Change

Variation, Selection, and the Evolution of Nature and Society (by Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh)

One of the most powerful ideas in science is also one of the simplest: things change, and a changing and complex environment decides which changes survive. In biology that's the whole engine of evolution and we can draw lessons from that to the accelerating pace of social evolution and changing paradigms. Organisms vary from one generation to the next, some of that variation gets passed down, and the environment acts like a filter — traits that help an organism survive and reproduce tend to spread, while traits that hurt tend to fade. Given enough time, variation and selection working together can reshape entire populations, which is how we ended up with the biological complexity and diversity of life around us. Mutation is one of the main sources of that variation. Every time genetic material gets copied, small errors are produced. My own research also shows that species that survive in changing environment also produce more variation to give their progeny more possibilities of survival. Wolves for example have high chromosome numbers allowing for more variation and hence it was possible to domesticate them quickly and produce the amazing variety of dogs we see today. Same for cows and sheep. Most genetic changes do little or nothing; some are harmful; a few turn out to be useful in a given environment. A trait that's an advantage today can become neutral, or even a liability, once conditions shift.

Natural selection then acts on whatever variation is there. No organism chooses to evolve. It's simpler than that: individuals whose traits happen to suit their circumstances tend to survive and reproduce a bit more often, and their offspring inherit those traits, so the traits become more common over time. Repeat that across generations and the population itself changes. It's tempting to read this as a march toward perfection, but that's not what's happening. Evolution doesn't aim for perfect organisms, and it doesn't necessarily aim for complexity either. What it produces is organisms good enough for a particular place and moment — nothing more, and there's no finish line it's working toward.   But variation remains and mutation rates remain. That is why for example among our species some 2% of people have mutations and problems ranging from thallasemia to Down Syndrome (hundreds of medically important types of genetic disorders).

 

Part of the reason why variation is encouraged is that the environment itself never holds still. Climate shifts, predators and prey evolve together, diseases emerge, food supplies rise and fall, new competitors show up, landscapes change. So evolution isn't organisms adjusting to a fixed backdrop — it's a running conversation between changing organisms and a changing world. Which points to a broader lesson: survival isn't about being well suited to today's conditions. It's about being able to keep up with tomorrow's.

That idea can draw lessons beyond biology. It is now being perfected with machine learning (artificial intelligence) to even create and virtually test everything from new drugs to new weapons. For society, we can draw positive lessons from this. Human societies develop new ideas like new genes and new mutations. Sometimes these are called memes and they can also spread if they are useful in particular circumstances. A new religion or philossphical tradition may spread if it is more advantageous than previous ones. While social change doesn't run on Darwinian selection in a literal sense, principles of change still apply. Societies generate huge amounts of variation: new ideas, technologies, institutions, customs, theories, ways of solving problems. But the ones that flourish are ones that do not get fixated on the past and stop changing. After all, change is dynamic and everywhere. 

What sets humans apart is that we can create variation on purpose. We can imagine alternatives before they exist, experiment, argue, invent, copy, tweak, and learn from mistakes. A society facing a new problem can generate thousands of possible responses and then, through trial and error and public debate, work out which ones actually hold up. Look at the last few centuries: the agricultural revolution that happened here in the Fertile Crescent 12 millenia ago reshaped settlement and food production. Europe languished in religious orthodoxy for hundreds of years creating so much misery. Shedding that and evolving new paradigms (renaissance) was certainly progressive in every sense of that word. The Islamic world had a golden age when various strands of thought were allowed and encouraged advancing sciences from Algebra (an Arabic word) to astronomy. Standards of living flourished. The printing press changed how knowledge spread and industrialization remade work, transportation, and city life. Electricity and telecommunications shrank distance and computers and the internet rewired how we exchange information. Now AI, biotechnology, robotics, and renewable energy are doing it again changing the environment individuals and institutions have to operate in. Non of our inventions or ideas is good or bad in abstract or good or bad in all circumstances. They work during a particular environment (ecosystem) but may become harmful if the ecosystem changes. This is why change is constant! Those that develop (sometimes a good idea) may suffer when the idea no longer serves its environment. That is why religious orthodoxy can end up causing horrors. That is why Zionism is causing not only a genocide but a collective suicide: sticking to paradigms in a world that has changed.

