If there's evolution,there's devolution. When does it start?

Question

Whether you believe in God or not,something always seems to be pulling us up. What happens if this goes backwards? Disintegration? Chaos? Back to the bushes & trees? Anything to look forward too,more freedom,whatever?

Answer 1

ha ha !
That is the best framing of a question regarding evolution.
Makes a great point to ponder, such as, why on the earth are not species devolving?

Answer 2

There's no such thing as devolution. It's a made up term for sci-fi. You could define evolution that leads to a weaker form as devolution but it is still primarily evolution. You can't just develop in a backwards fashion...

By the way, we didn't evolve from bushes and trees. Our paths took two very different turns before plant life was even around.

Answer 3

You're definitely getting somewhere there! However devolution is the process that took us away from totality (at one with 'God') in the first place, so essentially devolution has already taken place, although if you consider that outside the physical plane of existence time has no meaning, then it has happened, is happening and will happen.
And like trying to get your head around a geological timescale, if that don't confuse you then nothing will!

Answer 4

Evolution by natural selection is directionless, and so "devolution" is still actually evolution. From a biological perspective, there is no such thing as devolution. All changes in the gene frequencies of populations--and quite often in the traits those genes influence--are by definition evolutionary changes. Evolution, not devolution, selected for those adaptations.

Answer 5

Actually "devolution" happens all the time and people fail to recognize it for what it is.

Those of us who are born and survive without too much difficulty take for granted that basic good health, physical and mental, is common to everyone - well, it isn't.

Plenty of new would-be births are burdened by such remarkable deficiencies that they succumb to death before they take their first breath. Others appear unhealthy both before and at birth and parish within days or months regardless of the best efforts of medicine. Some successful births go through years and decades of suffering under conditions which are well known to medicine as chronic and mortal illnesses, and still there are a very few that present the best of health at birth and during their early life only to discover that they are deficient in one regard or another. In all of these cases we can find a common calling card - these individuals have all been the unfortunate recipients of the abnormalities capable within our human species.

We might look at this as being nothing more than the occurance of normal abnormality and it would not be incorrect to do so for the greatest number of cases, but for the rarest of these we must consider that we are probably looking at an unsuccessful set of mutant genes - at a would-be evolutionary possibility which failed, i.e., (as you called it,)a "devolutionary" step.

The very fact that the bulk of these individuals are so unfit to thrive and therefore fall victim to early deaths which keep them from propagating successfully, causes evolution to keep moving in a somewhat steady direction - the strong survive while the weak fail. But even in the failed step forward, the "devolutionary" step, we can see the possibility that a successful event in our mutation has the slim chance to occur among individuals who may be fraught with gene abnormalities. If such an individual has the opportunity to pass on his mutant gene and the resulting generation surprises us with new resistance to or greater ability to overcome the affliction that beset its parent, we are likely seeing the evolutionary process at its best - that a successful change may have needed to take one step backward before it could take its next leap forward.

"Devolution" does in fact happen... but it is by its own nature that evolution ultimately stands to claim the glory.

[][][] r u randy? [][][]
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POST SCRIPT to maguyver…: Holy Cow, Dude... you are way too god-goofy for words. Gosh, re-washing you brain might even be hopeless.

Answer 6

Evolution has no destination, it just leaves the adaptive organisms alive. Therefore if humans become extinct and there are no more 'intelligent' life forms like us, then devolution has not occured, but evolution, because we would no longer be fit to survive compared to the species that do survive.

I hope I actually answered your question there...

Answer 7

You're not thinking about this the right away. There is not straight line between a reproducing protein and a human. A "more evolved" species is also not necessarily a complex one -- for example, cockroaches survived whatever killed off the dinosaurs. They are poised to survive global warming too, and we are not necessarily poised for that.

So complex organisms can go extinct, if that's what you mean. But it's still just normal evolution -- not devolution.

Answer 8

It's not called devolution, it's called recession. And happens all the time, i.e the fall of the Roman Empire the whole dark ages.

Answer 9

Something is pulling us and it is called natural selection.

But it is not pulling in any particular direction. It creates dead ends all the time. Nothing says that we are at the top of evolution. Cockroaches have been on earth a lot longer than we have been. If you want to identify a pinacle for evolution that might be it.

Answer 10

Happens all the time, but those creatures die off through natural selection. That's why we don't "devolve."

"...something always seems to be pulling us up."

Realize that your idea of "up" in terms of evolution is subjective. Perhaps our hominid ancestors were the perfect ones, and we as humans have "devolved" into a less perfect creature. The frequent back pains a good majority of us experience as a direct result of walking upright might be evidence of this.

Answer 11

There is no such thing as devolution. Evolution does not mean better.