Spandrels and Exaptive Behavior

Spandrels and exaptive behavior

Stephen Jay Gould called those structural or functional traits riding piggyback on traits selected for fitness "spandrels". One further way in which they may make an evolutionary story more complicated is by (sometimes) becoming functional and adaptive in a different context, or by allowing the organism to develop an emergent behavioural function. E.g. the ability to create vivid imaginary worlds may be a side effect of a big brain selected for adaptive intelligent behavior, but then these imaginary constructs (religion, rituals, myths, shared stories, fictions) may provide useful vehicles for socially useful beliefs, behavior, which in turn may help make a group more competitive in terms of the transmission of social knowledge and the development of ideologies of social cohesion or help maintain an efficient social organization. A complex and efficient society may in turn lead to further emergent modes of social behavior and cognition. The dynamics of selection, adaptation, exaptation and emergence is complex indeed, and makes for interesting stories.

(A comment to a post by Norman Holland on literary darwinism).
 

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And a comment on literary darwinism on the PsyArt list:

Norm & all,
 
Like any other 'ism', literary Darwinism might provide a useful way to approach literature--but also like any other ism, it has limits.
 
If the purpose of storytelling is to further our own evolution as a species, sure, work from authors like Jack London might have "instructional value."  And I'm thinking mostly of turn-of-the-century Naturalist authors who, no surprise, were writing when evolution was still scientifically groundbreaking.  Once you move beyond modernism into the "postmodern era" (at least as defined by most literary historians/critics), where you have experimental, genre-bending, absurdist, meta-fictional literature, etc, the theory runs into trouble. Currently I'm reading DeLillo's Underworld--and I suspect any Darwinist interpretation of that epic would be *way* too simplistic.
 
It (literary Darwinism) just seems like another critical movement which will itself follow an evolutionary trajectory.  It'll gain traction, maybe have a devoted following of practitioners for a while, and either morph into something new, or die out.  :-)
 
Best,
Jason Roberts
Doctoral candidate, English
Oklahoma State University

In the beginning — in the beginning