Bacteria Evolution and Sci-Fi
This bacteria hasn’t evolved in more than two billion years
http://www.sciencealert.com/this-bacteria-hasn-t-evolved-in-more-than-two-billion-years
This is a very interesting article. Some anti-evolution people will quote this as proof that Darwin was wrong. The article gives a good explanation of why that isn’t true.
If I may state it differently, a living organism only evolves so that it will survive. If the environment doesn’t change and the organism is successful then there is no reason for it to change. The shark and other creatures demonstrate that, although not changing over 2 billion years is a long time.
I think this has a direct impact on Science Fiction. Most of us sci-fi authors imagine future societies that have evolved into something much further advanced than we are. When in fact a civilization may only evolve until it succeeds. What do I mean by succeed? We are ‘succeeding’ but we may be still evolving. Our brains have other factors, like exploration, questioning our position in the universe and other questioning characteristics. I suppose that a society can reach a point where it is ‘succeeding’ but it doesn’t need to explore and question the world around them. They might even be a technological society that had developed technology only to the extent that it helped its daily existence.
This is also a partial answer to Fermi’s Paradox. As society may evolve to the point, where it succeeds but it doesn’t have the need to continue exploration. It could find a comfortable limit where it sees no need to explore.
I point this out because in my series Gemini, I tried to do that. I created a society that wasn’t inquisitive; it didn’t question its position in the universe around them. They were happy, propagating and living a good life. They evolved as the alpha predator so they didn’t need to develop survival instincts like ours. They didn’t have war so they didn’t invent weapons. However, they did make a small mistake and their civilization almost paid the ultimate price.
Ray Jay Perreault
