2023-02-14

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

#BIO21i #biology #sciencefiction

• In the 1930 sci-fi classic Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, Homo sapiens undergoes drastic evolutionary processes throughout its history that ultimately results in no less than 17 descendant species, with the fourth of those onward being found on other planets, namely Venus and Neptune. Is this the future of our species? Are we even still evolving? Yes, we are still evolving. But not our species as a whole!
• Remember that ==evolution works on the level of a population, which is a group of individuals living together.== Of course, our various modes of transportation complicate that definition and virtually prevent total isolation of any one human population, but the distinction is important. There have been several documented cases of human evolution, such as the following:
  • Tibetans, living in very high altitudes where there is less oxygen in the air, have more efficient oxygen-utilization mechanisms;
  • The Buriat tribe of very cold Siberia have wider than normal skulls at the forehead, which by virtue of resulting in a smaller surface area:volume ratio causes less heat to escape through the head;
  • Certain native African tribes develop a non-lethal form of sickle cell anemia that protects them from malaria;
  • Alpine dairy-farming communities in Europe have 1.0 frequency for the allele for lactase, allowing them to digest lactose in milk unlike most other people in the world;
  • The Bajau, who have been free diving for subsistence for a thousand years, have larger than average (as much 50% larger!) spleens, which recycle red blood cells and hold a reserve of blood.
• These are just a few of the most fascinating and well known examples. As the Bajau example shows you, ==these evolutionary trends can take a relatively short period of time.==
  • Dairy-farming communities evolved the lactase gene in around 5,000 years. For a species that is only around 200,000 years old, it’s important to note these quick evolutionary rates.
  • Also take note that these are evolutionary events occurring independently in certain human populations; they are not all happening concurrently in all humans! That’s what we mean by evolution working on the population level.
• There has been the question of whether or not the human species is still driven by natural selection the way other organisms are.
  • Certainly, there are things we can do that other species can’t in response to environmental change, such as locking ourselves in a well-stocked, air-conditioned bunker during a nuclear holocaust that will kill most other species.
  • But as we’ve seen with the examples above, evolutionary pressures are still working on certain human populations.
  • Many biologists speculate that disease may be the greatest evolutionary pressure molding our trajectory, with resistance to disease being selected for. This is very timely given the situation that we find ourselves in now.
• Now let’s talk about Cards/Speciation. Recall: evolution and Cards/Speciation are NOT the same process.
  • As we’ve seen with Biston betularia, evolution can happen without Cards/Speciation. The mutants of X-Men may be products of evolution but they’re not necessarily a new species.
  • Yes, humans are currently evolving but there is no evidence to suggest that any one human population is speciating. Recall: in order for speciation to occur, there should be reproductive isolation. Rarely is any human group so completely cut-off from the rest of humanity that such isolation can take place.

