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13The Future of Human Evolution and Technocratic Ideology. Review of Growth by Vaclav Smil
Natalia P. Sharova1
Natalia P. Sharova,
PhD, Dr habil (Biology), Deputy Director of N. K. Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology of Russian Academy of Sciences,
Head of Laboratory of Biochemistry of Ontogenesis Processes, Russia
Article No / Номер статьи: 020570007
For citation (Chicago style) / Для цитирования (стиль «Чикаго»):
Sharova, Natalia P. 2021. "Future Human Evolution and Technocratic Ideology." Beacon J Stud Ide-ol Ment Dimens 4, 020570007.
Versions in different languages available online: English only. Permanent URL links to the article:
http://thebeacon.ru/pdf/Vol.%204.%20Issue%202.%20020570007%20ENG.pdf https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/thebeacon.4.020570007
1 Please send the correspondence to e-mail: npsharova@bk.ru.
020570007-1
Received in the original form: 17 August 2021 Review cycles: 2
1st review cycle ready: 8 October 2021 Review outcome: 3 of 3 positive Decision: To publish with minor revisions 2nd review cycle ready: 22 October 2021 Accepted: 26 October 2021 Published online: 10 November 2021
HEADLINE. Book review of Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. $16.34.
The heated polemics on the possible ways of future evolution of human has entered the Science and Technology Studies discipline twenty-twenty-five years ago (Hare 2017; Matsuzawa 2018; Moore 2008; Myers and Knoll 2001; Reeds and Aquadro 2008) in parallel with its omnipresent capturing our culture. From popular TV series to motion picture films and from fiction books to PC games the topic has been continuously occupying our minds, as the progress of technology evolved, genetics demonstrated ever-growing success and human's unquenchable thirst for being better, faster and smarter strengthened.
Multiple problems arise when we come to a need for objective markers of the human evolution, unequivocal for sociologists and biologists. The presumable evolutionary changes of human beings should be measured, assessed, controlled and documented somehow. Otherwise how can we have a slightest idea of whether the human evolution is a real biosocial process or just a theoretical patch, an invention of philosophers trying to explain multiple environmental shifts occurring in the modern world, including the climate change and human-induced evolution of biota (Agosta and Brooks 2020; Lynch and Woolgar 1990; Woolgar and Lezaun 2013)? To measure everything constitutes the essence of technocratic
ABSTRACT
Natalia P. 5harova. The Future of Human Evolution and Technocratic Ideology. Review of Growth by Vaclav Smil. In my book review of Vaclav Smil's recently published book Growth, I focus on perspectives of technocratic ideology with respect to human evolution. Can we measure future evolution of homo sapiens in any way? I study Smil's approach to the problem and show its key strengths and deficiencies.
Key words: growth, globalization, technocratism, human evolution, 5T5 studies
ideology. I my book review, I study to which ends this ideology leads regarding human evolution.
From the viewpoint of technocrats, the STS (science and technology studies) discipline must advance or at least outline techniques, be they qualitative or quantitative, for estimating the human evolution, the process everyone is eager to pole-mise upon without a transparent anthropological understanding of the borders, definitions, pivotal points and evidence base.
Without effectual, clear and easy-to-apply instruments of assessing the alleged evolution of homo sapiens, all theorising about it will
remain a pitiful and ponderous - but profitable, to be sure - burden of philosophers and script writers of films and videogames. Despite obvious limitations of technocratic ideology, it can make studies of
U^^^ _ human evolution stricter and more
grounded. Besides, anthropologists, biologists and sociologists will not be able to interfere in any possible legal debates connected with the human evolution, if they still do not have clear definitions. In this context the appearance of books like the recent Growth by Vaclav Smil is important and promising for the STS.
In my review I shall analyse the book's capacity to offer empirical evaluation techniques for the putative human evolution we strive to interpret.
First of all, exactly what evolution do we like to describe, evaluate or even measure, when we speak about the human evolution? Saying 'human evolution', I mean genetically fixed appearance of new qualities that would statistically distinguish a new hominid from the modern human, be they mental, physical or behavioural.
