The teleological fallacy and Animorphs: a ramble

[primeideal]

"Things fall to Earth because of the law of gravity."

"What did we do before the law was passed?"

 

Hey everyone! This is Ember Nickel (primeideal), longtime fan and occasional author of fanfic. A few months ago, I completed a long series reread of Animorphs, jotting down things that caught my eye along the way. Starting around book 9 (and Megamorphs 1), I noticed a couple patterns of things I'd like to discuss further. Here, I'll be talking about more of the "science" side of "science fiction." So the intro-y stuff will be a biology refresher course, and then it'll be onto the fandom aspects! (Feel free to skim.)

 

For those of you who do know more about biology than me, I'm sorry if I've egregiously misrepresented any of the details. I'm also sorry if I'm quibbling about something that annoys me more than it annoys you, but I had to get this out there.

 

So what's all this evolution business?

 

e-vo-lu-tion (noun), the age-old process responsible for the diversity of live on Earth! Pretty cool stuff! But what exactly are we talking about?

 

Evolution has been explained as "variation and natural selection." To wit; whenever new individual organisms (animals, or plants, you name it) are born, they vary--genetic mutations, and the process of mixing DNA from their parents, will create offspring with a slightly different genetic code from the generation before. Many of these differences are inconsequential, but some have an impact on how likely that new individual is to survive and reach reproductive age. A classic example is that some animals of the same species will happen to have longer necks than others, and the ones with long necks can more easily stretch to reach fruit growing up in trees. If food is scarce, the short-necked animals are more likely to die off, and the long-necked ones are more likely to survive, and pass on their DNA to their children. Their children are then more likely to inherit that height, and so the next generation is, on average, taller than the last. If the same pressures on the population (food is scarce, but high up when anybody can find it) continue over time, we expect to see the average neck height slowly grow over many generations. Over long, long stretches of time, we wind up with species like giraffes.

 

Charles Darwin studied evolution on the Galápagos Islands, where the beaks of different species of finches differed slightly on different islands. The same population might have split into two groups, and both evolved separately. For whatever reason, such as slightly different food sources on the separate islands, both groups of finches evolved in response to the "selective pressures" in their different environments. The result is noticeable differences between two groups, or among a larger number of islands.

 

What is evolution not?

(This has very little to do with Animorphs, but it's kind of important to get out there.)

 

Evolution is not "creationism" or "intelligent design," which refer to the idea that species were created in their current form and have not changed much, having only existed for a much smaller timescale than makes scientific sense. (This is not a debate between two equally-valid hypotheses, and definitely not a "religion versus science!!!111eleventyone!" throwdown. I'm just one of many religious believers who understand and marvel at the scientific insight we can bring to bear on the millions and millions of years it has taken to create the biodiversity on Earth.) Unfortunately, because there's a lot of misunderstanding about evolution, it's easy to mischaracterize it. 

 

So, what else is evolution not? Evolution is not anthropomorphic; it is not the "hand" of "Mother Nature" trying to "sculpt" species "towards" any one outcome. Rather, it's the result of random forces. Going back to the finches, if we have two slightly different species of finch on two different islands, neither one is better or worse than the other; they're descendants of the same population, who have since become relatively differentiated.

 

Evolution, and here's my main point, is not teleological--it doesn't have any kind of goals or purposes in mind. And to implicitly assume that it does is a disservice to science.

 

Now, a species that survives does so because its forerunners were able to reproduce, whether that be through avoiding predators, hunting down prey, or attracting mates. So in that sense, the ancestors of every species living today have been "successful"--because their descendants are all still around. But even that is slightly anthropomorphizing.

 

Evolution is also not just one dimensional. You've probably seen pictures of the timeline of human evolution, from bipeds that didn't know how to stand upright, to crouching creatures, to hairy bodies, and finally to modern homo sapiens. And yes, that's one strand of evolution! But at the same time, there are other family trees branching off in different directions, to contemporary species that don't necessarily have opposable thumbs, or any of our human traits. We're just one part of the history of life.

 

Why Animorphs?

 

K. A. Applegate has said that one of her main reasons in writing the series was to describe animals--their diversity and unique traits. So far, so good. And it can be tempting to write about evolution in a praiseworthy light, to present it as a cool body of knowledge in its own right rather than "just a theory" (the well-attested theory of gravity is also a "theory"). But sometimes, it just doesn't look very scientifically sound.

