(Deleuzian) Darwinian Evolution against (Conservative) Social Darwinism

[All citations, except the passing one from Brian Massumi, are from Manuel De Landa’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. Take note of the terminologies species, which refers to the class or genus that the organism, e.g. a particular animal, belongs to.]

Despite Charles Darwin’s break with essentialist thinking–the kind of thinking that takes biological species as examples of a natural kind (whether the “transcendental essence” of Plato or the “immanent natural state” of Aristotle), i.e. the kind of thinking that takes species as “examples of what an abstract general entity [(also known as form) is] supposed to be,” in other words hylomorphic thinking–Darwin’s historical theory of evolution, asserting that “species, far from being eternal archetypes, are born at a particular historical time and die through extinction in an equally historical way,” has most often been appropriated by conservatives and extended into the social sphere (where it is called social Darwinism) as the “scientific” justification for discrimination, conquest (where Nietzsche’s concept of the will-to-power is as crudely appropriated), and outright oppression, usually (but not only) with regards to race (57). This is the sense in which Darwin’s theory of evolution is incomplete. We need to follow it up with later developments in the field (that have collectively been called population thinking) and seek philosophical grounding from Nietzsche (with a better appropriation) and Deleuze.

The first step is to think (like the biologist Michael Ghiselin) of species (which, in essentialist thinking, is considered the “essential” type that particular organisms belong to) as–like the organisms that compose them–themselves individuals. As De Landa explains, rather than “exemplification or instantiation, the relation of individual species to individual organisms is one of whole and parts, much as the relation between an organism and the individual cells that compose it, [. . . which is a causal relation, i.e.] the whole emerges from the causal interactions between the component parts” (57). In other words, the (individual) species by no means represent a higher ontological category (some abstract, ideal type or form that define or that the organic instantiations aspire to) than the individual organisms. Rather, although there are differences (of spatio-temporal scale) between the two, both organisms and species are individuals.

In fact, species are formed, take the shape that they do, “through a double process of natural selection and reproductive isolation” that its component parts go through, i.e. through the interactions of the organisms (considered by Deleuze as intensive) (57). It is thus not a matter of organisms aspiring to the species considered as the ideal model of what they ought to be (which is the crux of hylomorphic thinking), but of species, as larger-scale individuals (which some, even going further, refer to as mere “statistical aggregates or abstractions”), being shaped according to the interplay of the organisms, the smaller-scale individuals that constitute them.

(To render the difference between the two approaches (essentialist v. populationist) clearer, perhaps an utterance by population thinker Ernst Mayr, as quoted by De Landa, would prove enlightening: “For the typologist, the type (eidos) is real and the variation an illusion, while for the populationist, the type (the average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real” (59). “Averages are merely statistical abstractions, only the individuals of which the populations are composed have reality” (58). DeLanda articulates a consequence of this when he says, “For population thinkers heterogeneity is the state we should expect to exist spontaneously under most circumstances, while homogeneity is a highly unlikely state which may be brought about only under very specific selection pressures, abnormally uniform in space and time” (59).)

Hylomorphism is further undermined by the Darwinian concept of the norm of reaction, which social Darwinism is quick to overlook. This concept, as De Landa explains, “refers to the fact that there is enough flexibility in the connection between genes and bodily traits that differences in the environment can yield different characteristics for the two communities, even though they are still the same species. [. . .] In this case, there would be no point in saying that one community represents the normal, ideal, fixed phenotype, or that it approximates it to a greater degree of perfection. Since the phenotypes are flexible within certain limits, all realizations of the genotype are normal within those limits. [. . .] The idea of degrees of perfection [is thus replaced] with that of relations between rates of change” (59-60). In other words, the idea of form that defines matter is at best tenuous. Instead, what he have are rates of change between different elements (in the previous example, the rates of change of the gene and the rates of change in the environment).

There is thus (in contrast to the essentialist/typological/hylomorphic approach) no higher-level form (what species have been thought to be) that real beings (also known as matter, e.g. the organisms) aspire to (or, if you’re a Platonist, form would be what’s real, matter the illusion, mere appearance; but these two are really the same: one level is real, the other is not). Instead, species and organisms–both individuals (although at different scales)–are both real. The difference between species and organisms is more precisely designated–rather than by form and matter, real and illusory–by the ontological distinction that Deleuze makes, i.e. by the virtual and the actual. Actual organisms interact and, out of that interaction, a particular statistical aggregate is shaped, that we are then able to conceive virtually: what has been scientifically called species.