The idea of future evolution of human beings is scarcely a product of the last decades. The longstanding nineteenth- and twentieth-century anthropological disputes were obviously
treading the same paths as futurist and fiction writers trod. Around one hundred and forty years ago Herbert G. Wells (1895) put forward an idea about the expected split of humans into light-minded Eloi and technologically advanced Morlocks. The former lived on the Earth's surface and were fully provided by the latter in everything, but the latter fed on the former. Aldous Huxley (1932) elaborated much on the possibilities to breed genetically modified humans with predesigned physical and mental properties in 'artificial wombs' for the labour-driven needs of society. In not-so-distant past Daniel Dennett (1995) recognised a possibility of scientific progress to transform human to another species with a probable split of homo sapiens into those who will have an access to life-prolonging technologies and those who will not.
Steve Woolgar (2002) questioned the idea of direct and unambiguous influence of emerging artificial neural networks and comparable technologies on the evolution of humans. The 'virtualisation' of humans is far from being obvious, as borderlands between what dynamically comprises the 'real' and 'virtual' is volatile (Grint and Woolgar 1997; Schneider and Woolgar 2015; Woolgar 2002). According to Woolgar, if the evolution of homo sapiens is understood synonymously to its virtualisation, i.e. spending ever-increasing amount of time, devotion and money by the world's population in any kind of virtual reality, and we cannot find evident signs of notable shifts in human cognition or body transformations caused by such a virtualisation, we cannot argue about any human evolution at all (Woolgar et al. 2008).
Despite the sceptical position towards ungrounded speculations on the human evolution many a STS researcher shares with Woolgar, new evolutionary concepts appeared during the last few years. Recently Yuval Noah Harari (2017) introduced a concept of homo deus as a future scion of homo sapiens whose existence can be witnessed even now-a-days. According to Harari, this homo deus armed with the power of artificial intelligence (AI), will reach the levels of globalisation, digitisation and body / mind transformation that are difficult to imagine today. Similarly Ray Kurzweil (2017) predicts a soon fusion of human beings with software carriers and human mind with CPU capabilities ('The Singularity') that would provide the homo sapiens with immortality. This 'immortality' will be, however, only digital (Kurzweil 2005).
Simultaneously with Harari and Kurzweil, a soberer and more balanced scientific position appeared. The team of WE: The Dark Side of Evolution project (Austria) led by Wolfgang Sassin recently proposed an idea of homo blliionis that may be complementary to homo deus (Sassin et al. 2018): the latter will subdue the former as a more 'advanced species'. Such an advanced hominid species may use the Al's computational and predictive techniques that would allow it to apprehend information and transform nature with rates unattainable by the brains of the contemporary homo sapiens (Sassin et al. 2018) - our minds, in short. Harari, Sassin and Kurzweil agree with each other in that future stages of the human evolution will shape creatures who will be something like 'gods' to the 'ordinary humans' that will not participate in evolutionary processes - deliberately or coercively.
In his Growth, Vaclav Smil takes over the discussion about the human evolution and the AI's role in it. He understands growth as a strictly evolutionary process. The author tries to connect growth as a biological / social category with inevitable evolutionary changes of every species and artefacts on the planet, including the homo sapiens species itself. It is obvious that Smil treats the both notions of growth and evolution as broadly as he can, almost like Aristotle. The Smil's book is a treatise written in his brand style characteristic for the majority of his forty books, with a great amount of details in providing historical, sociological and biological information. A polymath's approach of the maître is useful for seeing multidimensionality of the human evolution beyond the simple facts. Growth contains almost two thousand references sorted on one hundred pages - not a trifle! - and may be used by a reader even as an encyclopaedia.
Smil suggests a kind of the social Darwinian approach to the evolution of human beings. As he equates growth to evolution, he automatically accepts the idea of contemporary real evolution of humans, i.e. not merely explanatory evolution, as the modern world's population with almost eight billion people evidently continues to expand. For Smil, the modern human is evolutionary different from, e.g., an inhabitant of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, since the homo sapiens species experienced enormous growth of population, energy output, places of living (from villages to megacities), networks of roads, infrastructural objects, economies and other constituents of human society development since the distant times of ancient world.
The Smil's broad idea of evolution as an euphemism of growth and circumlocution of development makes the assessment of human evolution in his own terms rather complex. He deliberately avoids technocratic ideology, though it could provide him with powerful tools. Having commenced from a task to elaborate efficient instruments of evaluating the alleged evolution of homo sapiens understood as the growth of humanity in all senses, the author comes to an inevitable conclusion that calculating the total growth (economy + infrastructure + population + artefacts + ...) is no other than providing a quantitative measure of the human evolution in question. A reader may be quite puzzled by the incommensurability of the general concepts of evolution (Darwinian, Lamarckian, Mendelian, ortho-genetic, etc.), on which all ideas of the human evolution usually hinge, and Smil's personal understanding the term.
