Term Paper, SP '11, Non-Fiction Writing

Evolution of Theory

“To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” –Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1872

Darwin here is referring to a problem that would eventually be called the “Cambrian explosion”.  Interestingly, 150 years later, no one has yet given a satisfactory answer.  We have scoured the Earth since then, and have only reaffirmed the missing deposits.  To those with an eye to discredit the whole of evolutionary theory, it is an insurmountable obstacle.  This isn’t to say there aren’t a few theories out there, but all fall short.  None truly satisfy.  It goes like this:  over a period of about 50 million years, life on earth grew from very simple cellular organisms like sponges, algae and worms, into every major phylum that exist today (arthropods, mollusks, chordates, etc.).  That is, all the major body-plans ubiquitous to life on Earth appeared by the end of the Cambrian time period.  All of this growth is normal of course, just not at the extraordinary rate at which it occurred.  Evolutionary change is a measureable constant, yet during this early period that law is broken.  As with many of the hows of life, science has yet to explain this phenomenon in detail.  To some, it cripples the whole of evolution, to many it is just another mystery that will eventually be solved.  The crux of this controversy though, has a particular meaning to me.

My early exposure to the origin stories of life were rendered through the lens of Christianity.  In particular, it was a biblical-literalist view of creation; 7 days and done.  In 8th grade, my science curriculum proposed a 6,000 year old universe, supported by amazingly simple minded theories.  For example, the moon moves away from us a bit each year (call it x), 4.5 billion years ago the moon would have been so close to us that the earth would have been flooded twice a day by its gravitation pull on the water.  This of course only takes linear math into consideration, x times 4.5 billion certainly does put the moon too close.  Though, as has been proven several times, by several groups, the laws governing celestial bodies are not bound to pre-exponential math.  In other words, massive orbiting satellites don’t behave the same way every year.   The moon's orbit is in fact a careful dance that requires a level of computer modeling that did not exist when the moon-distance argument was first posed.  This theory wasn't debunked properly until the late 80s, where as some sources put the argument's origin around the early 60s.  Yet in 1995, I was taught this.  And I believed it.  I even defended it.

As a freshman in yet another Christian school, I was again taught this theory and many other attempts to “expose” the fallacies of evolution.  It was made to appear not only implausible, but downright outrageous.  One afternoon the whole student body was marched into the church sanctuary to listen to a travelling speaker.  His name was Dr. Hovind, and he presented to us argument after argument defending the now counter-cultural position that the earth is only 6000 years old.  As we looked at his slides and listened, we were taught a great deal, we learned that carbon dating is impossible, every pre-human skeleton was a hoax, and dinosaurs and humans must have coexisted within the last 6,000 years.  In fact, he insisted that dinosaurs were among us; plesiosaurs exist in the ocean and brontosauri in the Congo, he even cites the Loch Ness monster as proof.  Though it’s embarrassing that I ever believed such things, I find it fairly reasonable that I did so.  He didn’t look or sound crazy and he supported all I had learned in Sunday school, as well as the Christian curricula.  On top of that, he was a doctor, an adult with seemingly sound theories that any 14 year old could understand, and really, who was I to doubt him?

A dozen years, and as many books and documentaries later, I felt confident in my understanding of life and its appearance in the universe.  I no longer relied on the problems of evolution to create a space for a god.  The arguments I grew up with were slowly but handily dispatched, here in a book, there in a lecture.  None of the old biblical literalist complaints held sway with me.  Then I stumbled upon a documentary on Christian television called “Darwins’s Dilemma”.  This new take on creationism focused entirely on the Cambrian explosion.  As I watched, I found that a lot of the old arguments had been dropped entirely, which was impressive to me.  These new creationists accepted the geologic timeline, thankfully not daring to pose an earth that was only a few thousand years old.  They also accepted common ancestry between apes and humans, an issue that seemed much more important in the past; it was raised often during the Scopes trials.  They even admit to the process of evolution within entire phyla, rather than within one species.  All of this evolutionary theory is accepted, so that, within the framework of itself, they can try to posit God in a new location, time, and place.  Another way to say it: they accept all the current science, show the lack of information regarding the Cambrian explosion, claim science fails there, and therefore God.

It was honestly refreshing to see the modern take on the Christian origin story.  Truly though, I was looking forward to the debunking ceremony.  Over the years, I had learned to research from all sides of an argument.  Creationism was easy to debunk, free will was a trickier subject, the 9/11 conspiracies were actually pretty tough, but if you stick that out, you’ll see its all bullshit.  I spent a great deal of my twenties inside arguments, from one side to the other, back and forth until I found a comfortable space to rest my beliefs.  This ceremony could take a few hours, or a few months.  I looked forward to parsing this theory down into bits and shattering it like so many before it.  But I was in for a surprise.

