2.2.1 Evolution and the Universe

One difficulty of evolutionary theory is explaining why humans are motivated mainly by psychology, rather than direct reflex. In evolution, any behavior a modern creature displays can only have arisen because in the past that was a biologically fit behavior so more genes of that individual, reflecting the behavior, were passed into the gene pools of life. Yet, while some 30-50,000 genes are used to code the human brain this is only slightly more than used in a chimp brain, with which humans share about 98% of genes. The dramatic difference in human and chimp brains is not the genes used to code behaviors but brain bulk. The higher and frontal cortex of the human brain increased 30-40% in size in the final spurt of human evolution with sharpest size increases in the last few hundred thousand years. It is highly unlikely that over such a short evolutionary time, so late in evolution, while brain size was expanding rapidly in volume, complex new behavioral genes were evolving proportionate to volume (a cubic) increase to brain size.

Plus each gene for a new neural function must be selectively evolved in behavioral competition with rivals. Yet, later human evolution was mostly cooperative behavior within groups, and this tends to evolve common, rather than distinct behaviors. Simply, if one group wipes out all its rivals descendants inherit the behaviors of the group. But if within groups behavior is cooperative distinct behaviors of individuals will never sweep genetically to predominate over rivals. Inheritance of common, rather than distinct behaviors would also correlate the rapid expansion of human brain bulk, and correlate that the brain parts that expanded most rapidly appear the most homologous in design. Plus while humans share 98% of genes with chimps, DNA is less varied among human individuals than among individual chimps or other great apes. Except far from human behavior being uniform it is the most varied individually among all species. More perplexing, many psychologically driven behaviors such as suicide, inhibition, self-sacrifice, sexually dysfunction, or hallucination are not fit behaviors biologically. Any of these behaviors in nature would rapidly delete from a gene pool. But there are innumerable varied behaviors among humans, which do not make any fitness sense at all.

The Theory of Options will resolve the conundrum. It is not that any one motivational peccadillo that an individual might display today had to be a genetically fit behavior in the past. Rather, at a certain stage in evolution it is fit to evolve a large brain. Only large brains which evolve quickly will require extra mechanisms to make them work reliably. These mechanisms engender various feelings that motivate the psychology, which once humans acquire language, require different explanations again of why the feelings exist. Only to connect the argument together, we must explain many mechanisms from evolution, neurology, sociology, and psychology. We must also explain why mechanisms that correctly explain the genetic basis of behavior that appears psychologically motivated in animals, might obfuscate the explanation of similar appearing human behavior. Plus there are unrelated reasons why after thousands of years of language, civilization, religion, and culture, humans retain the psychological make-up that they do. So, it takes an entire book to explain why evolution results in humans being motivated by psychology. While to explain each mechanism connecting evolution to psychology in detail would take many volumes.

Yet, there is a fundamental reason why human behavior is motivated by psychology!

It is a common observation that in life and the universe, some properties are easier to change than others. It is easier for particles to form atoms, than new sub-particles to form. It is easier for atoms to form elements, and elements to form molecules, than to transform one element into another. At every level of existence there are fundamental qualities that are hard to alter, but there are aggregates, forms, or combinations of basic elements, which are easy to change. We are not sure why this is, but it could be due to energy. It takes huge energy to alter the structure of matter, but small energy to bind existing matter into new forms. This gives a direction to likely change, such that we see chemical transformations all the time, but nuclear transformation is a rare event. We see the entire universe in constant change, flux and evolution. But the fundamental forms of matter evolved in the first few minutes of existence, and these basic forms will never alter.

This effect of a direction to change in the universe carries over into how life evolves. This begins with the biochemical properties of life. Chemistry is the basis of life but some elements, especially those at the center of life, are easier to bond than others. Molecules at the center of life like water, amino acids, or DNA, often exhibit strong, hard-to-alter bonds on one molecular axis, but weak, easy-to-alter inter-molecular bonds along another. Consequently, life too is always easier to alter in one direction than another. For life on Earth, the easiest attribute to alter is the DNA sequence, which varies once per gamete. But life's most enduring attribute is the DNA code, which would now be very hard to alter its basic type. The easiest-to-alter living unit is the cell, but cell structures evolved into basic types (super-kingdoms) over a billion years ago and new kingdoms would be near impossible to evolve today. In advanced life it is easier to adapt morphology or behavior around basic body plans such as vertebrae and limbs than evolve whole new body plans from the start. And though we are not sure why it too seems to do with the cost of change. Just as it takes effort alter the basic structures of innate matter it takes effort to evolve and alter the basic structures of life. We know that organisms have to adapt to survive and to adapt they have to change. But while the effect has not been quantified it seems that the fittest organisms are those which find ways to adapt at the least cost of change.