However, many times in the book Smil insists on his strong devotion to the Darwinian approach in evolutionary studies, primarily social Darwinism. Darwinism was initially expounded in The Origin of Species (Darwin, 1872) as a primarily philosophical, not biological concept. Charles Darwin himself, Thomas Huxley and Francis Galton put it on the biological track whereas Herbert Spencer on the social one. Perhaps, these philosophic, highly speculative origins of The Origin do not give the Smil's approach an opportunity to elaborate empirical techniques of its assessment. In the mid-twentieth century, so-called neo-Darwinism appeared that combined evidence-based approaches of genetics with empirical studies in ecology (Dobzhansky 1937; Gould 1983; Huxley 1942; Maynard Smith and Szathmàry 1995). This gradually permitted scientists to decode human genome and assure
ourselves that, e.g., genetically a modern Englishman cannot be viewed as a someone who 'evolved' from an Angle, Saxon, Jute or Briton of the fifth century. Evolutionarily and genetically the modern and ancient humans cannot be ascribed to different species of the hominid family.
Switching form Darwinism to neo-Darwinism (Ross and Richerson 2014) or post-Darwinism (Agosta and Brooks 2020) opens prospects for the STS researchers to sketch main possible empirical approaches to evaluating the human evolution and measuring it where possible. Some of these approaches may be associated with the Al and some not. The major ones can be systematised as follows:
(1) Studying the change of racial composition of humans due to migrations and globalisation;
(2) Evaluating changes in life expectancy, especially if the changes are associated with the emergence of different casts of people, e.g., those who live a 'normal' life and those who can afford to buy 'extra' years;
(3) Watching practical implementation of genome editing of humans, e.g., treatment of hereditary diseases or making human 'improvements' in embryo;
(4) Documenting the cases of body modifications with technical 'augmentations', e.g., the devices that return some physical capabilities to the disabled persons;
(5) Statistical comparing the Al's growing computational potential with its power to control the crucial processes of human civilisation that were once administered by human beings manually, especially in megacities.
I am sure this list is far from being comprehensive. Yet it may indicate the possible ways of how anthropologists can assess, understand and even intervene in the processes that may determine the alleged human evolution in the future.
The Smil's understanding of evolution deals much with the Al, both as an actor and side effect of the humanity's informational growth. But to what extent can the empirical STS accept the idea of Al's transforming the world and human, as an evolutionary force?
Theoretically the Al may serve as a marker of human evolution. The homo sapiens species has passed a long way from gathering / hunting to farming, then to industrial production, and finally to the state of 'informational society', where the Al plays a more important role every year2 (Glaubrecht 2019). ln a nutshell, most of the concepts of the future evolution of human are about the Al's 'domestication', control and improvement of humans as a multibillion-figure phenomenon in the situation of further growth of population (Klambauer et al. 2017; Sassin 2020b). However, Smil does not propose any instruments for assessing the Al's involvement in the modern processes of growth, be it growth of humanity
2 See https://thebeacon.ru/archive/archive-2019/article-2.020110205.html.
or its informational imprint. Growth raises some important questions about the AI but does not make any attempts to suggest answers that would satisfy biologists, sociologists or anthropologists.
So far most of the claims about the human evolution were mainly the products of sci-fi culture and contrivances of philosophising enthusiasts. However, it is to remember that a true evolutionary process means not only changes of human body, behaviour, cognition or mental profiles but also the capability to inherit them (Barrett 2019; Heyes 2012). For an anthropologist only genetically fixed new properties of the homo genus which can be retranslated in new generations, may be understood as unequivocal and explicit markers of an evolutionary process. Up to now, the researchers - biologists, sociologists or anthropologists - did not find evident genetic and hereditary signs of the transformation of homo sapiens to another representative of the hominid family deemed to come as a result of the human evolution. Thus far the notion of human evolution was a part of technocratic ideology, a cosy but ostensible explanation of the huge changes in nature and society we witness. Perhaps, practical steps towards its evaluation or even measurement will offer another, less ideologised perspective.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Dr Konstantin S. Sharov for constant think-tank discussions of the main ideas reflected in Vaclav Smil's Growth and Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin for his rigorous review of my text, many improvements and most valuable input in Extended Summary preparation.
Funding. This work was funded by Government program of basic research in Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences in 2020, no. 0108-2019-0002.