 

The quotes that irked me (or didn't)

 

Our adventures start in book 9, where Cassie, our animal expert, is doing the narration.

 

"My osprey had been designed by nature for this-, flying high and finding prey...we had been designed by millions of years of evolution to be predators." Here we go. There's no entity "behind" evolution that's necessarily trying to "design" anything...it just happens.

 

<Look, Cassie, you're human. Homo sapien. Your job is to keep yourself and your species alive. That's all nature wants from you. That's the whole point of evolution -- to survive.> Again, unnecessarily anthropomorphic--"nature" doesn't "want" anything from anyone. (This is Tobias talking.)

 

Later, Cassie asks, "Am I a part of nature, so I should just live by the laws of nature, kill to eat, kill or be killed? Or am I something different because I'm a human?"

 

"Well, I guess you're both," Jake said at last. "I mean, you are the person who got rid of the termite queen. You're also the person who went out of her way to save a bunch of skunks." <-Unlike many legislatures, nature does not pass laws. We have "laws" of science, observed trends; the temperature of a gas is proportional to its pressure, objects fall to Earth by accelerating at 9.8 meters per second every second, and so on. And trying to reduce ethical decisions to "following laws" that nobody has encoded is a silly misstep.

 

Onwards to the next book, where we meet Erek and the Chee, and learn about Pemalites! Their backstory will be retconned slightly in the Ellimist Chronicles, where the Ellimist takes hands-on credit for creating the Pemalites as we knew them. Here, however, we learn that "they had been a fully evolved race for so long that all the harsher instincts were gone from them." Although the rest of this essay is more quibbling, this is perhaps the most egregious misunderstanding. There is no such thing as "fully evolved"--species are constantly changing over time. The series as a whole certainly doesn't suggest that species that have been around longer are any more moral than those that aren't--Andalites are ancient, but they're no paragons of virtue. Nor, I think, would Applegate say that humans are necessarily morally superior to other species with less complex thought processes. The t-shirt model of human evolution would not lead to a Pemalite-esque species of do-gooders, after which there would be no more change. It doesn't make sense scientifically, or narratively.

 

Book eleven gets us up-close-and-personal with our fellow primates. When swinging from the trees, Casie points out that the process is called "brachiating," and wonders if "Maybe all the stages of evolution are still a part of us." Conveniently, there's a name for a similar hypothesis, the Recapitulation Theory. This posits that, developing from an embryo to an adult, individuals pass through stages resembling those of ancestral species. Also conveniently, this theory has been discredited.

 

Moving on, book 14 takes us back to Cassie as narrator again, and here she claims "I was doing what I had been designed to do. I was fulfilling millions of years of horse evolution..." Familiar refrain by now; there is no design in evolution, and no goals to be fulfilled. We can skip ahead to book 37 for more of the non-need for speed, where Rachel will similarly claim "I was built for speed."

 

Beyond this, things get a little more subtle, and it's more common to just find praise of a morph's abilities. Which, is no doubt the goal, in writing the books to showcase how cool animals are. We can appreciate and celebrate these traits, but that doesn't mean they're on some kind of scale from "well-designed" to "poorly-designed"--they just are, the outcome of random processes. Which can sound boring, admittedly, but nonetheless.

 

So, book 15 brings us Marco's "I think at some level, at the most basic survival level, that primitive shark brain was actually superior to our own human brain." Superiority on what measure?

 

And then, it's back to Cassie one more time for this laudation in book 19 about leopards. "They were smart, adaptable, cunning, and ruthless. They were the ultimate hunters. Human hunters, professional, experienced hunters armed with high-powered rifles and telescopic sights, had waited in trees for hours for a leopard to return to the place where it had stashed a kill. They had waited with eyes wide-open, nerves tingling, guns at the ready ... and had suddenly felt the faint tingling warning that they were being watched. And they had turned to find the leopard sitting right behind them in the tree. The last thing they ever saw."

 

Okay, the "ultimate" hunters is one thing. (Also pertinent; if they died right then and there, with no time to tell anyone what had happened, how did anyone else know there had ever been a tingling warning?!)

 

There is, however, one point when the series does break away from this style of writing. And it takes an inhuman narrator to point out the human fallacy...sort of. Let's drop in on book 28, to hear from Ax.