Proceeding the other way around, were it the case that the virtual (idea of what a) species (is) shapes how actual organisms are, this still does not change the relationship between species and organisms (and the way we think about evolution). The virtual species still would not impose some higher-level form on the actual organisms because, from Deleuze’s intensive ontology, we know that there is no such form. Rather, in the intensive (individualization of the organisms), there are only divergent actualizations. The actual (organism) is different from the virtual (species supposed to define the organism). In fact, the whole process–actualization–is driven by difference. The actual only becomes actual (the organism takes the particular shape it does) by becoming different. Rather than exemplification by matter (the organism) of form (the species), the actualization of the organism is instead defined by elements different from each other (gene and factors in the environment, in De Landa’s example) and moved by rates of change (again!) different from each other. In other words, the formation of the individual organism (and of the individual species) is determined by differential elements and different rates of change. These differentials then drive to symmetry-breaking bifurcations, to the phase transitions of a singularity, where things change, i.e. where novel forms emerge.

There is thus (How many times do we have to say this?) no form (and hylomorphic exemplification/imitation) involved in the process. Rather, the process is driven by difference. Evolution, that intensive process (what isn’t?) discovered by Darwin, is defined by difference. De Landa articulates this when he says that “variation, genetic variation [. . .], far from being unimportant, is the fuel of evolution. Without adaptive differences between organisms, natural selection would be incapable of yielding any improvements in the population, let alone allow novel forms to emerge” (59). In other words, in contrast to conservative social Darwinism, measuring up to ideal types (of what the organisms are supposed to be, based on the “natural” species that they belong to) is not how it works: the “essential” form is not what motivates what happens (e.g. the actions of the members) in the population. Rather, difference is what moves an intensive process, what causes evolution in the first place! Without those different rates of change, those differential elements, there would be no movement (that lead to singularities, the emergence of novel forms, i.e. evolution).

What is more (and this necessarily follows from what’s been established above), homogeneity–sameness–is not the goal of the process–for then there will be no more movement. If that were so, all that we would be left with are static types and standardized beings that compose, as Massumi puts it in A User’s Guide to Deleuze and Guattari, “an enthropic trashbin of outworn modes that refuse to die” (8). Simply put, without difference (what social conservatives try really hard to get rid of) (which is not possible in the first place, as De Landa has pointed out: a condition that exists “only under very specific selection pressures, abnormally uniform in space and time,” i.e. what the Nazis tried to create) there will itself be no evolution. That means no moving ahead, no advance, no surpassing and overcoming (through the emergence of novel forms!). In other words, no Übermensch.

This is what I meant when I said that conservative social Darwinism makes a crude appropriation of the Nietzschean concept of will-to-power. More precisely: the conservative appropriation of Darwin misunderstands the Nietzschean principle of power completely. By trying to get rid of the different (like what the Nazis tried to do), these self-proclaimed Darwinists deprive themselves of the very resource (difference) that makes it possible to evolve at all, i.e. to overcome, to be more than you are, to be Übermensch. Metaphorically speaking, they deprive themselves of the very room by which to maneuver, the very room where we are headed.

This does not mean that difference is only there as a resource (in a way analogous to what Heidegger saw technology do; although Heidegger paints a sharply different picture of the will-to-power) to gain power (i.e. retain the weak as a sort of springboard, or as subjects that you subjugate to feel, demonstrate, to exercise your power). Difference does not equal weak. Difference is not the same as, is not a value of the slave. What you conquer, in exercising the will-to-power, in attempting to become an Übermensch, are slavish values: values that keep you chained to what you are (as defined by the Lacanian Other?), prevent you from moving ahead, make you the slave (rather than the master) of your drives. That (the values of the slave) is not difference, which, as we’ve already established, is on the contrary what allows you to move in the first place, to evolve, to strive to Übermensch.

This gets even further from conservative social Darwinism if, like Deleuze, we read this Nietzschean principle (of becoming-Übermensch) as first and foremost internal–something you do, you achieve, within yourself–before becoming (admittedly, necessary at times) an interpersonal affair, which (if, by interpersonal relations, we mean the relations we have with people who are close to us, people who influence how we behave, what we desire, etc.) is still steps away (we’ll have to do amazing logical stunts to get there; perhaps here the neoconservatives can teach us something) from saying that, according to Darwin, we have to conquer “lesser” races, i.e. convert and raise them to “civilization.”

