Evolution and popular culture

In the years between the two world wars people didn't have a clue how dominant evolutionary thinking would one day become; but if they'd paid serious attention to the Sf magazines they might have.
In this post I want to take a look at one of the most popular stories of that period. The 'Man who evolved' was written by Edmond Hamilton and published in 1931.

Quotes and comments;

Synopsis; an experiment is conducted that purports to show how man will evolve in the next two hundred million years or so. One man is sent forward in time (as it were) while two others control the machinery and take notes.

A. "Do you two have any knowledge at all of evolution?" he asked.
"I know that it's a fighting word in some states," I answered, "and that when you say it you've got to smile, damn you." [1.]

- I take it this is a reference to the Scopes trial, which took place in 1926 in Tennessee.

B. He smiled himself. "I suppose you're aware of the fact, however, that all life on this earth began as simple uni-cellular protoplasm, and by successive evolutionary mutations or changes developed into its present forms and is still slowly developing?"

- i.e. you're an idiot if you don't know this, or if you deny it.
- The idea at this time ('31) seems to have been that evolution was still going on.

C. "We know that much—just because we're not biologists you needn't think we're totally ignorant of biology," Button said.
"Shut up. Dutton," I warned. "What's evolution got to do with your work up here, Pollard?"
"It is my work up here," Pollard answered.

- The idea seems to be that man can 'direct' evolution. (Really this amounts to taking over from evolution, and substituting an intelligent goal directed process for the goal-less process of mindless evolution.)

D. "Life began on this earth as simple protoplasm, a jelly-like mass from which developed small protoplasmic organisms. From these developed in turn sea-creatures, land-lizards, mammals, by successive mutations.
This infinitely slow evolutionary process has reached its highest point so far in the mammal man, and is still going on with the same slowness.

- At this time ideas about the cell were still very primitive. It's said here to be simple, and jelly-like. (Sounds like Haeckel)

- The idea is that mutations (copying mistakes) can create new (and more sophisticated) information.
- Evolution is seen as a slow, gradual process (ala Charles Darwin)
- Evolution has reached its highest point in man.... so far (i.e. the idea here is that something might come after man and surpass him in greatness)

E. "This much is certain biological knowledge, but two great questions concerning this process of evolution have remained hitherto unanswered. First, what is the cause of evolutionary change, the cause of these slow, steady mutations into higher forms? Second, what is the future course of man's evolution going to be, what will be the forms into which in the future man will evolve, and where will his evolution stop? Those two questions biology has so far been unable to answer."

- Evolution is an idea (theory) that here is presented (to its young readers) as certain. (We still hear this; i.e. evolution isn't a theory but a fact)
- this seems confusing as he said earlier change comes by mutation (is he asking what causes mutation?)
- what is the future course of man's evolution? i.e. man isn't seen as a finished product of creation, but as an evolving animal.
- where will evolution stop? (Where? who knows... but an evolutionist could say it will likely stop, as a biological process when man begins to interfere with the process.)

F. 'Pollard was silent a moment and then said quietly, "I have found the answer to one of those questions, and am going to find the answer to the other tonight."

- Here we have the image of the scientist as gnostic (i.e. able to know all things)

G. "I'm absolutely serious, Arthur. I have actually solved the first of those problems, have found the cause of evolution."
"What is it, then?" burst out of Dutton.
"What it has been thought by some biologists for years to be," Pollard answered. "The cosmic rays."
"The cosmic rays?" I echoed. "The vibrations from space that Millikan discovered?"
"Yes, the cosmic rays, the shortest wavelength and most highly penetrating of all vibratory forces. It has been known that they beat unceasingly upon the earth from outer space, cast forth by the huge generators of the stars, and it has also been known that they must have some great effect in one way or another upon the life of the earth." [2.]

H. "I have proved that they do have such an effect, and that that effect is what we call evolution! For it is the cosmic rays, beating upon every living organism on earth, that cause the profound changes in the structure of those organisms which we call mutations. Those changes are slow indeed, but it is due to them that through the ages life has been raised from the first protoplasm to man, and is still being raised higher."

- So the idea is that a destructive process can somehow (I guess we shouldn't ask how) create new information of a complex and specified kind. This is an extraordinary idea; but it's passed off as banal. How could such a thing possibly work? This would be like shooting a shotgun blast at a pigeon and hoping it will turn into an ape.) The great wonder is that no one seems to stop and question this wild idea; question how bombarding something with particle like bullets can somehow have a creative result. Didn't anyone wonder if the idea wasn't a tad crazy?