 

"Chimpanzees are proof of the unpredictability of evolution. Many humans think evolution involves improvement. Of course, it does not. It merely involves survivability. Often individual capabilities are lessened in the process of moving toward a survivable species. Humans are clearly weaker than chimpanzees. But their brains are much more capable. Well, somewhat more capable."

 

Okay, good. It's not an outright "improvement." But is "toward" a teleological misstep in its own right? One could just as easily say that "humans evolved from chimpanzees, and are more evolved, because their brains are more capable." Which doesn't really work. Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor, but then diverge--like the finches, writ large. And chimpanzees aren't any "worse" than humans because of their comparative mental capacities. Similarly, humans aren't "lesser" because of their physical strength.

 

All in all? These die down a lot in the second half of the series, and so much the better as far as I'm concerned. It definitely didn't catch my mind the first time around, but that was, uh, a long time ago. (I don't even want to think about what fraction of my life this represents, put it that way.) I guess the takeaway is, be careful--just because evolution (or any other branch of science, really) hasn't gotten a fair shake in the popular mindset, doesn't mean it's your responsibility to show off how cool it is by distorting it. 

Comments

[joking]

I find it funny how Cassie is generally the most likely to commit the fallacy of assigning intentionality to nature, when she is presumably the most knowledgeable about biology. But then, that's her mindset. She looks for agency, which is a great trait when she applies it to the Yeerks, but not really applicable to nature.

[primeideal]

Hmm, yeah. I think I interpreted it as mostly Cassie saying most about animals and their abilities, overall, whether relevant or less so, than everybody else. But I don't actually remember whether she really has more to say about the morphs, overall. Thanks so much for reading! :)

[tygerwulfe]

It is, unfortunately, human nature to anthropomorphize - especially thoughts and natural processes that the layman has no way of understanding otherwise.

The scientific community are encouraged to push away this way of thinking, but it is incredibly difficult. Saying a horse was "designed for speed" by evolution, versus saying "natural selection over millions of years has resulted modernly in a creature capable of sustained rapid travel over land". It doesn't sound nearly as good. :P

We have to remember, all of these statements were being made (taking the books at face value - not as evidence of author's understanding or misunderstanding) by thirteen to sixteen year old KIDS. They're barely into junior high before their world goes to hell, and yeah - none of them BUT Cassie have the biological background to understand beyond the anthropomorphized view of evolution. Even Tobias, who is technically living natural selection with every mouse he kills, can't understand it from a scientific perspective. He's too close to it.

Cassie, who does have the scientific knowledge, also has too much of a bleeding heart. She anthropomorphizes EVERYTHING, form the animals in her parent's barn, to the natural processes of the planet. It's simply the way she thinks.

Ultimately, it's my opinion that these statements aren't a negative reflection on the author's understandings of evolution so much as an accurate attempt to put everything into the mindset of the characters and be consistent with said mindset.

Also, yes - the anthropomorphizing does die down as the series goes on - as one would expect. These people are going from naive children to hardened warriors. It stops mattering what the animals are capable of doing from a standpoint of admiration and beauty, and more about "do they fulfill this requirement we need the morph to do". The animals become weapons, nothing more.

And again, if that DIDN'T happen, this series wouldn't be nearly as realistic a look at the impact of war on a human psyche as it is.

[primeideal]

Thanks so much for reading and your thoughtful comment! I had not considered that the changes in tone over time were part of the broader arc and changing perspectives, but that's definitely plausible and would fit. There might be other specific narration patterns that die out similarly...? The pacing of the "my name is" introductions jumps to mind.

[tygerwulfe]

The introductions definitely changed. So did the descriptions in battle scenes. In early books, all the kids would just generically describe the battles and the aftermath.

"My entire world was blow and counterblow. I'd block five jabs of his and throw three slashes of my own." Is a paraphrased line from #13.

Compare this description to later battle descriptions in which the viscera are described being strewn about the floor. Jake gets tripped up in his own intestines. Rachel is beating a Hork-Bajir over the head with her own severed arm.

As the kids became more and more warriors and less and less kids, the need to "soften" the descriptors went away.

I actually did an experiment a couple of years ago that I highly recommend. If you have access to all the books, read EACH CHARACTER individually. It helps to see the evolution of the individual people.

For instance, for Tobias, read #3, #13, Megamorphs 2, #23, #33, etc. And the same for the other kids. Don't read the books in order. Watch how they change. The differences in their thinking from their first book to their last book is incredibly striking.

If you've read the series recently, you could even just read each character's first book and last book.