• Our key reference for this topic is The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells, which supposes that H. sapiens has evolved into two offshoot species: the Eloi and the Morlocks.
• In the timeless classic, the protagonist (simply called the Traveller), creates a time machine and with it zooms to the future, 802701 AD to be precise. At this time, it seems that H. sapiens as we know it no longer exists, at least in far-future London.
  • (Who knows what the rest of the world looks like? As we have learned, it’s populations that evolve, not entire species, so it’s possible that there’s still H. sapiens elsewhere on the globe.)
• In London and probably throughout Great Britain, the pleasant, indolent Eloi live on the surface while the monstrous and cunning Morlocks live underground. Given the absence of H. sapiens, it’s reasonable to suspect that both species are offshoots of humans, especially considering that 800,000 years is definitely enough time for speciation to have occurred, as long as there was sufficient reproductive isolation between the two formerly human populations.
• What could have caused this reproductive isolation? Obviously, it involved keeping one population of humans above the surface and casting away another population below the ground.
  • Physically, the Eloi represent current humans much more closely than Morlocks do, and the novel makes it a point to emphasize how pretty they are compared to the grotesque, animalistic other.
  • It’s almost impossible not to have a Marxist reading of the book. The distinction between the two new species practically screams “class struggle!”
  • The most obvious sign of this is the presence of the machines underground. Sometime in our future, capitalists force the laborers underground to drive the machinery that keeps the surface world going.
  • And for the allopatric speciation scenario to work, this means that the laborers weren’t just made to work down there and then be able to return to the surface when they’re done with work; the Eloi ancestors forced them to stay there! Think miners, but they can’t ever leave their place of work. Laws must have been put into place to prevent mixing of the two populations, which could have only meant a social milieu where it became unacceptable for the capitalist elite to interact with the lowly workers. Such a grim future! It’s almost completely antithetical to the harmonious future that Star Trek envisions.
• The physical transformation of the subterranean humans into Morlocks over 800,000 years is typical of speculations on the evolution of animals that are bound to underground habitats.
  • These animals are called troglobites (a similar word, troglodyte, has been used to refer to humans living in caves and has been co-opted by fantasy literature as a name for any sort of repulsive, barbaric creature, such as in Dungeons & Dragons).
  • Typically, troglobites have evolved to have slow metabolism (likely an evolutionary response to the scarcity of food underground compared to above-ground), absence of pigmentation (colors being biologically costly to produce but not useful in caves, whether for display purposes or protection from ultraviolet radiation), and decrease or loss of sight, if not the eyes themselves (which do not fully develop).
  • The cunning and aggression displayed by the Morlocks, which is atypical of cave denizens, is not surprising given that they are an offshoot of an intelligent species that has had to fight for survival. The cave creature in the excellent 2005 horror film The Descent is another good example of such a creature.
• In several ways, the Eloi as future human is even more frightening a concept, at least from a biological perspective. Here we have a species that still looks human and yet has lost many of the things that make a human human: strong emotional responses and drives.
  • The Eloi is a lazy creature reduced to feeding and reproducing out of need, barely stimulated by external forces. In this way, it’s easy to argue that Morlocks are even more human.
  • Eloi seem to have lost even basic survival instincts, which most animals have!
  • In Wells’s view of the world, the capitalists’ dependence on and harsh treatment of laborers dehumanizes them, perhaps not physically, but certainly behaviorally.
  • Honestly, it’s difficult to speculate a future where humans reach this level of helpless complacency. Wells’s future must have been absolutely utopic (at least above ground), with diseases and senescence and natural disasters a thing of the past, for natural selection to have bred out survival instincts and non-essential desires (which are admittedly energetically costly) from the surface humans!
  • Anatomically speaking, the Eloi’s limbic system (recall: it’s the part of the brain that’s involved in behavioral and emotional responses, including those critical to survival) is probably quite different from H. sapiens’s. Whatever cataclysm caused the collapse of this society left a remnant of humanity (or of Brits, to be specific) that’s but a shade of what humans used to be, unable (and even unwilling) to defend themselves against the Morlocks, who are now able to return to the surface.

• Many biologists and futurists seem to believe that there are two major avenues by which humans could possible speciate. Cards/Transhumanism is the ==philosophical movement of human transcendence through technological enhancement such as but not limited to the use of cybernetics.==
  • This is a common trope in cyberpunk fiction, which include William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and the Ghost in the Shell properties as key examples.
  • More modern technological breakthroughs have allowed the addition of genetic engineering methods as transhumanist innovations.
    • Orphan Black’s Neolution is a group that advocates all of these.
  • The main advocacy in transhumanism is to ==better the lives of humans through enhancement==, such as replacing lost limbs with synthetic parts or fixing eyesight with cybernetic implants.
  • But transhumanists are also beginning to advocate doing so even for ==purely cosmetic purposes==.
    • It should be clear that speciation is not the main goal here, and in fact most of these tweaks on the human body aren’t evolutionary and so cannot result in another species…unless the tweaking extends to the germ line, or those cells (i.e. gametes) that can pass on genetic changes to the offspring.
      • CRISPR-Cas9 is an astounding technological breakthrough that allows edit parts of the human genome for potentially an insanely large amount of applications. If these changes are made in ==the germ line==, such changes coupled with reproductive isolation may result in speciation.
• Speaking of reproductive isolation, it’s much easier to imagine how an ==intergalactic diaspora or migration== would result in speciation.
  • Imagine humans eventually colonizing other moons and planets in our galaxy or even outside it. The space between Earth and any of those moons or planets is the largest geographical barrier imaginable!
  • And then each moon or planet will subject the colonists to unique evolutionary pressures that will favor particular adaptations over time.
  • Reproductive isolation and adaptations are two key ingredients for speciation.