The Cambrian explosion really doesn’t have a complete working theory.  In fact, it hardly has a theory at all.  Oxygen level increase?  Maybe, but that happened in the Phanerazoic period, with no such consequences.  The rise of predation?  Predation had already developed, and doesn’t seem to be a catalyst of any kind, though obviously this behavior heavily influenced the time period, as predation always has and will.  Some have even chalked it up to mis-dating, forgoing the need to explain it at all.  So here I was, out of running room, on the very edge of what we know about our origins.  Here was a place to ponder.  For the first time, I had to learn how to research in scientific journals, Wikipedia ran out quickly.  I had to increase my vocabulary quite a bit, just to try and find related articles.  It consumed me.  I had so easily found accessible truths in the past, it was almost startling to find something so unknown.  I understood now why the creationists had crafted their attack as they had.  They found the weakest part of the theory, and pointing, exclaim "God goes here!"  I want to prove them wrong.

How does one explain the sharp growth of the Cambrian period?  It seems startling in comparison to two other time periods.  That of the very beginnings of life itself, and the median rate of change for all time after the Cambrian.  What would cause this?  After researching into a myriad of evolutionary topics, I realized I was asking the wrong question.  The correct question is; what caused the steady rate of change after the Cambrian?  When you start to think of the earliest life forms, it’s hard to set aside all the current realities we take for granted.  The very rate of evolution that we understand through fossils, is the rate which appears to be broken in the Cambrian.  Rather than focusing on why the Cambrian was different, I had to focus on why the current rate is what it is.  When I discovered the field of senescence, I found what I believe to be a major factor in the explosion.

Senescence basically means aging.  This is a process, aging; a complicated one.  It’s rather counter-intuitive, but a living organism that ages is more complex than a living organism that does not.  Like all of life around us, everything must be explained through the lens of evolution.  Say, sleep, or baby teeth, or the sensation of color, all must have gone through the gauntlet of the evolutionary process.  Nothing that exists happened without it being a benefit to the species.  Natural selection right? This includes aging.  So, it seems I’ve found myself in another impossible problem.  How did aging evolve?  Surprisingly, the theories here are much stronger than anything science has for the Cambrian.  The consensus in this particular scientific realm is that aging is an evolutionary positive because it prevents poor replication.  It sounds odd when thinking of adult humans, but in the microbiologic levels, it makes perfect sense.  If one doesn’t stop reproducing, the coding errors will simply get worse over time and fidelity is endangered.  As I chewed on this idea, something began to come together in my brain.

What did the world look like before the aging process?  Is immortality a negative?  Well, organisms certainly died back then.  Through environment: heat, cold, pH balance, radiation, predation, etc.  But if we accept this reality, that at some point in the past, aging was not a biological process yet, then we have to reexamine the rate of mutation during this time period.  Imagine it with me.  Seas churning with small organisms, a few small ecologies develop which include predation.  All of these algea and simple life forms reproducing every day, and, given a safe environment, reproducing without the limits of aging.  There are many limits like I have stated, many ways to die, but self-assured destruction had not yet been woven into the code of life.  What does this look like then?  Should we be surprised that the rate of mutation in the early periods are high?  I propose that we should not at all be startled.  The rate of change we see today is directly related to mortality.  Mortality keeps a species more pure, it keeps the mutations at bay.  It seems only logical that if we remove aging from population growth studies, we will begin to see why things happened so “fast” in the Cambrian.  The immortals cranked out bad code, bad copies, and mutations at a rate unrecognizable in a world now fully dominated by the aging process.  In fact, I think it is safe to say, the end of the Cambrian is actually, the beginning of aging.  The beginning of senescence.

It boggles me a bit that I can’t find this argument out there.  Not even as a theory brought up and shot down, like so many others.   Part of me wants recognition, but I know my motivations are more devious here.  Having been raised in an anti-intellectual home, having been made to believe such ludicrous concepts, there is something of a resentment inside me.  Ok, a huge resentment.  But having written now, I see a new way to appreciate my miserable childhood education.  Had I nothing to defend, I would have never really looked into evolution with the same depth.  If I hadn’t set out in contrast to popular understanding, I don’t think I would have the same appreciation, or thirst for knowledge.  It was literally being duped over the course of 10 years that stirs this hunger for truth.  For that, I can be appreciative.  And because of that, they have made themselves a potent enemy.