Each time, old habits run into new conditions. Some institutions adapt. Others dig in. Ideas that once seemed radical become ordinary; innovations that looked promising quietly fail; things once dismissed out of hand become central. This is where the biological metaphor earns its keep: a fast-changing environment rewards variation and experimentation. When circumstances move quickly and institutions, societies, and individuals don't, the outcome for them is extinction. Institutions and individuals that have accumulated success can get attached to the habits that produced it — understandably, but not harmlessly. If something worked repeatedly in the past, people start assuming it always will. Rules harden into traditions, traditions into conventions, conventions into assumptions, and assumptions eventually get treated as truths nobody questions anymore. But the environment isn't obligated to keep an institution comfortable.

Adapting requires a steady supply of alternatives. Societies need people asking different questions, proposing unfamiliar solutions, and testing new approaches -not by throwing out what's already known- but by treating that knowledge as a foundation to build on rather than a fence to stay inside. That's really why variation matters intellectually and socially, not just biologically. A society where everyone thinks the same way gets conformity, but conformity narrows the range of responses available when things change as they ALWAYS do. Intellectual diversity widens that range. Some new ideas will fail and that is the nature of things. What matters is whether we learn from the failures.

The analogy of nature and human society has some limits. Selection works differently for us than it does in nature. We can evaluate ideas consciously and  even test them theoretically without the cost of death or lack of reproductions as happens in nature. We can research whether an idea (a meme) will actually improves people's lives in the current environment. We can ask and test many hypotheses and then consciously decide to implement. That's a real advantage. That is the power of knowledge. The most adaptable societies aren't necessarily the richest or the oldest. They're the ones that learn quickly, experiment freely, admit mistakes, and change direction when the evidence says to. The same holds for individuals. Anyone who treats their identity, knowledge, or worldview as permanently settled becomes fragile and vulnerable the moment circumstances shift. Education should be directed to building the capacity to ask new questions and revise the old ones staying attuned to changing worlds. My grandfather wrote me this when I was 17 years old “The world is changing ..so shed the mental chains that society and religion created around your brain and embrace the change”.

None of this means shedding key principles. The main principles including the golden rule “do no harm, treat people as you wish to be treated. Someone can remain committed to justice, dignity, or scientific inquiry while completely rethinking how that commitment plays out under new conditions. Sometimes staying true to a principle is exactly what requires giving up an old practice. This matters right now because AI is reshaping what expertise, education, research, and work even mean. The right response isn't to defend every old method just because it's familiar, and it isn't to embrace every new tool just because it's new. It's to experiment, evaluate, keep what works, drop what doesn't, and keep going and changing.

There's an intellectual humility built into all of this. No organism has full knowledge of the environment it's heading into, and no person or society can know exactly which ideas will hold up decades from now. The sensible response to that uncertainty isn't false certainty — it's staying capable of learning. Being "progressive," in this sense, isn't about a fixed checklist of positions; it's a willingness to revise views as evidence changes. Being "radical" can just mean going back to a problem's roots and questioning what everyone else has stopped questioning. And being "nimble" means staying flexible enough to change before circumstances force the issue.

The deepest lesson of evolution comes down to two words: variation and selection. Biology generates variation and lets environments sort through it. Culture generates an even wider range of possibilities through human creativity, knowledge, and communication, and societies test those possibilities against experience and evidence.

A healthy society makes room for new ideas — tolerating experimentation, protecting inquiry, allowing dissent, and letting failed approaches be dropped without losing the appetite to try again. It doesn't mistake stability for stagnation, or tradition for truth.

The world is changing faster than it used to, across nearly every dimension, and technological shifts can remake the social landscape within a single generation, sometimes within a few years. The biggest risk in that environment is assuming that what worked before will keep working. My main worry is that things like the climate change or a nuclear war will eliminate human civilization because we failed to collectively change course in the time needed. And time is another component. A species may still go extinct even if it has variation simply because there was not enough time or enough accelerated change to make the critical difference.

Nature rewards variation, responsiveness, and adaptation for individuals and societies alike. The fast pace of change around us require fast change in our ways of thinking. We now have the tools to do that more than in any other period in human history of 3 million years. We must embrace the change.