Growing Young

The Event in Science, History, Philosophy & Art

From chapter 1: The Event in Science

It was once more Gould in his highly influential "Phylogeny and Ontogeny" (1977) that brought from oblivion the fundamental problematic of "neoteny" in primates and humans which helped our understanding of evolution as a whole.

Gould started by resurrecting Louis Bolk's neglected investigations, and this opened new research and debate regarding neoteny that shows much promise as part of the second scientific revolution and the forming of a new synthesis between social science and human life. Bolk (1866-1930) called his discovery "retardation theory," and summed it up in his classical statement: "Man, in his bodily development, is a primate embryo that has reached sexual maturity... We represent the primitive conditions of the evolution of our species." (Bolk, 1926) Placed in the whole context of our study thus far, we can say: human becoming, understood as evolution becoming conscious of itself, brings to expression nature's general strategy of evolution as a whole. This "strategy" is indeed remarkable, because it makes evolution possible by means of ever recurring phases of involution. Meaning that the more evolved beings are those that have managed to integrate and embody in their bodily plans, organs, and functions, more of the universalizing, neotenizing, characteristics.

We evolve "higher" and further by “going back” to our primitive, less specialized, more open, beginnings, and take our next jump ahead not from the pinnacles of our most complex and sophisticated tips, but from our most embryonic sources. This is because those sources are far richer in potentials, and open for adaptive variations and selections, than the already formed specializations of an advanced evolution. This is the reason why we discover that neoteny and related phenomena (juvenilization, paedomorphosis, fetalization) are not chiefly primate or human phenomena, but universal; they show themselves so clearly in human becoming only because they are everywhere present in nature, and as many new researches are finding out, they are indeed far more central to evolution than was previously thought.

Arthur Koestler, a sharp observer of life and science, summed it all up in these fine words:

Biological evolution is to a large extent a history of escapes from the blind alleys of over- specialization, the evolution of ideas a series of escapes from the tyranny of mental habits and stagnant routines. In biological evolution the escape is brought about by a retreat from the adult to a juvenile stage as the starting-point for the new line; in mental evolution by a temporary regression to more primitive and uninhibited modes of ideation, followed by the creative forward leap (the equivalent of a sudden burst of 'adaptive radiation'). Thus these two types of progress—the emergence of evolutionary novelties and the creation of cultural novelties—reflect the same undoing-redoing pattern and appear as analogous processes on different levels.

(Arthur Koestler, Janus, A Summing Up)

As I was working to add some last remarks to this chapter, recent research came to my notice that illuminates one central detail of neoteny, and provides further proof of its far reaching significance. The article, worth quoting at length, is “Transcriptional neoteny in the human brain.”

In development, timing is of the utmost importance, and the timing of developmental processes often changes as organisms evolve. In human evolution, developmental retardation, or neoteny, has been proposed as a possible mechanism that contributed to the

rise of many human-specific features, including an increase in brain size and the emergence of human-specific cognitive traits. We analyzed mRNA expression in the prefrontal cortex of humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques to determine whether human-specific neotenic changes are present at the gene expression level. We show that the brain transcriptome is dramatically remodeled during postnatal development and that developmental changes in the human brain are indeed delayed relative to other primates...

By comparing the gene expression profiles in human, chimpanzee, and rhesus macaque prefrontal cortices throughout postnatal development, we have found ... a significant excess of genes showing neotenic expression in humans. This result is in line with the neoteny hypothesis of human evolution and provides insight into the possible functional role of neoteny in human brain development. Specifically, we show that at least in one of the 2 cortical regions studied, the neotenic shift is most pronounced at the time when humans approach sexual maturity, a process known to be delayed in humans relative to chimpanzees or other primates. Furthermore, the neotenic shift particularly affects a group of genes preferentially expressed in gray matter. Intriguingly, the timing of the shift also corresponds to a period of substantial cortical reorganization characterized by a decrease in gray-matter volume, which is thought to be related to synaptic elimination. The developmental pace of changes in gray-matter volume has been associated with the development of cognitive skills among humans (e.g., linguistic skills) as well as with the development of disorders (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder).

So, perhaps we are really neotenic apes, as Bolk suggested? However, in the new emerging paradigm, this characteristic is fully human and positive, because it can be integrated into the whole new picture of a creatively evolving human in a creatively evolving universe. To be retarded, means, therefore: to be able to evolve much further, because going back, or retaining, the embryonic proportions, functions, and timings, allows the creative faculties to draw on a much vaster potential of creativity. If we are indeed growing young, as Ashley Montague put it so aptly, then the future of our evolutionary old age may become the future of our most significant creativity. But this depends very much on how we understand and interpret this fact. Montague was writing in what was in the 1960s a humanistic context, committed to the development of human potentials and the structuring of society and education to fulfill this aim. This is what she said in Growing Young:

Based on the evolutionary facts, we may define society as the nurturing life-system that generates and extends the neotenous traits of humanity with every generation. The perspective of evolution shows us that our neotenous, extended childhood, our lifelong youthfulness, becomes the single most commanding fact upon which to design all social and productive relations. The child, as Simone de Beauvoir has so well said, surpasses the adult by the wealth of his possibilities, the vast range of his acquisitions, and his emotional freshness. Throughout human history neotenic processes were sustained and succeeded within the evolutionary matrix because social organization rapidly evolved to support the demand of prolonged childhood, to afford the protection, nurturing, learning, and interpersonal support and collaboration essential to the continuing development of human potentialities.

In other words: the human is the most universal expression of evolution, because it has retained a potential element of evolution’s virtual, that is, original beginnings, (which are pre-individualized and pre-differentiated) in a biologically individualized and differentiated form. In the human, biological evolution has solved the problem it set for itself, and has managed to bring together, synergistically, the secret of virtualization and actualization, that is, of an individuation that doesn’t limit the universal, but precisely makes the universal (or virtual) individualized. Now humans are becoming the creative agent itself, and evolution is becoming self-conscious of its innermost secret. Thus, the human is today on the verge of understanding itself as such, as evolution’s solution to its material, embodied, and biological problem. Realizing this fact, the human will begin to address its own future evolution, now that it is going to be free from its organic embodiment. The human will have to decide in which direction it is going to take its future transformations.