I. "Now suppose those concentrated cosmic rays, millions of times stronger than the ordinary cosmic rays that strike one spot on earth, fall upon a man standing inside the cube. What will be the result? It is the cosmic rays that cause evolutionary change, and you heard me say that they are still changing all life on earth, still changing man, but so slowly as to be unnoticeable. But what about the man under those terrifically intensified rays? He will be changed millions of times faster than ordinarily, will go forward in hours or minutes through the evolutionary mutations that all mankind will go forward through in eons to come!"

J. "I propose to try it on myself," said Pollard gravely, "and to find out for myself the evolutionary changes that await humankind."
"Why, it's insane!" Dutton exclaimed.
Pollard smiled. "The old cry," he commented. "Never an attempt. has been made yet to tamper with nature's laws, but that cry has been raised."

- Tampering with evolution is now seen as fully respectable. Every day e. apologists tell us that we 'must' take over the e. process. This isn't the wild cry of a mad scientist anymore, but the boring lesson from a school teacher.

K. 'His expression changed, his eyes brooding. "Can't you two sees what this may mean to humanity? As we are to the apes, so must the; men of the future be to us. If we could use this method of mine to take all mankind forward through millions of years of evolutionary development at one stride, wouldn't it be sane to do so?"

- What would be the point? Is it any more meaningful to live in the future than in the present?
- Evolution is presented here as progress (the Victorians almost equated the two). But what could the end of millions of years of human evolution be? (Is it progress to cease being human?)

L. 'My mind was whirling. "Good heavens, the whole thing is so crazy," I protested. "To accelerate the evolution of the human race? It seems somehow a thing forbidden."

M. "Now, I will stand inside the cube and you will turn on the rays and let them play upon me for fifteen minutes. Roughly, that should represent a period of some fifty million years of future evolutionary change. At the end of fifteen minutes you will turn the rays off and we will be able to observe what changes they have caused. We will then resume the process, going forward by fifteen-minute or rather fifty-million-year periods."

- Sf has always been full of devices (etc.) to speed things up. The ordinary time flow (as it were) is seen as boring.

N. "I'm afraid it is too late," he smiled. "If I backed out now I'd be ashamed to look in a mirror hereafter. And no explorer was ever more eager than I am to start down the path of man's future evolution!"

- Hidden away inside all the gushing talk about evolution is the idea there's something wrong with man as he is. (I don't mean morally, but physically.) It's hard to pinpoint this mania for e. change. Wouldn't it mean the death of man? And why would man look forward to the death of man? It seems a very odd desire for a human being to have.

O. 'Pollard stood inside the cube, staggering as though still dazed by the impact of the experience, but he was not the Pollard who had entered the chamber! He was transfigured, godlike! His body had literally expanded into a great figure of such physical power and beauty as we had not imagined could exist! He was many inches taller and broader, his skin a clear pink, every limb and muscle molded as though by some master sculptor.'

- Heh; I want one of these super duper, evolve in 15 mins. machines :=)
- We're not supposed to ask how a destructive process can lead to improvements. (Apparently bigger and stronger is always to be considered as progress. Why this should be so, we're not told.)
- Beauty is a result of a random and destructive process apparently.

P. 'The greatest change, though, was in his face. Pollard's homely, good-humored features were gone, replaced by a face whose perfectly-cut features held the stamp of immense intellectual power that shone almost overpoweringly from the dear dark eyes. It was not Pollard who stood before us, I told myself, but a being as far above us as the most advanced man of today is above the troglodyte!

- These fellows can detect intelligence just by looking at it apparently.
- Yes; man developed intelligence by being bombarded by particles from space... yes; it all makes sense now.

Q. "You see? It worked as I knew it would work! I'm fifty million years ahead of the rest of humanity in evolutionary development!"
- He's evolved 50 million years, but he still speaks English. (I think this disproves the idea we'll all be speaking Mandarin before long.)

R. 'When I shut off the mechanism at the end of the [next] appointed period, Dutton and I received a shock. For again Pollard had changed!
He was no longer the radiant, physically perfect figure of the first metamorphosis. His body instead seemed to have grown thin and shrivelled, the outlines of bones visible through its flesh. His body, indeed, seemed to have lost half its bulk and many inches of stature and breadth, but these were compensated for by the change in his head.
For the head supported by this weak body was an immense, bulging balloon that measured fully eighteen inches from brow to back!

- This is technically known as the 'egghead' stage of evolution.

S. "You say that because in this change you're getting away from all human emotions and sentiments!" I burst. "Pollard, do you realize what you're doing? You're changing out of human semblance!"
"I realize it perfectly," he snapped, "and I see nothing to be deplored in the fact. It means that in a hundred million years man will be developing in brain-capacity and will care nothing for the development of body. To you two crude beings, of what is to me the past,: this seems terrible; but to me it is desirable and natural. Turn on the rays again!"

