2.1.1 Background to the Debate

A significant claim of the Theory of Options is that it can explain human behavioral complexity by evolution. This is crucial. A misconception about evolution is that it is for the good of the species. This would make human qualities such as intelligence, morality, or cooperation fit behaviors that humans struggling to survive would attain. Only fitness is a property of individuals, not species. Even if a cooperative behavior benefits a species, it still evolved only because it conferred a fitness advantage to individuals. If today humans are moral, biological attributes of morality can only have evolved because individuals who exhibited moral attributes passed more of their genes via offspring than rivals. Yet, studies have proven that behaviors among higher animals, which appear moral, are just disguised individual rivalry and selfishness.

The brutal conclusion is that if human behavior arose from evolution it too must be selfish, and in many ways it is. Except even if we prove that human behavior is universally selfish, which is disputed, it is still not biologically selfish behavior, with a singular aim of procuring more offspring. Selfish people can have small families or no offspring. This anomaly between how modern humans behave as a fact and how fitness works in nature causes ensconced difficulties explaining human behavior by evolution, and results in bitter disputes. A core group of researchers are convinced that evolutionary theory can already explain human behavior, so it is only anti-Darwin or anti-evolution attitudes preventing acceptance of the new ideas. Other researchers contend that there are genuine difficulties not only with human behavior, but other facets of evolutionary theory not yet overcome. The Theory of Options will show how the difficulties can be addressed within current knowledge, but we must revise key assumptions in how we approach the issue.

But is the Theory of Evolution true at all?

This question is paradoxical, especially as the stated purpose of this book is explaining human behavior by evolution. But evolution today is under attack in many areas, not just over human behavior. The most virulent charges are from the religious extreme Right, that evolution is both a flawed theory scientifically plus it leads to moral decay in society. Most religious inspired attacks on Darwinism are not rational, but now there are other issues. Ever since Darwin's theory was first promulgated people have drawn questionable moral inferences from it, but it was always considered that the science of the theory was itself free from the social disputes it engendered. But the selfish gene and sociobiology theories that began the latest debate required changes to the science within the core theory. These changes, to some critics, seemed less to do with science and more to push the theory itself into a moral view of behavior that Plato long ago might have characterized as "nothing but a life of conquest over others".

So, the reaction to the latest changes in evolution theory was not just confined to religious objections. During the 1970's some social-minded scientists began challenging conventional theory on several grounds, and the criticism spread to the ecology movement. With the birth of environmentalism came a general reaction against the so-called desacralization of nature by mechanical science, of which the Newton-Darwin model was seen as the paradigm. Then in 1983 social critic Jeremy Rifkin, who was not religious but environmental and anti-mechanical, openly savaged Darwin in a much-acclaimed book Algeny. Most of Rifkin's arguments were anti-scientific or even anti-intellectual, except an unsettling feature of his attack was the number of quotes he garnered from alleged scientific authorities disputing Darwin's Theory. It turned out that most quotes, including ones by Darwin were out of context, or drawn from a pool of regular, religiously inspired anti-Darwin critics. Only when rushing to defend Darwin writers such as Daniel Dennett also surprised readers by admitting how widespread academic criticism of current evolutionary theory is. The public too knew enough that the fossil record showed not gradual improvement but layers of sudden increase in species complexity, which scientists seemed reluctant to explain or even admit was the case. So, once the debate became public glib testimonials to an almost religious faith in evolution by some scientists could no longer assuage genuine concerns.

2.1.2 The Main Disputes

So, what are the issues?

