Topics Biology

Question If reproducing is our "ultimate goal" in life, is it possible that evolution made an "error" of some kind by allowing us to think? Biologists say that evolution happens to allow a species to thrive more than it previously did, and that evolution experiments with combinations of properties that species have. Is it possible for evolution to undo our ability to think? Could you say according to this theory that instead of the human species being smarter it has actualy masked itself from its ultimate goal by being able to ponder the question "why?". These days, some people have no plans of creating offspring because they can choose whether or not they want to have children, and I believe choice is a product of thought. Is this theory plausible?

Accepted:
January 23, 2006

Comments

Yes, the theory of natural selection implies that a trait is more likely to spread insofar as (roughly speaking) the creatures possessing it are better at producing greater numbers of fertile offspring. But this does not mean that the "ultimate goal" of a creature is to reproduce. To speak of a creature as having such a goal suggests that the creature has this goal consciously in mind, and also that the creature's value or worth is to be judged (at least in part) by how well it achieves this goal. Evolutionary theory says no such thing. (Perhaps you realize this, and that's why you put the word "error" in scare-quotes in your question.)

Furthermore, even setting this point aside, our ability to think surely contributes greatly to our evolutionary fitness. Of course, it also allows people to choose not to reproduce, as well as to create technology that might (with careless application) sometime lead to the demise of the human species. But it seems to me that overall, being able to think contributes to our fitness rather than diminishes from it. Human beings who are severely mentally deficient are, in a purely evolutionary sense, less fit. (Note well my warning above not to confuse evolutionary fitness with value or worth.) Surely, our capacity to think arose partly because it enhances our fitness -- even if not everything that we do, just because we can think, enhances our fitness. (The production of great works of art may not enhance our fitness, for instance.)