- On a more serious note, we see here man's insatiable lust for power. (The Faust legend springs to mind; not to mention Satan himself.)

T. 'Pollard's great eyes surveyed us with cold menace. "You will turn on the rays," his thin voice ordered deliberately. "If you do not, it will be but the work of a moment for me to annihilate both of you and go on with this alone."
"You'd kill us?" I said dumfoundedly. "We two, two of your best friends?"
His narrow mouth seemed to sneer. "Friends? I am millions of years past such irrational emotions as friendship. The only emotion you awaken in me is a contempt for your crudity. Turn on the rays!"

- If you could 'transcend' the human stage where would you stop? This is the question the posthumanist crowd can't answer.

U. 'The change had continued, and Pollard—I could not call him that in my own mind—stood in the cube-chamber as a shape the sight of which stunned our minds.
He had become simply a great head! A huge hairless head fully a yard in diameter, supported on tiny legs, the arms having dwindled to mere hands that projected just below the head! The eyes were enormous, saucer-like, but the ears were mere pin-holes at either side of the head, the nose and mouth being similar holes below the eyes!

- You might wonder how such a being could survive.
- the lesson here is obvious; a little evolution is good, but too much can be a disaster. (Sort of like global warming.)

V. "Good God, Pollard, you've made yourself a monster!" The words burst from me without thought.
"I mean that with the colossal brain I have I will master without a struggle this man-swarming planet, and make it a huge laboratory in which to pursue the experiments that please me."

W. "So you two would try to kill me?" queried the head that had been Pollard. "Why, I could direct you without a word to kill yourselves and you'd do so in an instant! What chance has your puny will and brain against mine? And what chance will all the force of men have against me when a glance from me will make them puppets of my will?"

- Over and over in early sf you had the idea that greater intelligence would somehow create in man (etc.) the ability to do things by mere will. I'm not sure where this idea came from. It seems a crude desire to be God, and to do things by will only.

Y. 'Into our minds came a thought from the gray head-thing before us, a thought as clear as though spoken. "You have guessed it, for even my former head-body is disappearing, all atrophying except the brain. I am become a walking, seeing brain. As I am so all of your race will be in two hundred million years, gradually losing more and more of their atrophied bodies and developing more and more their great brains."

- How a brain can live without the other body organs I have no idea. (I guess I'm just not evolved enough.)

Z. 'The great gray brain that had been inside it was gone. There lay on the cube's floor instead of it a quite shapeless mass of clear, jelly-like matter. It was quite motionless save for a slight quivering. My shaking hand went forth to touch it, and then it was that I screamed, such a scream as all the tortures of hell's crudest fiends could not have wrung from a human throat.
The mass inside the cube was a mass of simple protoplasm! This then was the end of man's evolution-road, the highest form to which time would bring him, the last mutation of all! The road of man's evolution was a circular one, returning to its beginning!

- Since two hundred million years of evolutionary progress gets wiped out in a single step, we see that Darwin's idea that evolution must always progress in tiny steps has been disproved.

Ending;
'I remember the chill of dew-wet grass against my hands and face as the flames from Pollard's house soared higher. And I remember that as I saw Dutton's crazy laughter by that crimson light, I knew that he would laugh thus until he died.'

- Pollard dies, Dutton goes mad, and the lab goes up in flame. Thus the proof of evolution that we all so greatly desire was lost.

Summary; we can see in this (admittedly crude) story how the theory of evolution was presented as an exciting idea. Not only was it a certain truth, but it was something scientific that could be experimented with. This was just one of a great many stories where the truth of M2M evolution was just assumed. The veracity of evolutionary theory came to be accepted by being presented in this manner. Science fiction at this time was presented as cutting edge science, as the science of the future. Evolution was incorporated into the stories as a vital element of the whole mythos.
- M. Johnson

Notes;
1. The man who evolved - Edmond Hamilton
- the story can be found online at Manybooks.net
- the story has been included in several anthologies, notably in the one by Isaac Asimov, 'Before the Golden Age'
2. Cosmic rays;
'Cosmic rays are energetic particles originating from outer space that impinge on Earth's atmosphere. Almost 90% of all the incoming cosmic ray particles are simple protons, with nearly 10% being helium nuclei (alpha particles), and slightly under 1% are heavier elements, electrons (beta particles), or gamma ray photons.[1] The term ray is a misnomer, as cosmic particles arrive individually, not in the form of a ray or beam of particles. - Wiki