1. Discuss human evolution and disease in the context of the Evolutionary Arms Race.
2. What do you imagine will be a specific transhumanist trajectory that will result in the origination of new descendant species from Homo sapiens?
3. What type of speciation will likely result from intergalactic diaspora?
4. What do you think are other ways by which H. sapiens can give rise to a new species?
5. How likely do you think The Time Machine’s speculation of the future humans is?

• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Chase” unfolds in classic Star Trek fashion: ==science and exploration used as the scaffolding for philosophical inquiry.==
• Narratively, “The Chase” is ==a science fiction take on the creation myth==: a story about a group of people that explains their history. And in the same way that science fiction about the future is really about the present, ==creation myths are stories we tell about the past to explain ourselves to ourselves in the present.==
  • The story of Adam and Eve, for example, tells Christians that they have a God who loves them, but that they were disobedient and shunned that love.
  • For the Greeks, the story of how the Olympian gods overthrew the Titans to become the reigning pantheon is a story about how the world is ruled by conflict and children rebelling against their parents. And so it goes, and so it goes.
• Scientifically, the central novum of “The Chase”–the advanced precursor race that happens to look like many of the races in Star Trek–is a take on ==the idea of life arriving on our planet through being seeded== (a.k.a. panspermia).
  • The idea that we might have been created by a higher power together with all other life on Earth is not new–see: religion–but “The Chase” hyperbolizes this, exploring the notion that ==we might even share a common creator with aliens from other worlds.==

So, game–let’s look at what’s going on here. Respond to any of the following questions!

1. From a storytelling perspective, why do you think the program had to be encoded in DNA? What does this do for the ideas the story is trying to forward?
2. What assumptions did the precursors have about the life that would come after them? Based on the actions of the various characters and factions in the episode, do you think they were right?
3. Professor Galen says the discovery he’s working on will shake galactic civilization to its core. Let’s say this knowledge becomes widespread in the Star Trek universe. What do you think will happen? (You don’t need to invoke any extra Star Trek knowledge beyond what’s in this episode, but Trekkies, if you’d like to geek out, you absolutely can.)