Conflicts of interest. None declared.
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EXTENDED SUMMARY
Sharova, Natalia P. The Future of Human Evolution and Technocratic Ideology. Review of Growth by Vaclav Smil.
Technocratism is one of modern scientific ideologies. It is based on the belief that every side of human life may be measured, optimised and rationalised. In regard to human evolution, technocrats assume that it will soon lead to the appearance of a new species of hominids. An instructive example is Ray Kurzweil's hypothesis of 'The Singularity', a soon fusion of human beings with software carriers and human mind with CPU capabilities that would provide the homo sapiens with digital immortality. Another example of technocratic ideology is Yuval Noah Harari's theory of homo deus. According to Harari, the homo deus, the next step of human evolution armed with the power of artificial intelligence (AI), will reach the levels of globalisation, digitisation and body / mind transformation that are difficult to imagine today.
A soberer alternative to technocratic ideology recently appeared as a result of international scientific seminar WE: The Dark Side of Evolution led by Wolfgang Sassin. Sassin suggested a term homo billionis, the next generation of humans who would adopt herd behaviour due to unrestricted and uncontrolled globalisation.
In his Growth, Vaclav Smil takes over the discussion about the human evolution and the Al's role in it. He understands growth as a strictly evolutionary process. The author tries to connect growth as a biological / social category with inevitable evolutionary changes of every species and artefacts on the planet, including the homo sapiens species itself. It is obvious that Smil treats the both notions of growth and evolution as broadly as he can. According to Wolfgang Sassin, Smil focusses on growth from the beginning of life on the Earth. Quantitative growth is the parameter he uses to chart the "result" of evolution. With respect to our modern civilisation Smil states: "the progress of societies and economies, not so linear, encompasses both decline and renewal. The trajectory of modern civilization, driven by competing imperatives of material growth and biospheric limits remains uncertain." Smil overlooks for the reasons and mechanism of evolution, as many researchers do when they try to trace what happened in the past. Darwin was the first to speak of selection, pointing to something more than mere massive environmental change and consequent existential competition for scarce resources.
What is ignored in the Smil's view that he describes as anti-technocratic is the phenomena of symbiosis and parasitism during the process of growth. Sassin has recently demonstrated that very different forms of life may cooperate for mutual benefit and thus gain an advantage in the fight for prey. The evolutionary mechanism understood beyond the limits of technocratic ideology is not only about scarce inanimate resources, but always about other forms of life that a given form of life lives "in collaboration." But symbiosis may also turns into parasitism if one part does not allow the others to benefit from their coexistence. Wolfgang Sassin drew my attention to the fact that when Smil said "The trajectory of modern civilization remains uncertain," he failed to elaborate on one decisive difference in the past fundamental changes that led to the evolution of species, namely the factor of time. Of six or seven major species extinction phases that opened up niches for resilient species to fill via random mutations slowly, only the impact of the meteorite occurred in an incredibly short time. If one positions itself in the present situation of the flora and fauna of the planet, the current human-related challenges to the Earth are equivalent to the impact of a meteorite. Homo sapiens as a global multibillion phenomenon has a devastating effect on the Earth's biosphere similar to a second meteorite, modifying the processes of symbiosis and parasitism via its growth almost instantaneously.
The Smil's understanding of evolution deals much with the AI, both as an actor and side effect of the humanity's growth. But to what extent can the empirical Science-Technology-Society (STS) studies accept the idea of Al's transforming the world and human, as an evolutionary force?
Theoretically the AI may serve as a marker of human evolution. The homo sapiens species has passed a long way from gathering / hunting to farming, then to industrial production, and finally to the state of 'informational society', where the AI plays a more important role every year. Most of the concepts of the future evolution of human are about the AI's 'domestication', control and improvement of humans as a multibil-lion-figure phenomenon in the situation of further growth of population. However, Smil does not propose any instruments for assessing the AI's involvement in the modern processes of growth, be it growth of humanity or its informational imprint. Growth raises some important questions about the AI but does not make any attempts to suggest answers that would satisfy biologists, sociologists or anthropologists.
The book is overtly anti-technocratic but Smil seems to be more occupied by ideological struggle with technocrats than by search for techniques of assessing human evolution.
Author / Автор Natalia P. Sharova,
N. K. Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology of Russian Academy of Sciences, 26 Vavilov st, Moscow, 119334, Russia
© Natalia P. Sharova
Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions
Licensing the materials published is made according to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence
