Why Do Anomalies Exist?
By what mechanism does our species occasionally produce individuals capable of reason?
--
By definition, any species that exists is more-or-less adapted to its environment. For any ecosystem, there are usually multiple niches that can be occupied, and natural selection ensures that given enough time and enough stability, speciation will occur so as to fill those niches.
Even though ecosystems change over time, and very occasionally mass extinction events occur, we see similar patterns appearing over the eons. Trees grow tall to out-compete surrounding foliage in order to gain access to precious photons. Animals grow long necks, or acquire the ability to fly, or acquire the ability to climb, in order to reach vegetable food produced by trees and stored above ground-level. Eyes, because they are a very basic requirement for things that can move around, have independently evolved over forty times since eukaryotic life began here on Earth.
Contrary to the idle fancies of people who know nothing about the reality of life, however, nature is not in harmony. Nature is in fact much closer to Tennyson’s “red in tooth and claw” than to the fatuous blabberings of New Age middle-class mid-life folk whose idea of nature is a picnic at the local park or a docent-led meander down some well-maintained trail. In nature, everything is trying to eat everything else and avoid being eaten in turn. Most importantly of all, not only are species in competition with each other but competition within a species is often the most intense driver of natural selection.
This is because individuals within a species are competing with other individuals of the same species for access to mating opportunities, access to food, and access to other resources that in some way will improve their chances of survival. This competition is especially intense (and relentless) within group species such as our own. Indeed, an arms race between the ability to trick our companions versus the ability to discern one is being tricked may be largely responsible for the development of whatever vague intellectual capacity we humans possess.
Although we like to imagine that we are thinking reasoning animals, the reality is quite different. Just like every other mammal (and probably…
