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Evolutionary Theory Intersubjectivity: A New Way of Thinking About Evolutionary Theory
Wheeler began his presentation by asking the group to reflect upon what is really evolving in evolutionary theory? Is it the individual organism that evolves in response to its competitive struggle to survive? Wheeler believes that this way of thinking has gained acceptance in mainstream evolutionary theory not because it is close to the truth of what really is happening but rather because the Western worldview itself is so conditioned to this way of thinking. To explain his point, Wheeler took the history of psychology as an example. Darwin’s seminal publication that shook the world, The Origin of Species, was published in 1859. In the decades of the 1870s and 1880s, scholars such as Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley were successful in shaping the public popularity of the seemingly implied message of Darwin’s thesis: "the fittest are the ones who survive." At the height of his career at this time, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed that all meaning was arbitrary, and thus might makes right. Whatever individual can climb to the top is the winner of the evolutionary struggle of the fittest. Thus, evolution is the game of individual units competing to see who will come out on top and pass on his/her genes to the next generation. Wheeler pointed out that the roots of modern psychological thinking grew right out of this general late-19th century framework, or "worldview" that was inspired by the first interpreters of Darwin. As a result, psychology ever since has had a strong tendency to focus on how to help the individual adapt and competitively survive in the world. Using evolutionary theory as their justification, the forefathers of modern psychology based their theories on the individual as an autonomous unit. Deriving his work from a completely different tradition, called Gestalt psychology, Wheeler and others have eschewed the atomistic trend in Western thought and looked instead at the nature of inter-subjectivity; how does the self exists in relationship to its world? With this as his orientation, Wheeler posed the question: what would we see in evolutionary theory if we looked at it through the eyes of inter-subjectivity? First of all, Wheeler pointed out that if we place inter-subjectivity as primary and the self as derivative, then we might say that social relationships mediate the creation of the individual unit. One’s very being is constituted by the environment one lives in. What "I" am is different depending upon my context, my environment, and my relationships. To draw an analogy to biology, we might say that a bear in the woods is a completely different bear than the bear in the zoo. The bear in the woods exists in relationship to other bears, other animals, the trees, the forest, and the mountains and rivers. But a bear in the zoo is in a completely different context, and hence it is a different bear. The "mistake" evolutionary theory has so often made, then, is to study the organism—our proverbial bear—as if it were somehow independent of its environment. But that is clearly ludicrous. The bear’s very being is constituted by its social and environmental milieu. Secondly, Wheeler used the framework of inter-subjectivity to respond to the conference’s discussion of consciousness. How do we really become conscious? And when? Wheeler’s underlying contribution to this perennial question was to point out that the common error in the West is to understand the rise of consciousness as an individual heroic act of self-achievement. Aha, "I" am conscious now! Wheeler pointed out that recent psychological studies have revealed a quite different story; we become conscious in relationship; we become conscious in the midst of our inter-subjective dialogue and communication with others. Consciousness, in short, arises out of the very fabric of our related-ness. Thus, and this is important, what we call "self" is not a "self" at all. Instead, "self" is rather "self-in-relationship." The individual, the self, and the organism can never be abstracted from their relational context. In fact, the very essence of "self" arises from the matrix of relationships that constitute its being. I am because I relate. How does this shift evolutionary theory? Wheeler believes that evolutionary theory needs to make a paradigmatic shift and look not at the organism as if it were "parachuted into the pre-existing environment" ready to do battle with other organisms to see who will survive—but instead to look at the very relationship—the very complexity and richness—that arises between and among organisms and their environment. Put in other words, organism and environment arise together. Organism and environment form a cohesive bond of complex relationships, and those very relationships are what evolve. The complexity of "the whole" is what evolves, not the organism as a solitary, competitive unit that valiantly struggles over the others. In this light, what scientists have called "perception" is seen differently. Perception is the relationship between organism and environment. In humans, perception is something even more—it is dialogue, mutual understanding and getting along. It is the ability to know and understand another. To give an example of the evolution of such abilities, Wheeler described the famous Greek Homeric epic poem, The Odyssey. In this lyrical story that dates from around 800 B.C., the main character Odysseus is portrayed as being qualitatively different from his peers because of one unique and consequential ability: He can understand himself and others. He is perceptive of inter-subjectivity and his own interiority. This, in turn, enables him to refrain from acting on his lower impulses. When he meets the enemy, he does not have to kill them right away as his soldiers urge him to do. Instead, Odysseus can wait and decide when the time is right to act. He can defer his own gratification, and he can see perceptively into other’s psyches. In short, Odysseus had developed a degree of awareness of inter-subjectivity. Likewise, Wheeler turned to Carl Jung’s analysis of the Book of Job as another example where the evolution of inter-subjectivity is apparent. In this famous Old Testament narrative, the main character Job undergoes many trials and tribulations at the hands of God. But—and this is Wheeler’s point—God responds to Job in the story. God is in relationship to Job. God is affected by Job. God and humanity are in tension and in relation. In effect, Wheeler pointed out that Carl Jung dwelled on the fact that the evolutionary significance of the Book of Job seemed to be that it was the first time in religious literature that there was an indication that God needed humanity for God Himself/Herself to evolve. Divinity needs humanity to grow. The relationship itself is a necessity for evolution to occur. The dialogue between subject and object is the grist that drives the mill of evolution. The friction between two poles is what propels it all. Relating inter-subjectivity more directly to evolutionary theory, Wheeler pointed out that the rather sudden explosion in brain size in relation to body size -- the point where the hominid brain diverged sharply from the adult chimp brain – may have been driven by inter-subjective needs. Although several archeologists have emphasized how manual coordination skills (such as throwing a bow and arrow) facilitated the rapid brain expansion, Wheeler postulated that the expansion was selected for specifically by the sudden increase in the demands of social complexity. Because we were living in larger and more integrated social units (tribes and bands), a larger brain size was necessary to manage the complexity of our new inter-relationships. In a real sense, at that point biological evolution was being driven by relational needs, and not the other way around. In summary, Wheeler pointed out that because modern evolutionary theory grew out of the Western tradition of the salient individual, there has been an undue emphasis on the organism as the valiant survivor of the competitive struggle for life. Our whole way of theorizing about evolution has been a priori conditioned by the worldview of individualism. Our challenge now, Wheeler asserted, is to re-look at the assumptions that underlie the very way we think about evolution, and, in particular, the assumption of the isolated part. There is a different way to look at evolution altogether; we can see it as the rise of complexity of the relationships themselves. The complexity of the field, the inter-ness of all things is what evolves. To cap off his presentation, Wheeler responded to Jay Ogilvy’s rephrasing of the famous Cartesian cogito. While Ogilvy had proclaimed that the Cartesian phrase could have been uttered as "I love therefore I am," Wheeler went one step further by asking us to reflect on the famous statement from the paradigm of inter-subjectivity and consider yet another reading: "I am loved, therefore I am."
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