The Evolution of Ideas

 In his famous book on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn tries at one point to acquit himself of the charge of relativism. It's not—he argues—that he believes scientific advances bear no relationship to truth; it's more that they change through a process akin to natural selection. He encourages us to think of the evolution of thought as much like the evolution of species. 

In much the same way as we have had to jettison the idea of any teleological "evolution" in the natural environment—so too, we should no longer think of ideas as moving along a linear vector of progress. But they do adapt over time through a process of trial-and-error, such that they eventually become more viable—workable—adapted, that is to say—to whatever it is that scientific ideas do. 

Three years before Kuhn published his book, Arthur Koestler already hinted at a similar analogy. "It would indeed seem more expedient to treat the history of thought in terms borrowed from biology," he writes in The Sleepwalkers (his account of changing theories of cosmology during the early-modern Scientific Revolution). And he proceeds to do so. 

He talks about how the evolution of ideas—much like the evolution of living beings—proceeds in fits and starts; by sudden leaps and explosions, followed by long periods of relative calm and quiet. "There occur in biological evolution periods of crisis and transition when there is a rapid, almost explosive branching out in all directions [...] follow[ed by] periods of stabilization."

One detects in this passage not only an anticipation of Kuhn—but also of the famous concept from modern evolutionary biology of "punctuated equilibrium"—according to which evolution proceeds not at a constant rate of change, but by means of long periods of relative stasis punctuated by sudden eruptions and upheavals. Koestler says the same thing happens with ideas. 

And long before any of these people wrote, I find that the great idiosyncratic 19th century luminary Samuel Butler had already given voice to a similar insight. In his God the Known and God the Unknown, he points out that ideas—like the evolution of species—require a long period of incubation—during which there is no outward sign of change—before a sudden break and crisis. 

Again analogizing natural to ideological evolution, Butler notes that both species and thoughts may evolve by either of two methods: gradually, or all at once. The amount of change required to adapt to facts is the same either way—so if one procrastinates the change, then the extent of the change when it comes will be all the greater. Yet, choosing this delayed option is often to be preferred. 

 It is on the first principle that the modification of animal forms has proceeded mainly; but it may be questioned whether what is called a sport is not the organic expression of discontent which has been long felt, but which has not been attended to, nor been met step by step by as much small remedial modification as was found practicable: so that when a change does come it comes by way of revolution. 

Or, again (only that it comes to much the same thing), a sport may be compared to one of those happy thoughts which sometimes come to us unbidden after we have been thinking for a long time what to do, or how to arrange our ideas, and have yet been unable to arrive at any conclusion. [...]

The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by more cataclysmic methods are obvious. [writes Butler] For, in the first place, all composite things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, so that some parts shall depend upon and be grouped round others, as in the articulation of a skeleton and the arrangement of muscles, nerves, tendons, etc., which are attached to it. 

To meddle with the skeleton is like taking up the street, or the flooring of one's house; it so upsets our arrangements that we put it off till whatever else is found wanted [...] can be done at the same time. Another advantage is in the rest which is given to the attention during the long hollows, so to speak, of the waves between the periods of resettlement[.]

And this in turn makes me think back to William James's observation in the Varieties of Religious Experience—in which he analogizes religious conversion to this same sudden "revolution" or upset of a preexisting equilibrium. Often—he writes—the forces that go to make for a conversion were a long time in incubation—such that the change, when it comes, appears to be set off by a trivial cause. 

Neither an outside observer nor the Subject who undergoes the process [writes James] can explain fully how particular experiences are able to change one's centre of energy so decisively, or why they so often have to bide their hour to do so. [...] In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. [....] 

A mental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and then the centre of gravity sinks into an attitude more stable, for the new ideas that reach the centre in the rearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new structure remains permanent.

And so it will be, I suppose, with whatever grand new intellectual synthesis comes next. When it comes, it will come all at once. Our equilibrium will be overthrown; and there will be a time of great chaos before the next arrives. 

We appear to be in a period of considerable intellectual stagnation at the moment. The twenty first century has proved to be a sort of dark ages, in which self-appointed monks like me pick over the intellectual remains of what our 19th and 20th century forbears left us (just look at this blog post for evidence of the process). 

Our dizzying strides in information technology in recent years have not managed to abolish the sense that we live at the end of history—at least when it comes to ideas. Henry Miller, in his book about Rimbaud, once asks us to name the last time a poem on its own had changed the world—the way they once did in the 19th century. We have the same complaint today—except we'd have to broaden it. When's the last time a literary work of any kind changed the world? An idea? 

But what appears to us as an end must be no more than a period of temporary equilibrium. No doubt, revolutionary currents are going on beneath the surface. No doubt, we are merely in a period of incubation. Some new revolution in thought is being prepared in some way we can't foresee ("while the tired waves [...] seem here no painful inch to gain, / Far back, through creeks and inlets making, / Comes silent, flooding in, the main." (Clough.)) After all, I'm sure the monks in the Dark Ages thought they too had reached the end of history. 

And maybe—when the moment comes—it won't have seemed so sterile as it may now for me to spend all this time picking over the remains of the twentieth century—trying to keep the lamp of people like Koestler lit for the TikTok generation. After all—as Koestler himself says—new creative insights often derive from rediscovering the old and familiar—and simply regarding it in a new light. "Every creative act," he writes, "involves a regression to a more primitive level."* The Renaissance, after all, came about because people rediscovered the Greek classics. 

Maybe by me constantly digging up these old books—insisting that people talk about Samuel Butler again; or James; or Koestler; or Kuhn—these old and familiar works will suddenly bounce back a glint from the sun that no one ever saw there before. And something will catch fire. 

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*Koestler was in part obviously hoping that by writing his great account of the defunct scientific classics of the past—by offering, say, an encounter with Copernicus in the original—he might suddenly precipitate a new synthesis; a rupture in the modern equilibrium that would lead to a new revolution of thought.