The best-known dispute is over the fossil record. We are told that evolution is a process of incremental change over time, and Darwin expected a complete fossil record to show smooth, continuous improvement. Supporters quoting Darwin have argued that he was not expecting this, yet regardless of his expectations the pattern of evolutionary change is not smooth. Since Darwin's day scientists have found fossil evidence of life back to its earliest forms, 3.8 billion years ago. Even the Silurian radiation 440 myrs ago Darwin spoke of is preceded by an earlier Cambrian radiation 530 myrs ago. The reason that fossils do not appear before this is not because of geology, as Darwin supposed, but because prior to the Cambrian explosion creatures lacked bony parts so they were never fossilized. Moreover, despite other gaps in the record scientists have found many examples of intermediates, or transitional forms between established species. Also, we now better understand why new species might appear suddenly in local areas even if they were not separately created, as opponents of evolution have claimed. Only despite these discoveries the overall pattern to the fossil record has not changed since Darwin's time. The current model of evolution is still of gradual change, whereas the fossil record shows stepped patterns of large, relatively rapid change.

The next dispute concerns the actual "origin" of new species, only we must be clear what this means. Every organism has both a genome, which is its genetic code, and phenotype, which is the appearance of the grown individual. Evidence is overwhelming that the phenotype to genome distance of every species living or which ever lived is in correspondence. Horses are like zebras, but not like fish. So, the genome distance is short between horses and zebras but is far from fish. There are similar correspondences in the genome and morphological distances between humans and great apes, and so on. The simplest explanation of such correspondence, over so many species is to presume that all species evolved by successive divergence from a single ancestral stock. It would be statistically inconceivable that the correspondence could arise any other way. So, however improbable it might seem that evolution occurred it is more improbable that it did not. Yet, even if we observe as a fact that species arose by successive divergence, this still does not explain why they did. If anything, it is now realized that it takes strong pressure to isolate individuals from a common species into reproductively separate groups. So, while humans have altered their domestic stocks, they have never been able to breed a new species under controlled conditions. Speciation among wild species has been observed, and in modern times, but other forces act to retain species within the limit of their genome variability. So, to explain the origin of totally new species we need to know which mechanisms cause organisms step outside the given limits of a species genome.

When genetic distance evolves with temporal (time) separation from the genome of the ancestral species, this is called anagenesis. Only anagenesis is hard to observe because of both the long times involved, and because we are comparing a modern individual with one from the past, about which we have only scanty data. One test of a separate species say, is if it could breed with a member of the parent species. But how could we test if a modern individual could breed with an ancestor of a million years ago? There have been claims of observing anagenesis but these are now disputed, not that it occurred, but what it represents. Examples are evolution of domestic breeds by artificial selection, cited by Darwin, or changes in the appearance of peppered moths by natural selection. In both cases the morphology of the species adapted over time, but this is not proof that a new species evolved in a place where a different species existed before. If domestic dogs can breed with wolves, dogs are an adaptation of the wolf type but not proof of anagenesis under domestication. Controversially, Darwin expected that most evolution would be by anagenesis and this model is most used in studies of evolution by gene flow. Only it is much debated if anagenesis leading to new species can occur at all.

More easy for humans to measure is evolution of cladistic distance, or separation between two modern species, termed cladogenesis, and this has been observed. Within the past 50-60 years two new species evolved in the plant genus Tragopogon. And while it was not observed directly modern wheat evolved as a distinct species from a wild type, within the last few thousand years. Moreover, today among many plants, insects, bacteria and fish, modern species exist at such short distances apart we infer that they must have recently split into separate species. Except these changes are over short distances. In the past, changes must have occurred over huge distances. Within the orthodox view this is explained that the longer the time involved, the greater the distance will be. Except large changes seemed to occur in relatively short times. Among different orders of mammals such as carnivores, whales, primates, or bats the 'distance' is much greater between the orders than within them. Yet, these major orders arose suddenly 55-60 myrs ago and no new orders have arisen since. Earlier many major modern phyla emerged suddenly in a 15 myrs burst of the Cambrian Explosion, but no new phyla have evolved since. So over the whole of life new species have evolved genetic and morphological distance from ancestors, and there is overwhelming evidence of this. But the transformation was not linear in time. At points in evolution huge forces pushed species large distances in short times. While at other times, forces we presume act all the time appear strangely quiescent. And we need to know why this is.

The next focus of the debate is the applicability of natural selection. This is a broad concern, as many people wonder how a property as intricate as life, the eye, or the human emotions could arise by so-called blind processes of chance. This is a concern of scientists too, only some criticism is astonishingly misinformed. Any event has a probability of either 1 (certain), 0 (never) or a statistical outcome that fits a curve (say, 95% chance it will be between 0.8 and 0.9). But to make their argument look scientific critics have calculated huge open-ended numbers against the chance of evolution occurring. They illustrate these numbers with quips about monkeys typing Hamlet, or quote the famed astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle that the probability against life evolving equaled the chances of a tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747. Only these quips are not scientific arguments. Hoyle's quips especially have a dubious record. This scientist once ridiculed the Big Bang theory by likening it to a "party girl jumping out of a birthday cake", but that theory turned out to be correct. And while nobody has made a computer type Hamlet, computer programs can type simple sentences or design shapes using natural selection. Plus there are other examples (later) where computer simulated natural selection has proven a powerful force of organization. Nor have odds against an organ like the eye evolving by natural selection, once thought huge, proven as great as first thought. Eyes evolved about forty times and there are many examples of intermediate or partly perfected eyes. Evolution of focusing systems has also been easily simulated on a computer.

The issue then, is not just concocting huge numbers and calling them probabilities. There is a chance of course, that of the billions of planets in the universe only Earth evolved life, in which case there was a high probability against life evolving and we must identify what that factor was. But we hope odds against life evolving are not so great, maybe less than a 1,000 to 1. So, there is no need to concoct huge odds, as theories relying too much on chance will be rejected anyway. Plus there are ways to bring the odds down. The number of possible chess games is infinite. But the number that will be won by white between two equal players, or the number of games that will end in less than a 100 moves is a finite probability. The unconstrained probability of randomly producing the enzyme sequence AYQGFA is one in 3,600 trillion with a twenty-place amino acid code. It is one in a million even to get two letters into sequence. Yet, in modern life the AYQGFA is always 100% reproduced and not subject to further chance variation at all. So, this sequence probably evolved letter at a time, first with a 15 amino acid code used in early life, to keep probabilities within reasonable limits.

Strangely then, the argument is not that we must bring the odds down, but that some scientists are only relying on a single mechanism to do it. This is the issue over natural selection. It has been proven many times that once initial parameters are set natural selection can bring the odds down very quickly. If anything, another concern is that most times life evolved, or failed too, at much slower rates than natural selection can force. Only life also seems to evolve into certain patterns that might not be set by natural selection, but are inherent geometrical or chemical properties of existence. This especially applies to early life. The only way that non-life could evolve into life by natural selection alone with no other mechanism is by replication of an early "naked code". Only while some scientists propose this mechanism other scientists, also atheists, do not believe it is possible that a complete cell with its complex replication machinery could simply evolve this way. The alternative view to the "naked code" is that there must be an initial cell type requiring a form of chemical hyper-cycle to set it replicating, and the code came later. Plus the random chance is not against any particular sequence evolving, but that life itself moves in a direction against thermodynamic probability. Recently then, it has been discovered that early life possibly began close to heat sources where thermodynamic probability against it evolving would be much less. Unfortunately, the math of this early life involves not only probability but also energy balance, so people outside of specialized fields find it difficult to contribute.

Yet even once it starts, the rate at which species modify by natural selection seems to be modulated by several factors. Natural selection works equally on lungfish and humans. But humans evolved markedly in five myrs, while lungfish barely altered in 350 myrs, which we must explain. Plus despite testimonials of ultra-Darwinists like Dennett that natural selection "unifies ... mechanism and physical law" most scientists concede that all observed natural selection is post-biotic. The eye evolved by natural selection, but only once life existed. Computer programs can simulate natural selection, but only after these too are first written by living beings. There is no evidence of any pre-biotic natural selection, which leaves the issue of how life first evolved from non-life open. We also doubt if natural selection is post-biotic. We can use a metaphor that history or the economy is Darwinian, and if not correct, be understood what we have inferred. But while genes can be quantified as biological units of natural selection there is no evidence of so-called 'memes' as post-biotic packets of information, selected the way genes are. A small academic industry has grown around the study of so-called memes, only we wonder if the sum total of human knowledge has increased one iota from this effort.