• While the psychic/empathic abilities possessed by sensates would seem to lump them in a category together with 99%[citation needed] of science fiction enhanced humans, Sense8 limits and nuances its specific version of an otherwise-well-worn novum in a really interesting way, making the sensate power set and narrative a very specific one: these aren’t mind readers, coercives, or brainwashers, just otherwise-normal people ==capable of communicating with each other and borrowing skills from each other.==
• In terms of affecting the outside world, nothing any sensate does is in any way superhuman, but in terms of their inner lives, ==the sensate experience is infinitely more complex than our own==, and this is something reflected in how the series is put together.
• Sense8 is a science fiction property that employs something called the mutant metaphor: the trope of people born with ==extraordinary powers== being used as a metaphor for ==real-world conditions of marginalization and oppression.==
  • We’ll look at the most iconic example, the X-Men, later in the semester, but Sense8’s shadowy sensate-hunting organization neatly fills the role of persecutor in this show, particularly in the second season.
  • With texts like this, especially with a diverse ensemble cast, it’s worth looking at the ways in which the ==mutation functions as both source of power and site of oppression==–the way the sensate connection allows Whispers to track Will, for example, but also allows Will to receive support from his cluster.
• Beyond that, though, it’s also necessary to examine the sensate mindlink itelf as the central novum of the text. We know it’s a superpower, and often we tend to kind of gloss over superpowers as literary devices (especially in our superhero-saturated world where everyone’s got a power), but the sensate ability is both very specific and much more ==semiotically rich== than, say, the ability to shoot heat beams from your eyes.
  • Consider both Marvel’s Luke Cage and Heroes’ D. L. Hawkins, both Black men and ex-convicts–victims of the highly racialized criminal justice system in the United States–whose superpowers (invulnerability and intangibility, respectively) make them Black men who cannot be shot, a powerful image in a world where so many young Black men die in exactly that way.
  • Or look at Jessica Cruz, DC’s first human female Green Lantern, seemingly a walking paradox in that she wields a ring powered by willpower but is afraid to leave the house–her whole deal is that she’s traumatized and agoraphobic, so unlike the former soldiers and cocky test pilots who are her senior Lanterns, to her, even leaving her apartment proves to her ring that she can “overcome great fear.”
• Sense8 then is a wonderful text for examining identity, power, and the intersections of the two, ==the ways in which the site of our suffering can also be what saves us==–whether it’s how we look, who we love, or what superpowers we wield–and how even superhuman abilities can be fertile ground for discourse and critical exploration.

So! Discussion questions; as usual, answer any or all.

1. If the novum of the sensate superpower uses telepathy and mind-linking as the signifier, what exactly is being signified? What concept or capability is being heightened and hyperbolized to create the sensate experience?
2. Do you have a favorite sensate? If so, fanboy/fangirl/fanperson over them for a bit. (Mark spoilers if you’ve seen episodes other than the one we’ve given you. But also help us convince your classmates to watch this show.)
3. If sensates were real, would you want to be one? Why or why not? (Assume no shadowy sensate-hunting organization exists.)
4. Discuss the potential of sensates for speciation.

• If Sense8 concerns itself with a fictional subspecies of humanity that might be living alongside us in the present, and Star Trek concerns itself with humanity’s ancestry–our ultimate past–then The Time Machine, perhaps unsurprisingly, concerns itself with our future: the question of where we’re going.
  • This is very much the stuff of classic science fiction, but we’re saving it for last in this module for two reasons: one, it’s our first novel, so we figured you might want more time to read it, and two, we wanted to make a point: ==all this stuff is contextual.== ==The future in science fiction, along with the past, remains very much rooted in the present.==
• Class-based human speciation: Wells’ novel posits that in the year 802,701 A.D., humanity will have split into two different species: the Eloi, the lethargic and childlike above-ground species which the Time Traveler believes to be the descendents of the bourgeoisie upper class, and the Morlocks, the apelike, cave-dwelling creatures that the Time Traveler thinks evolved from the working class. Through the Time Traveler’s interactions with both species, he reflects on what might have caused the divide, and on what characteristics from humanity might have remained within each of the descendent species.
• This is, then, a text in which ==point of view matters a lot.==
  • At first glance, the Eloi seem far more sympathetic: they look like us, they wear clothes, they are coded as victims, and so on.
  • The Morlocks, conversely, look inhuman, move at night, hunt and eat the creatures that look like us–our brain sees them and thinks, “Monsters!”
  • But while the Time Traveler never really leaves that perspective, the text gives us enough hints and evidence for us to ask whether the Eloi truly are the more “human” of the two species, and whether the Morlocks might in fact be as human if not more than they are. And once we cross that line, our reading of the Eloi-Morlock dynamic can get a lot more interesting.
• It’s interesting that the text is so explicitly class-based and Marxist in its analysis of what might happen to humanity 800,000 years in the future.
  • One belief of Marxism is the idea that History is dialectic, ==driven by class struggle towards the ultimate end of a classless society.==
  • On the one hand, if we believe the Time Traveler’s theory about where the Eloi and Morlocks came from, then class struggle clearly remains even that far in the future, albeit hyperbolized into species war. (Plus, when he goes even further into the future, he sees that version of Earth where the sun is red and everything is crabs, so, hey, classless society!)
  • But on the other hand, if that’s our takeaway, then damn is this a pessimistic future: one in which class conflict runs so deep that it cleaves us into separate species and keeps going, so unlike the utopian future envisioned by Star Trek and texts like it.
• Evolution is messy and wondrous, and often when we think of human evolution, we imagine where we as a species might go together. But texts like The Time Machine remind us that all our theorizing is ultimately rooted in who we are now, and if we don’t account for and address the divides between us, they’re not going to stop being there just because we’ve started dreaming of tomorrow.

