Who Did It?

Even in my early days at University, I still did not understand natural selection. I remember thinking and saying that, if a part of an organism performed a function, then it must have been designed to perform that function.

Hard sf is based in a scientific understanding of cosmogony, cosmology and evolution. Poul Anderson imagines the evolution of:

Diomedeans

Starkadians

Ythrians

Didonians

Talwinians

t'Kelans

Throrans

See Speculution (Speculative Evolution).

This issues hits characters in SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series when they find Terrestrial organisms almost (or exactly?) duplicated on Mars and Venus. Dr Feldman, paleontologist and ethnologist, loathes:

"'...the God-did-it crowd...'"

-SM Stirling, The Sky People (October 2007), CHAPTER TWO, p. 26.

But Marc Vitrac and his companions begin to find evidence for:

"'...the aliens-did-it stuff...'"

-CHAPTER NINE, p. 201.

Yes. Feldman, Marc etc inhabit a hard sf universe.

Radiation Or Convergence

Did human beings originate on a single planet, then spread to many planets throughout the Galaxy, or, alternatively,  did they originate on many planets, then converge? This question arises not in Poul Anderson's Terran Empire, four hundred light-years across, but in Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire, literally filling the Galaxy although spreading no further.

The question is absurd. Asimov assumes a Galaxy full of terrestroid but uninhabited planets easily colonized by human beings without any need for terraforming or adaptation. He does not describe any extra-solar organisms from which human beings might have evolved. In fact, he does not describe any extra-solar organisms - whereas, for every exoplanet in his Technic History, Anderson always presents a full ecology of plants and animals. He also goes into detail about the evolution of some of extra-solar intelligent species. See Speculution. 

Anderson deserves to be read more widely than Asimov.

Evolution In Aldiss, Anderson, Lewis And Stapledon

Since we concluded the previous post with a quotation from Brian Aldiss, we should additionally mention that Aldiss wrote both a time travel novel and a Frankenstein novel and also that, like Poul Anderson, he followed Robert Heinlein not only by writing a future history but also by linking a generation ship story to the future history. Furthermore, Aldiss' single-volume future history, Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand, has a culminating instalment based on the completely non-Darwinian idea that animal evolution culminated with humanity in this galaxy and will begin with humanity in the next. Not an amoeba but a complete human organism will somehow form.

CS Lewis' Perelandra presents the Christian Fundamentalist idea of (as yet) sinless First Parents created on another planet.

In what I remember of Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Man, a recognizably different human species just began to be born among the population when its time had come. Natural selection was not involved. However, Stapledon did show Darwinian processes operating later in the novel when human colonists of Neptune degenerated into animality and intelligence eventually re-evolved.

Anderson applies fully Darwinian principles when recounting the evolution of Diomedeans, Ythrians and Didonians. See Speculution. Anderson was a hard sf writer who respected religion but who did not lose sight of physics or biology.

Energy And Inertia

"...a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.

Reading about species as diverse as Terrans, Ythrians, Merseians, Wodenites, Cynthians, Baburites, Ikrankans, Ivanhoans, Didonians, Cainites, Diomedeans, Starkadians (two), Irumclagians, Talwinians (two) etc might generate some reflection on underlying evolutionary processes. See Speculution.

Everything that exists or happens is an interaction between change and resistance to change, energy and inertia. This universe began as concentrated energy which dispersed and partly solidified. As energy overcomes inertia, levels of interaction are progressively less static and more dynamic. Inanimate matter changes position, i.e., moves, but in mathematically predictable orbits. Animate matter resists change by change. Conscious organisms are mobile. Intelligent organisms actively change their environments, can become artistically creative and can also come to perceive everything anew at every moment, the most energetic level of consciousness, which however still needs inertia to maintain a natural and social environment.

However, the original energy did not intend this or any other outcome. Purposiveness originated only with consciousness. Before consciousness, change was random albeit eventually generating self-replication, mutation and natural selection. Naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation. Then organisms not only absorbed nutrients but also wanted and intended to.

Some natural processes became conscious and purposive but could not have been purposive until they had become conscious. Yet many people project purposiveness back to the beginning.

Speculution (Speculative Evolution)

The Man Who Counts, see here.

Rereading this novel, I have reached a point where I would want to summarize Poul Anderson's speculations about extraterrestrial evolution but find that I have already done so:

Diomedean Evolution
Diomedean Evolution II
Explanation
Alien Evolution

That fourth post also refers to evolution on Starkad, Ythri and Dido and to life cycles on Talwin. These five planets all appear in Anderson's main future history series, the History of Technic Civilization. Thus, Anderson presents not only future history but also fictional evolution.

For evolution on two other Technic History planets, t'Kela and Throra, see Making Sense Of T'Kela.