The other much-debated difficulty with evolutionary theory concerns human evolution and behavior. Even in the 'Origin' Darwin addressed one of the most difficult facets of evolution; how a selective struggle shapes behavior. Darwin's example was how natural selection would guide the instinct of the honeybee to fashion the complex hexagons of the honeycomb, another example concerned slavery among ants. But although Darwin only hinted at it, the challenge was to discover how evolution shaped instinctive behaviors in humans. Since then there have been many attempts, not to discover which human behaviors are instinctive, but elaborate a theory of why we should view all human behavior as an adaptive mechanism of evolution. Apart from early theories of evolutionary ethics and Social Darwinism, this science began with kin selection theories, outlined by Haldane as early as the 1930s. This idea was revived by Naked Ape and genetic kinship theories in the 1960s. In the 1970s the view received fresh impetus from Wilson's Sociobiology, and selfish gene and meme theories of Richard Dawkins. Today, this is the view of evolutionary psychology, or older views repeated with fresher examples, such as the peacock's tail theory, or Red Queen Effect, explained later.

Only if these theories provided interesting examples of how nature works, or human instincts might work, they failed in the larger goal. Regardless of how many examples we find of evolutionary behavior the so-called reining orthodoxy is that human behavior of most practical interest is driven by psychology, not evolution. There are other reasons these theories fail, one being practicality. Psychologists are not going to yield their specialization to biologists on a dubious argument. But universally, and controversially, advocates of pure evolutionary explanations of human behavior are the same upholders of the ultra-Darwinist orthodoxy in general evolution, which many scientists are now questioning.

2.1.3 The New Criticism

Following attempts to redefine human behavior by sociobiology and selfish gene theories, scientists associated with a nurture view of behavior challenged the evolutionary orthodoxy on several grounds. The initial challenge had been the stepped pattern in the fossil record. But from this, Harvard biologist Steven Gould and his colleagues launched a broad assault against so-called adaptationism, a concept that every feature of an organism must have been selectively favored. The new ideas favored cladogenesis over anagenesis, rejected improvement in a single line, and proposed that species enjoyed long periods of minimal change, "punctuated" by evolution of new types in short times. (The theory is called Punctuated Equilibrium.) Only in the eyes of its critics, the new theory was long on philosophy but short on mechanisms. Steven Gould came in for harsh criticism for allegedly damaging Darwinism in the public eye, one defender of orthodoxy labeling Punctuated Equilibrium "evolution by jerks". Steven Gould did overstate his case, and he oversold the Cambrian Explosion, despite that it remains an important example of stepped change, one used in this book. Steven was speaking out against a view of a universe rigidly determined by events fixed in the past, this being a universe that we do not have many options to change. Only his alternative, a universe so fortuitous that we can barely infer any laws about it at all is not a universe we have many options to change either, so this part of Steven's message was confusing even to his supporters. Yet, other reaction was mixed. Scientists in fields such as complexity theory had their own agendas on evolution and saw Punctuated Equilibrium as an opportunity to broaden the debate. Besides, it is mute if Steven Gould damaged Darwinism more by pointing out the realities of the fossil record, or if ultra-Darwinists damaged it more insisting on explanations of human behavior which are scientifically insupportable.

Only does such criticism of evolution even from within science mean that the whole theory is flawed?

Most theories of modern science, whether Newton's Laws, Quantum Theory, or Relativity are incomplete in many areas. Newton's Laws could not explain action at small or large distances. Nor could they explain quantum or relativity effects, or precession of the Planet Mercury. While because of a political dispute, for a century English scientists performed Newton's calculations with an inferior method of calculus. Plus pundits insist there are only two laws of motion, not three. Or while Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is seen as complete, his General Theory discovered in 1916 remains incomplete almost a century later. Yet, nobody asks if Relativity might be "wrong" because of gaps that Einstein could not fill. And while there has been muted criticism of Newton, mainly of his allegedly vindictive personality, nobody suggests the textbooks be rewritten, despite that some textbooks are likely out of date.

On the other hand, criticism of science will only lead to better science. It is not as though objections to Darwinism will cause society to abandon the scientific method and return to belief in God. Science once could not explain why the Sun burned brightly, but that was easily explained once humans discovered nuclear energy. Similarly, there have been many puzzles to evolution since the theory was first proposed, such as how the eye evolved, but which were later overcome by fresh research. If anything, evolutionary theory is already past a point where if God played any role it is harder to explain what he did than to presume that evolution works without God entirely. For instance, although science cannot explain how life formed from non-life the process occurred quickly once conditions stabilized on the early Earth. It took no more than half-a-billion years to evolve the first modern life forms, prokaryotic cells, without a membrane surrounding DNA. Yet, it took almost two billion years, four times as long, to evolve the next stage of life, eukaryotic cells, which have a membrane isolating DNA from the surrounding cytoplasm. So if we wish to explain the role God played we must explain why it took him only half a billion years to create prokaryotic cells but four times as long to create eukaryotic cells. More likely, we presume there is a scientific reason why eukaryotic cells took four times longer to evolve than prokaryotic cells, which is what we want to know anyway, and leave God out of it.

Even in the contentious issue of why, though evolution is gradual the fossil record shows species arise suddenly, there might still be no role for God. However incomplete it is the fossil record tells a history vastly different from the Bible. Life evolved for 3.8 billion years and the first two billion years, 60% of the history life on Earth, was evolution of prokaryotic microorganisms. Then came a release, called a radiation, of eukaryotic life followed by evolution of multi-cellular life less than a billion years ago. About 530 million years ago there was a dramatic new radiation of plant and animal forms in the Cambrian Explosion. Since then there has been gradual change but dramatic radiation and extinction too, like the famous extinction of the dinosaurs and radiation of mammals to replace them. So, the modern theory of evolution must explain more than gradual, slight improvement over time. It must explain why 60% of the history of life was only of microorganisms. Or why the most complex organisms evolved only in the last 15% of organic history, or the radiation of mammals in the last 2% of it. The theory also must explain the "stepped" increase in complexity after prolonged periods of gradual accumulation. Plus it must explain why the time for evolving new species goes down as the levels of preexisting complexity go up. People might see the hand of God in the sudden increases in complexity but to do so just pushes the questions we want answered back a notch. If God were a special creator why did he "create" in such a complex way? Why not complete the whole thing in six days just like the Bible says?

Still, some people dispute that life on Earth took 3.8 billion years to evolve or dispute any facts that contradict cherished beliefs. Only there are other forums for debating what constitutes a fact. Chapter 1.4 discusses it, but while it is a separate dispute facts are statements which can only be contradicted by other facts. So, if a person thinks life did not evolve for 3.8 billion years he or she should state how many years it did take, and the supporting evidence. And while in this book facts, theory, and the scientific method are defined slightly differently, and mechanisms of evolution are debated, the argument begins from base facts, now well-established. Among these are that humans live in a vast universe composed of atoms, stars, and galaxies. That this universe originated from a hotter and denser state 10 to 20 billion years in the past. That our Solar System formed from aggregation of debris from Type II matter ejected from exploding Type I Stars. That the Earth formed 4-6 billion years ago, and that 3.8 billion years ago on Earth organic molecules began to self-replicate. And from these first forms all life on Earth, including intelligent life evolved. Evolution of life was by a natural process which selected from among a variety of living forms individuals best adapted in a struggle for reproductive fitness.

And while some people, even scientists, dispute some of these facts, the theories used in this book take a strict view. For example, while the much quoted astronomer Fred Hoyle has ridiculed the concept of life evolving by chance, he is only doing so to support a theory further removed from Biblical creation than conventional views. Hoyle does not believe that the universe evolved from a hotter, denser state, but that it has existed forever. He has seems to imply that life too existed forever, or began not on Earth but somewhere else in the universe, despite that this argument only pushes the questions we want answered back a notch. Yet in this book we maintain that not only did Earthly life first evolve here but that key biological innovations evolved just one time. Further, while natural selection is not pre-biotic evolution is a general process that stretches back to the beginning of time. So, here we do not dispute whether biological or cosmological evolution occurred in a factual sense. The issue is only whether mechanisms that can describe parts of evolution are comprehensive enough to describe all of it, including the evolution of major new phyla, classes and orders, and evolution of the human species, with culture, morality, and intelligence.

So, what are these mechanisms of evolution, now in dispute?

We have already covered most of them. Firstly, we have a process in the universe called evolution. Now to some people this only means biological evolution, but here we mean any new quality of the universe not just adapting to it, but coming into being for the first time. Matter evolved, stars and galaxies evolved, the heavy elements evolved and the Earth evolved, all before life began. Or even after life began, some organisms just adapted existing designs slightly, but other times whole new types, materials and designs came into being the very first time. Only while we insist as a fact that evolution occurred, we do not make a religion from it. Just that humans observe in the universe measurable properties such as temperature, density, structure, and complexity that change over time. Being curious creatures, we want to know why that is. Then we notice that there are patterns or structures in the universe, some of which are more basic than others are. Fundamental particles form atoms in strictly defined ways. Atoms combine to form elements, in ways nearly as strict. Atoms and elements make up larger aggregates that form general patterns, but with individual uniqueness which gives each large aggregate a history. Stars and galaxies are aggregates of patterns, but each has a unique history. Finally, in at least one situation we know of, non-living aggregates began to self-replicate as living ones. We are not totally sure why that is, but we do notice that the living forms continue to obey laws of pattern formation. Just complex patterns must be maintained against other forces of disorder trying to break them down. So, unlike for innate complexity, patterns of living order must constantly renew themselves, to maintain their form.

Once patterns of living complexity begin to self-replicate a new mechanism arises. Because living aggregates are already complex each has a slight uniqueness. Once they begin to self-replicate it will happen that some aggregates are better at self-replication than others. This reinforces the effect, because those organisms better at self-replication will be replicated in greater numbers. Conversely, organisms not good at self-replication will be squeezed out by the better replicators as resources become scarce. Only because the living aggregates are complex they will never self-replicate exactly the pattern they had before. There will be variations each generation. Because of the self-reinforcement effect the beneficial changes will also tend to spread with successful replicators while harmful changes will be eliminated. Over time we would expect to see replicators become steadily improved at replicating. This process has been simulated on computers and has been proven to work, often with dramatic results. The process has also been studied in numerous examples in nature and has been quantified in many host-parasite systems, where introduction of a virulent parasite in a population of hosts produces an interactive evolution of both populations. After an initial disturbance the host evolves better resistance while the parasite evolves decreased virulence. (The parasite wants to spread, not kill.) From such interaction both populations increase adaptability or "evolve", in this case through a process of natural selection.

Except just as we should not make a religion of evolution, neither should we make one of natural selection. We are not certain if natural selection can work pre or post biotic. Nor can we infer that once begun natural selection should bring a cycle of continuous improvement, such that the population will evolve in the one place. Computer models tend to show improvement is continuous, but this is more the way the models are set up. However in nature, while small adaptation works all the time large changes in evolution mostly occur in steps. Even in a computer not set up that way, parasites can evolve causing step changes under continuous selection. In one study, organisms 80 characters long were competing for CPU resources of the computer. After millions of iterations a 45 character parasite evolved causing a step disturbance to the system. In related computer studies, multi-gene organisms have displayed step increases of fitness, when fortuitous gene combinations randomly appeared.

