Evolution and me (Plant)

March 3 2026

What destined me to the infinite cycle of writing and reading was the evolution unit in eleventh grade biology. It wasn't just for learning the facts discovered by Darwin but for all the other ideas like Lamarck's involved in the discourses of evolution; I liked the history of ideas in science more than the science itself. Having to apply different theories to the same observations in nature was like the critical lenses that I like to play with now.

Now I love anything that troubles popular ideas of the theory of evolution. Not as much creationist denials of evolution but new and creative concepts beyond the linear origins that once resulted in eugenics (I was very amused by the argument between geoffroy saint-hilaire, cuvier, von baer and others in A Thousand Plateaus). In her book zeros and ones, Sadie Plant elaborates on the female sex selection in animals that has long been taken for granted. it's easy to think that it conforms to the basic principles of natural selection, that females are attracted to those with the best genes for the survival of the species. but the bright colours and elaborate instinctual dances often observed in sexual difference bring the most attention to predators. the most vulnerable males are selected, creating tougher conditions for the species; an animal that lives a shorter life but produces more offspring is favored over one that lives longer without reproducing. natural selection not as a force of stability but also a force that destabilizes.

When both the preferred gene in the male and the preference of the female are inherited over and over again, it creates an accelerating positive feedback loop that can make natural selection tend towards extinction. "There are only two answers to the question 'which comes first?' and both of them are female."

If it cannot hatch from its shell, the chick will die without ever truly being born. We are the chick; the world is our egg. If we don't break the world's shell, we will die without truly being born. Smash the world's shell, for the Revolution of the World.

What even led me to take biology in high school was a dream I once had to be a botanist. Sadie Plant writes about a tolerance historically afforded to women in the study of plants. She calls this the result of a "zoocentric" elevation of animals for their conformity to the ideal of "tightly organized, highly structured, multicellular life." Algae and plant-like bacteria and lichens frustrate the categories of organisms, and instead of being more interesting for this reason, they are disregarded as anomalies. I remember first learning about the "protist" category and feeling like some sense of unity was broken. If the goal of science is to assimilate everything to our reason, then protists are the enemy of science. But now I find a pleasure in these things.

Let me be clear that I'm not supporting an essentialist female supremacy or something like that (women are better, but not for biological reasons). I am challenging a utilitarianism that measures everything against a higher end, an evolution that implies it is only natural to sacrifice some for others. Sometimes there is the well-meaning argument that women should be valued more because they carry babies, because they are half of the global labor force or because they are just as good at extracting capital. I don't think usefulness will liberate us.