Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: The Evolution of Power: A New Understanding of the History of Life is a provocative synthesis by distinguished evolutionary biologist Geerat Vermeij. His unifying theme is that nature selects to maximize power, leading to the repeated evolution of large, powerful, ecologically dominant organisms like dinosaurs and elephants. He argues that power is central not only to biological evolution but also to the human economy and our concepts of beauty, mortality, and freedom. To make this argument Vermeij draws on his extensive knowledge of biodiversity, including both living organisms and the fossil record, and on his familiarity with human history, economics, and culture. The scope of his synthesis and the breadth and depth of supporting evidence is truly impressive. After devoting the first seven chapters to bolstering his treatment of biological evolution with hundreds of citations from the scientific literature, he boldly extrapolates to humans in concluding chapters on “the human singularity” and “power, pattern and beauty.” Vermeij's treatment is so wide-ranging and thoroughly researched, so filled with examples from his extensive original studies and scholarly research, that it invites comparison with Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). Darwin drew on his natural history background to present countless examples of how natural selection has shaped the evolution and perpetuation of biodiversity. Vermeij draws on his extensive research on extant and fossil mollusks and his expansive knowledge of the literature to support his claim that power has been the primary force behind natural selection. He boldly extends his arguments to contemporary humans and the social sciences. Will Vermeij's contribution pass muster and be recognized as a new transformative evolutionary synthesis? Our verdict is mixed. We admire Vermeij's effort and we have reservations about his conclusions. The book reflects its author's unique history. His scientific contributions are based on a lifetime of carefully studying the shell morphologies of living and fossil organisms. It is written for academics, but the clear writing style and lack of jargon and technical material make it accessible to a broad audience. It is similar to the author's other books: text from cover-to-cover, with no diagrams, photographs, maps, tables, or equations. Vermeij uses captivating natural history narratives to present an impressive amount of information and draw conclusions. He draws from his lifetime of scholarship and hands-on research to make inferences and develop analogies between past and present, biology and geology, ecology and economics, human beings and the rest of life. Vermeij's compilation and interpretation of the empirical evidence of evolution is truly fascinating and a fun read. But ultimately we find his central thesis that the target of selection is to maximize power to be unconvincing. The book starts with the physical definition of power as energy expended to perform work, measured in units of energy per time (e.g., watts). For example, biological metabolism, the uptake, transformation and utilization of energy and materials, powers living things. From this biophysical foundation, he expands his focus, using his multidisciplinary expertise to incorporate other concepts of power: body size, physical strength, speed, defensive and cooperative behaviors, trophic and keystone roles of species in ecosystems. These are integrated with his encyclopedic knowledge of the Earth's history and biodiversity to present “a new understanding of the history of life” to make his case that “the concept of power unifies a vast range of natural phenomena, historical processes and trends and economic relations in the realm of evolving life…power has increased over time, giving collective life greater control over its circumstances and opening up previously unimaginable possibilities of structure and change”, preface xi (Vermeij 2023). Vermeij is not the first to have argued for the primary role of power in evolution. Over the last century several distinguished scientists, including Alfred Lotka (1922), Leigh Van Valen (1975), Howard Odum (1971), and Charles Hall (1995; see Hall and McWhirter (2023) for recent review) recognized the central role of energy in life. Lotka, Odum, and Hall advocated a maximum power principle (MPP): the idea that nature and humans select to maximize the power of energy-transforming systems of living organisms and human-designed machines. Others have questioned whether either empirical evidence or biophysical theory support the MPP. The recently formulated equal fitness paradigm (EFP; Brown et al. 2018, 2022, 2024, Burger et al. 2019, 2021, 2024) is an alternative theory of the biophysical basis of Darwinian fitness (see also Van Valen 1975). Life operates and biodiversity persists because organisms take up biomass energy from the environment and transform it in the biochemical processes to perform the biological work of survival, growth, and reproduction. At steady state all organisms are equally fit, because they allocate energy to offspring at the same rate; ∼22.4 kJ per gram per generation. Nature selects to maximize energetic fitness |$E$|, by affecting the tradeoff between the three parameters: |${{P}_{coh}}$|, the rate of cohort production of offspring biomass, |$G$|, the generation time required to produce offspring, and |$F$|, the efficiency of reproduction expressed as the fraction of biomass production that survives as offspring in the next generation (figure 1). Importantly, energetic fitness, |$E$|, in the EFP is maximized per generation, not per clock time as in Vermeij's use of power. A unifying approach to study how nature selects fitness traits showing the direct and indirect correlational paths. Traits, Zi-n, relate to power and performance range from high power red dashed arrows; left side to lower power blue dashed arrows; right side and are correlated (e.g., pace of life; outer black arrows). These traits are only indirectly (dashed red and blue arrows) selected to affect the parameters of the equal fitness paradigm (EFP) to maintain (green middle arrows) steady-state energetic fitness, where |$E = {{P}_{coh}}GF = 1$|. So, the MPP and EFP offer two alternative biophysical theories for evolution by natural selection. Does selection maximize biological power? Without going into additional detail here (but see Burger et al. 2024, Brown et al. 2024) it is clear that selection does not universally act to increase fitness by maximizing biological power measured as rates of metabolism or biomass production. All of the energy expended on metabolic respiration to do the work of living is dissipated as heat; none is passed on as biomass to the next generation. Similarly, maximizing growth or offspring biomass production is irrelevant for selection without considering, tradeoffs with generation time, mortality and the loss of biomass to the environment (Burger et al. 2024). Similar points can be made about human-designed machines: tradeoffs dictate that power is often sacrificed to enhance other measures of performance (e.g., longevity). Maximizing power is not the universal target of selection by nature nor machines. So what is our assessment of Vermeij's book? Can we reject his primary thesis and still profit from his synthesis? The answer is an enthusiastic yes. The EFP makes clear that nature does not select directly and universally to maximize power. Instead, metabolic rate and other manifestations of power are subject to indirect pathways of selection, mechanistically linked and statistically correlated with the parameters of the EFP (figure 1). Over the history of life, organisms have diversified to fill many ecological niches. Power, and correlates such as body size, physiological performance and efficiency, only indirectly affect the ultimate fitness traits (figure 1) of cohort production rate (|${{P}_{coh}})$|, generation time |$( G )$|, and efficiency of reproduction (|$F$|). The evidence that Vermeij has compiled and synthesized documents the pervasive roles of power-related traits in biological evolution and human society. Some carefully chosen graphs, tables, and equations would illustrate his examples and strengthen his central message. Large powerful organisms such as whales and trees, mammoths and dinosaurs are undoubtedly dominant species; they play major roles in the energy flows and biodiversity of ecosystems; they have evolved repeatedly and independently over the 3.5 billion year history of life. But the EFP echoes earlier contributions by Van Valen (1975) and Colinvaux (1979) in making the counter-point that there is more than one way to make a living. Because of the pervasive tradeoffs, selection does not always, universally and directly, favor species with high metabolic rates, large body sizes, or major roles in ecosystems. Any accounting that aims to provide “a new understanding of the history of life” must include how nature also selects the small, fast-living, and weak, the traits of the insects, mice, herbs, and microbes that are the most abundant and at least equally important features of biodiversity on Earth.
Source: BioScience
Authors: Joseph R Burger, James H Brown
Institutions: University of Kentucky, University of New Mexico
Language: English
Subfield: Paleontology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404112536