Natural selection, economics and coincidence

It is quite a wonder that at times a good book can be as interesting a companion as a fellow traveler with whom one enjoys having conversations. Even though I had enjoyed reading books while traveling before, Easter holidays this year brought along a very special experience (an interesting observation here: even though a considerable population of the homo sapiens tends to grow uninterested in the spiritual world, it is as if religious events sometimes  bring certain  blessings; “Coincidence”?) . I decided to spend the holidays with a dear friend in Düsseldorf. The companion I chose for the journey was “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins. Having already read the “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, I must say that it was a delight to understand evolution by natural selection from the point of view of the gene. By the time I reached Düsseldorf, I had only been able to read through the initial chapters that introduce the ideas of genes as replicators and bodies as gene machines. I had no idea what was coming next.

During my stay in Düsseldorf I put the book aside since most of the time was spent on site seeing and discussions. At one occasion while we were talking about energy trading and economics, at the back of my mind I began to wonder whether energy trading could be seen in the light of "Game Theory". However, the discussion moved on to other topics and I did not give it much thought. Soon, it was time to leave for home.

At the airport, I continued reading from where I had left and to my surprise the next chapter was about the application of game theory to evolution by natural selection. This is what we now know as “Evolutionary Game Theory”, put forward by Maynard Smith. Introduced in the same chapter is the concept of “Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESS)” (a concept from the evolutionary game theory) on which rest of the book relies heavily.

As wonderful as the experience of reading “The Selfish Gene” has been, it did not come without stimulating a myriad of thoughts in my mind. Some of these I have managed to streamline and would like to share with the reader. The book is based primarily on and extends Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. It is no doubt a brilliant effort at explaining the origin of species. However, I have come across certain issues resurfacing throughout the text that I find hard coming to terms with. In the following bullets, I try to tackle them one at a time.

• "Coincidence is the last refuge of the uninspired": I have not been able to authenticate the source of this very interesting quote, yet it makes a lot of sense in terms of statistics. Coincidence can be defined as, "a statistically possible yet highly unlikely event", or an anomaly perhaps? Yet, at the heart of the idea of "The Selfish Gene" lies the theory of evolution by natural selection; which in turn is built on a foundation of coincidence. One might wonder, we so arrogantly believe in coincidence (in the particular case of evolution by natural selection) that we do not wait much long to ridicule the concept of the existence of a supreme being; and yet we take pride in calling ourselves rational and scientific ... irony? (Please note here that peer reviewed articles published in scientific journals go through a very thorough process of evaluation in order to ensure that the experimental results bear statistical significance)
• Speculation and the scientific method: The fundamental message conveyed by the text appears to be speculative rather than scientific. One very interesting example appears in the last chapter where the author uses a sentence construct like, "This theory is testable, thought it hasn't been tested yet." which then connects to the sentence, "If I am right about ...., it follows that". Should this not be considered a fairly week argument in the light of the scientific method?
• The kaleidoscope of the sciences of the artificial: As mentioned earlier, the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies is an application of game theory to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Now, game theory (or economics in a broader sense) is one of the “Sciences of the artificial”. This would mean that economics is fundamentally a man-made tool. In essence, when we apply economics to explain the origin and function of life, what we are doing in a broader perspective is enclosing the phenomena of nature in the bubble of scientific progress made by man so far. We try to explain something using what we know, and we completely discard what we do not know. Are we so sure that we know of all there can ever be, that we shut the door to the existence of any other possibilities? It is as if history is repeating itself; as if we are back in the time when Galileo’s idea of heliocentrism met with bitter opposition. Are we not supposed to be open minded?

  The question of the origin of the life can perhaps be viewed from a different yet interesting perspective. Let us consider this problem as an optimization problem. We have an infinitely large search space consisting of all possible explanations for the origin of life. Wouldn’t natural selection be one of the possibilities and most likely a local optimum in the search space? Would it not be wise to continue the search in other directions and look for other possible explanations?

•  The gene and the cosmos: Let us take a step back from the theory of evolution and try to evaluate the place of the gene within the universe. The origin of life is a phenomenon known to have occurred only on the planet Earth. What about the rest of the universe? How did it come into being? These are the questions that have consistently been challenging some of the brightest minds in cosmology. To me it sounds as if the question of the existence of a supreme being is rightfully tackled by cosmology due to the much broader scope of the field. If we analyze the theory of evolution by natural selection in this perspective, does it not challenge the completeness of the theory if the sole focus is on the origin of life without considering the events of the cosmos? I would like to quote “Roger Penrose”  here: “There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance. Some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along–it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling of at the moment.” On a different occasion he said, “there is what can be called a Platonic world beyond the material world that "contains" mathematics and other abstractions”. My interest in sharing these quotations is merely to bring to the readers attention, once again, to the point that we are very limited by our senses. Our perceptions are constrained by the capabilities of our sensory organs and our nervous systems. What if there is much more to be perceived, only we do not yet have the ability to understand it?
• Existence of God and Ockham’s Razor: The 14th century English logician, William of Ockham presented a principle that is often quoted in a simplified form as, “The simplest explanation is usually the best one”. Applying the principle to the question of the origin of species, what would be simplest explanation; the existence of a supreme being or evolution by natural selection?

Having stated all that, I would like to bring the reader’s attention to the heart of this discussion. The purpose of this criticism is not to encourage a debate about the existence of God, or to defy atheism. The objective here is to highlight the fact that be it science or religion, when used with a political bias, it tends to incline towards extremism. As I understand it, the grand objective of science is to uncover the truth; and the curiosity and search for this truth is what has driven the scientists for centuries to make the most amazing discoveries that we know of today. Let us find a middle ground where our efforts are focused not on argument for the sake of argument, but rather on the search for truth.

Finally, I would like to conclude by sharing this excerpt from the Nobel lecture by "Sydney Brenner": 

“... there are many aspects of humanity that we still need to understand for which there are no useful models. Perhaps we should pretend that morality is known only to the gods and that if we treat humans as model organisms for the gods, then in studying ourselves we may come to understand the gods as well.”