In living nature too, there are ways to explain step increases in complexity from a continuous process, despite that the new mechanisms are not always accepted. It is now conceded that the "sudden" appearance is often an effect. Like steady rain on a blocked river for weeks the water level will rise slowly, but produce a step change in flow when the blockage bursts. Plus a stepped effect results from population size. By math, evolution should be equally probable in a small population as a large one, depending on mutation rate. But realistically successful mutations, if that is causing the changes, are more likely to sweep through a small population than a large one. This produces its own dynamics. A population of less than optimum types will stay small, and when it is small the population will evolve. But once the type reaches optimum it will tend to disperse over a broader area, which will distend its mechanism to evolve further. This will not only produce a step effect on the rate of evolution, but a further 'sudden appearance' effect in the fossil record. Simply, fossils of a stable and widely distributed population will be easier to find than those of a small, rapidly evolving population are. This is another factor in the dispute. Steven Gould and his colleagues are paleontologists: they study fossils. So, if there is an even slightly stepped effect in the mechanisms of evolution, its amplified effect will be more easily noticed in the fossil record. Upholders of the orthodox view on the other hand tend to be evolutionary biologists. These study highly active systems like host-parasite interactions, where change is mostly continuous and cyclic, which is how they see all evolution. As we shall explain later, over large geological time other mechanisms allow small changes to accumulate as a stepped effect, but for other reasons this was mostly in the past, impossible to observe in modern times.

So, when we inquire if the mechanisms of evolution are adequate to account for it, we really ask two questions.

1. Are all the mechanisms that we know about given an equal representation in explaining evolutionary complexity, or is the focus on just a few mechanisms, such as mutation and natural selection?
2. Even if all the known mechanisms are used, are they sufficient to explain first life, the origin of new species, major increases of complexity, and evolution of human behavior?

The difficulty with the first question is that while there are many ways of elaborating a theory of evolution, there is only one way to prove it. This is by models of gene flow, such as a model that will explain host-parasite interaction. Only the math and data gathering for these models is highly specialized. Only a few people, to its critics a priesthood of mathematicians and evolutionary biologists have access to the techniques, even among scientists. This core of scientists is insisting that the existing models are adequate only the critics cannot understand the math. This is not just exclusiveness. Equations express ideas precisely so they can be quickly checked against other models to see if they are valid. Yet, "verbal models" of evolution seem to go on forever, so a busy scientist could waste precious time trying to fathom the argument but not encounter anything provable. This logjams the debate. The math of how a continuous process would result in a "stepped" effect are certain to be complex, more than the existing math, to which most people already do not have access. Plus one cannot derive equations from a fossil record, or worse, a principle of philosophy. Mathematicians need quantifiable data sets such as mutation rates, allele frequencies, or population size. But this data is controlled by evolutionary biologists who do not think there is any need for new equations or broader models.

Is there any hope then, in the second question, that some mechanism of evolution might have been overlooked? Again, the primary concern is discovering the causes of the stepped changes. There are now many explanations of this, including computer models, which are beginning to permeate among the orthodoxy. Yet when this author was examining human evolution he encountered a mechanism, which while it might not have been overlooked, its significance could have been underrated. It is that all evolution, pre, during or post-biotic, is about change. Evolution is properties and qualities changing over time. Yet, all through evolution, when any set of properties change, there is outstanding property that is fundamental, but must have some effect.

Of all the properties that change, some, quite simply, are easier to change than others. Only if this property is basic its effects can become pronounced over large evolutionary scales. It is not essential, but we can better understand many other disputes of evolution or how evolution shapes human behavior, if we understand how some properties being either easy and hard to alter might shape all the forces of life.