But for now, let’s do some reading. Feel free to answer any or all!

1. How are the Eloi and the Morlocks coded in relation to each other? How does this shape our perceptions of them and the kinds of people they represent?
2. How is the conflict between the Eloi and the Morlocks rendered? What statements is the text making using this conflict? (And do you agree?)
3. Could there be an alternative explanation for where the Eloi and/or the Morlocks came from? If so, how would that change your reading of their interactions?
4. Fan-fiction time! Make up your own story on how Homo sapiens speciated into the Eloi and the Morlocks. What were the major evolutionary forces that led to this split? Bonus question: do you think there are remnants of the original H. sapiens species somewhere in this future world?

• This David Cronenberg film depicts a borderline post-apocalyptic future defined by an intriguing central novum whose very premise seems to be rooted in evolution: at some point, ==the humans of the film’s setting stopped feeling pain or getting infected with illness.==
  • If you think this sounds too good to be true, you’d be right–this radical shift in the human condition has led to society (or at least the snippet of society that the film shows us) becoming stricken with a fundamental, fatalistic ennui. Without pain, humankind seems trapped in a self-destructive search for pleasure, often resorting to bodily mutilation in an attempt to feel anything at all.
• In addition to being post-apocalyptic, the world of Crimes of the Future is incredibly dystopian, in the truest sense of the word.
  • While in general the term “dystopia” usually refers to an imagined society which contradicts the author’s ethos, often characterized by fear, oppression, and propaganda, some scholars define a specific type of dystopia–the _Anti-utopia–as something which specifically critiques the concept of utopia.
  • It’s the sort of thinking that leads to the notion of the monkey’s paw: ==if we believe that nothing good comes without a commensurate cost, then it follows that the cost of a perfect society must be high indeed, and an anti-utopian dystopia is what happens when the cost is too high.==
• It’s worth pointing out that the “perfection” in Crimes of the Future–the absence of pain and infectious disease–doesn’t seem to be deliberate on the part of humankind, but rather it’s described as ==something that “happened."== The worldbuilding seems to imply that it’s the ==product of evolution==, but the text doesn’t focus too hard on the history of this novum, opting instead to pay attention to the people and societies it creates.
  • People are changing in Crimes of the Future, and one of the other nova in the text literalizes that idea even further: people’s bodies seem to be developing new structures and processes, many of whose functions are unknown.
• As a work of social science fiction, the film presents us a society shaped by a particular biological shift in humankind, but suggests pretty heavily that ==that shift itself may be a response to the world humanity created==, the species changing in accordance with the increasingly decadent, derelict world it’s constructed for itself, a sort of perverted Red Queen world where we are perpetually adapting to ourselves in a masturbatory, almost cancerous inward spiral.
  • And by the journey’s end, even as some of the mysteries that drive the plot are solved, we’re left with more questions about this world than answers–and, like mutations or the search for pleasure or the strange recursive links between biology and society, many of these questions may never fully resolve themselves.

Discussion time! You know the drill.

1. Why is the mutation of the boy from the beginning of the movie significant?
2. Why are the government and the evolutionists at odds? What does this conflict represent in context of the setting?
3. This film is horny as shit. It also deliberately conflates intimacy and sensuality with concepts such as mutilation, surgery, and pain. What do you think it accomplishes by doing this? What is it trying to say, and is it working for you?