How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
A tough nut to crack even for scientists
Maria, the rogue nun.
She was my favourite character.
She still is.
I liked her rogue spirit.
I still do.
She loved the hills.
She would visit the hills and with a keen eye, notice how alive they were. And when she sang, the hills would respond.
The hills were alive, with the sound of music.
But her character would always land her in problems.
Mother Superior never understood what was amiss with this particular nun. Her close confidantes would try to explain her nuances but never could settle for one reason.
Eventually, Mother Superior sent our Maria elsewhere.
“When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window”.
Maria told herself as she left the Abbey.
The action taken by the Mother Superior was not one borne out of frustration but from mercy and curiosity. She wanted to see if there is a place and role, where Maria could fit.
Before she left, the nuns wondered?
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
The fallback answers
The mystery of Maria is the story every biologist encounters when they find an odd organism.
In the past, when midwives gave birth to a child with odd features, they could easily be dubbed monsters. Not hopeful monsters, but monstrous monsters. Before the development of this field, the fallback answer would have been:
The mother was cursed.
If the child was normal, male, and the mother was a queen, the fallback answer would have been:
Long live the King, for he has sired a healthy baby boy.
Both parents were blessed. Praise be to God.
But around the mid-1800s, another rogue scientist proposed an alternative interpretation of the story. Darwin suggested the emergence of diversity was steered by natural forces.
Blind natural forces.
Natural Selection.
The cheek.
Do you mean the eye, with its intricate machinations was developed blindly, and not by an external intervenor? Surely, Darwin, you must be joking!
But he wasn’t.
He collected his evidence for decades and submitted his work to an elite group. He offered another potential solution to understanding the problem of Maria.
It took a lot for his theory to get accepted.
First came August Weismann and his team of scientists. Then came the pioneers of population genetics, Sewall Wright, Ronald Fisher, and J.B.S Haldane. They purified his tarnished reputation.
But this problem bore other problems. Everybody started interpreting everything using the lens of natural selection. Theodosius Dobzhansky even made the bold claim:
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
And evolution was only practical if it followed Darwinian principles.
But not all of evolution can be explained by natural selection.
Almost every new aspect was often touted to have an adaptive reason. This has been the engine fueling many scientists in the labs and the fields.
The T.Rex must have had a reason for its small hands. An adaptive reason, one forged and molded by natural selection. It would not have risen to dominance during the Jurassic period if it did not.
Maybe it was useful in standing up or swatting smaller, flying creatures. Who knows?
An adaptive reason was the only reason most scientists would listen to.
But Gould and Lewontin thought otherwise. And they made sure it reached the elites in the field. They did it through the famous Spandrels paper.
Adaptation was not an asset to the Abbey.
Those triangular-like pieces at the corner of an Abbey, Cathedral or that Museum you like
Imagine a block of a room, well proportioned. A cube of a room.
Now imagine arches placed on the four walls. An arch does not cover the full face of the wall but leaves a small portion on the edge. When those two portions merge at one corner of the room, it forms a triangle-like form.
These are architectural features. They are spandrels.
Spandrels are seen in most cathedrals, at the edges of two faces of a building. They highlight an important feature — constraint.
The arches do not fit the entire wall. It leaves small portions on the side. The beauty of the cathedrals is formed by the intention of the arches to support the room.
But the spandrels stand out, as a result, shaped by the limitations offered by the space given by the room.
Like Maria, they seem not to fit. But unlike Maria, they are an asset to the Abbey.
We know the arches have supportive roles.
They give the room a sturdy base. They are adaptive in supporting the room.
What of the spandrels?
This is the argument made in the classical paper. Not all features we see in organisms need to have adaptive reasons. Some features were just spandrels.
Maria doesn’t need to be an asset to the Abbey. She does not have to fit in. But that does not mean she should be dismissed.
What is more, there was no criterion for identifying adaptive from non-adaptive traits. The tusks of elephants and antlers of antelopes were once considered protective from predators. Later, these body extensions were used to define male competition within the species.
Are all these objective adaptations?
For a long time, when a suitable solution was not found, another adaptive solution was sought. If you did not find it, it would mean you haven’t searched long enough.
Frustration after frustration.
Unlike mathematics, where discovering something is absolute, in evolution, adaptive solutions can be disproved at any time.
Adaptationist answers could not solve the problem like Maria.
The Spandrels paper gives an alternative — consider the alternatives.
Some features in biology could just be spandrels. Selection could not be the only player.
More objections to adaptations
Take feathers as an example.
Feathers were skin projections. The skin has always had projections to serve various roles. Warmth was one of them. You have hair in most of the parts of your body for this reason.
Feathers are suggested to have evolved for that primary role.
They were later co-opted for flight.
The question becomes — were they sub-optimal before they were used for flight? Did they start off as adaptive warm covers before being used as adaptive organ extensions for flight? And if so, where does that leave the ostrich?
We should not bury our heads in the sand of natural selection.
An open booklet of possible options should be the initial step to solving such Maria-like problems.
It is the same mindset Darwin had. He did not believe natural selection to be the only force at work.
Adaptation alone does not quite cut it.
Will adaptation still hold?
Attempts to develop a criterion for adaptation secondary to natural selection are ongoing.
These efforts are laudable. They will weaken the grasp of the adaptation in all studied features in organisms.
It will also prevent the unhealthy practice of sidelining other evolutionary forces.
The spinoff is, it may make scientists open to more new ideas, such as mine, organismal selection.
Like Maria, the rogue character in my favourite movie, The Sound of Music, a rogue solution might be needed.
I guess we’ll have to wait to know how much of an asset other theories, like Maria, are to the Abbey.
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