New Books Network Mark Vellend, "Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More than We Think, from Proteins to Politics" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Sep 27, 2025
In this enlightening discussion, Mark Vellend, a biology professor and author, delves into the concept of evolution as a unifying principle across various domains. He explains how evolutionary dynamics shape everything from viruses to technology, emphasizing that both biology and culture evolve through similar processes. Vellend also explores historical influences on the idea of evolution that predate Darwin. He highlights the relevance of evolutionary principles in areas like AI and genetic engineering, showing how they inform our understanding of complex systems.
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Two Sciences Explain Everything
- Evolution is a second science distinct from physics that explains how complex things come to be over time.
- Physics sets constraints while evolutionary processes set the rules for historical change.
Avoid The Darwinian Distraction
- Obsessing over Darwin-specific features (genes, randomness) can mislead attempts to generalize evolution.
- A unified evolutionary framework doesn't require gene-like analogs or purely random variation.
iPhone As An Evolved Product
- Mark Vellend uses the iPhone to illustrate technology's evolutionary history of incremental trial and error.
- He argues no single inventor created it from scratch; each component evolved over time.