As the fuel of evolution (and the key towards Übermensch), it is thus not desirable to get rid of difference. This fits right in with how population thinkers think of the development of organism (or species) forms as a collective process. Making another crucial distinction between essentialist and population thinking, DeLanda describes, “While the typologist thinks of the genesis of form in terms of the expression of single types, for the populationist the forms of organisms always evolve within collectivities (reproductive communities, for example) as selectively advantageous traits with different origins propagate through the population” (59). These collectivities, needless to say, are composed of heterogeneous elements (members who are different from each other) whose difference is irreducible and is, in fact, (in forming an intensive assemblage in relating to each other) not reduced, in which (in the non-reduction) consists, which drives, further movement, further development–in addition to the emergent properties (something over and above the individual qualities taken in isolation) produced by such assemblages.

Difference is thus (rather than eradicated by) key to evolution. Difference is not only what drives evolution. Nor does it merely (through the collective assemblage) allow the emergence of properties that go over and beyond the properties of the individual members. Novel forms–i.e. different beings, actual organisms we haven’t seen before–emerge quite regularly. That is to say, the emergence of novel forms are by no means the exception. DeLanda illustrates this by differentiating the “process of assembly of organisms” (as illustrated in the developing embryo) from the Euclidean, metric assembly process found in the factory. He states, “If putting together organisms followed an assembly-line pattern, random mutations would have to occur simultaneously in matching parts, channels and procedures, in order to yield a viable entity on which natural selection could operate” (66-7). This, however–DeLanda, backed by a lot of scientific literature, argues–is not the case. “The component parts used in biological assembly are defined less by rigid metric properties than by their topological connectivity: the specific shape of a cell’s membrane [e.g.] is less important than its continuity and closure, and the specific length of a muscle less important than its attachment points” (66). In other words, the elements involved in the process are less important than their relations. “This allows component parts to be not inert but adaptive, so that [e.g.] muscle lengths can change to fit longer bones, and skin can grow and fold adaptively to cover both. It also permits the transport processes not to be rigidly channelled” (66). “This greatly enhances the possibilities for evolutionary experimentation” (67).

If we add time (as a factor) to this (nonlinear) equation (this, as of yet, is not part of population thinking; DeLanda in fact argues for the need to add it “to population thinking to complete the Darwinian revolution”), we realize even more how the emergence of novel forms (in embryological development and in evolution), rather than an exception, is a likely (actual rather than possible) outcome (118). As DeLanda points out, “if embryological processes followed a strictly sequential order, that is, if a unique linear sequence of events defined the production of an organism, then any novel structures would be constrained to be added at the end of the sequence” (118). This is not the case, however. “Embryonic development occurs in parallel, [with] bundles of relatively independent processes occur[ing] simultaneously. [From this,] new designs may arise [simply] from disengaging bundles, or more precisely, from altering the duration of one process relative to another, or the relative timing of the start or end of a process” (118).

A specific example of this process (called heterochrony) is neoteny, which “illustrates that novelty need not be the effect of terminal addition of new features, but on the contrary, [. . .] can be the result of a loss of certain old features. [. . . This] loss of a feature made possible by the uncoupling of rates of change may provide an escape route from morphologies that have become too rigid and specialized, allowing organisms to explore new developmental pathways” (118).

In citing Darwinism as the justification for outrightly conservative agendas (Discriminate against homosexuals, those perverts who don’t fit in the norm! Conquer other races and spread civilization! Get rid of difference and make everyone the same, i.e. white and male! (Well, how do we reproduce then, without the different, i.e. without the female?)), hasn’t it occurred to these conservatives that in truth, Darwinian evolution moves towards–rather than eradicates–the different–in the least to continue moving itself, and at the most to attain to the status of Übermensch?

Neoteny, that intensive scientific process, further demonstrates another thing. By demonstrating in a scientific way (as a scientifically validated process) that movement and novelty–i.e. evolution–can actually proceed through the loss (and not only the gain) of certain features, “it eliminates the idea that evolutionary processes possess an inherent drive towards an increase in complexity, an idea which reintroduces teleology into Darwinism” (118). Evolution, in being demonstrated (scientifically!) as an unpredictable and somewhat random process, thus loses its attachment to progress (and its would-be harbingers). We don’t (can’t) even know where evolution would lead! More importantly, it deprives would-be agents of the claim of knowing and carrying out the natural order of things, e.g. the discovery of the inherent superiority of a race and its destined conquest of the world, its establishment of the empire of the pure and the “best.”

Then again, Darwinian evolution–this time fully thought out, its revolution brought closer to completion–also adds a lot of uncertainty to how we think about nature and history, to what will happen next. It may just as yet reveal to us the hold that randomness–chance, Deleuze’s quasi-cause–has on this world, populated as it is by self-claimed knowing agents.