As technology moves to take its place inside the body, thanks to advances in medicine, nanotechnology and wearables, we have taken control of our own evolution
Three hundred million years ago, when the air was noxious, temperatures ranged between 600 to 1200 degrees, and poisons of many varieties oozed out from the belly of the earth, life survived on this planet. The ability that life has shown to adapt and evolve according to circumstances is quite extraordinary. What is even more astonishing is that the apparent movement towards a better form of adaptation is entirely the result of a series of accidents multiplied by heredity and filtered through the process of natural selection. Evolution is a way of aligning the inside with the outside, of accidentally finding ways of fashioning our own selves so that we can survive better in the context that prevails all around us.
The trouble with evolution is that it moves in geological time, whereas our lifespan is modestly biological. For it, a few million years is a canter, and a hundred thousand years a tearing dash. Thus in the fullness of time, our bodies and brains will possibly mutate into something more useful; the ineptness of our bodies will perhaps give way to something more refined, but by then our needs would have changed. The world is moving too fast for evolution to be able to catch up and be useful in any real sense.
The trouble with evolution is that it moves in geological time, whereas our lifespan is modestly biological. For it, a few million years is a canter, and a hundred thousand years a tearing dash. Thus in the fullness of time, our bodies and brains will possibly mutate into something more useful; the ineptness of our bodies will perhaps give way to something more refined, but by then our needs would have changed. The world is moving too fast for evolution to be able to catch up and be useful in any real sense.