This, ultimately, is why humans are motivated by psychology. Perplexingly, it incurs substantial evolutionary cost to evolve a large brain or the psychological emotions. But the cost is why it happens. Simple life as might have evolved on Mars, does not develop far or experiment much. But prolific life as evolved on Earth over billions of years, over ages of fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, will "search out" all the easy ways by which organisms can adapt. Given sufficient time the struggle for fitness eventually refines adaptation to where biology adapts at the maximum rate possible. We might say that there are easier ways for organisms to adapt and procreate than how humans do. Except in life on Earth, niches in which such adaptation work are already filled by other creatures. Mechanisms of Evolutionary Psychology used to explain human behavior might work in a fictitious evolutionary niche where the most advanced organism was allowed to adapt no faster than the rate at which biology can alter. But on Planet Earth life has evolved to such complexity that it has already crossed the Rubicon of what that rate is. It will be explained in detail later but once life evolves to equivalent of advanced primates, the only way it can adapt faster is by moving adaptation outside of biology. A result is creatures with evolved constraints on behavior but the constraints are not directly biological. Humans behave in the variety of ways that they do, not because in the past each modern behavior was individually fit in a genetic sense. They behave the way that they do because in a universe of easy and hard to alter properties it is ultimately easier, and hence fitter, to adapt behavior by altering psychology than altering biology.

Except now we come to a great puzzle, not of nature, but of human perception.

It is easy to see, and there are innumerable examples, of why many properties of the innate universe are easier to alter than others. It is also easy to see why reflecting this in advanced evolution psychology is easier to alter than biology. Plus, if any other evidence is needed, there is ample of it within evolution of why many properties of life are also easier to alter than others. Even before Darwin published his bitter rival Richard Owen had identified that traits could be homologous or analogous. Homologous traits such as vertebrate or limbs tend to be permanent and hard-to-alter. Analogous traits such as how limbs can adapt as arms, legs, wings, or flippers, correlate to easy-to-alter adaptations of function, behavior and morphology, which leave the underlying structure intact. This is also why evolution of new species, orders, or classes is an order-of-magnitude more difficult than adaptation of an existing species over time. For example, there has been huge adaptive variation among orders of mammals in the last 55 myrs. But all the existing orders (bats, carnivores, primates, etc.) evolved suddenly within a short period 55-65 myrs ago, and no new orders have evolved since. Adaptive variations on a basic theme or body plan are easy-to-alter changes. But evolution of totally new body plans or underlying structures is mostly a once only hard-to-alter change.

Only while these patterns of easy and hard to enact change can be explained philosophically, it is difficult to express this as an equation. Philosophy is fine for discussion but equations state meanings in precise, quantifiable forms, which can be easily tested. Only the equations now used in evolution do not express that some properties of life are easier to alter than others, because current equations that describe how populations evolve concern only changes of a few number of genes or genes alleles at a locus. Such small changes are treated best as likely to occur in a random or non-directional way. So, if letters A, C, G, or U can occupy any spot in a codon, each letter has a 25% chance of doing so. If a locus on a single chromosome can be occupied by one of two alleles A1 or A2, chances are 50% for either allele. If any one of the twenty amino acids can occupy one place in a polymer, there is a 5% (1 in 20) equal chance that it will. Yet if all the traits of modern life are encoded this way, if each mathematically allowable mutation has a statistically equal chance to occur, why would any traits at all end up harder to alter than others?

This is one of the great debates over the paradigm of modern evolution.

2.2.2 Trajectories and Pathways

The simple answer to why if mutation to any sequence is equally likely, some sequences are still hard-to-alter concerns that sequences evolve as part of living organisms. It was mentioned that the enzyme sequence AYQGFA could undergo 64 million permutations to its sequence by random mutation. Yet, within living organisms this sequence is always 100% selected with no variation. Similarly, DNA can alter easily in an isolated way as chemistry, but once within living organisms changes have consequences. If hundreds of base pairs (bp's) in a chromosome can alter with no effect on the phenotype this is an easy-to-enact change of DNA, with a neutral expressed effect. But if alteration of a single bp kills the cell or aborts the fetus then this is a hard-to-alter, maybe impossible change. Here we judge ease of altering DNA not by its chemical properties, by the results it produces among living organisms in which it evolved. The problem is akin to randomly altering 1's and 0's in computer code. We might alter hundreds of lines of code that were garbage anyway (a lot of computer code today) and the program still runs. But if we change a single critical 1 for a 0 the computer might hang, or a multi-billion dollar rocket can veer off course.

Moreover, even if we tried to alter 1's and 0's in computer code more methodically it still might not be possible. The code might look easy to change, but modern computer code is an intermixed composite of "instructions" and "data" that was not there in early computers. The instructions are usually of a variable word length that will only work in certain computers fed in within a certain sequence. It is more efficient to use fixed word length instructions but nobody dare change this because of the huge base of legacy code and machines. Plus some early code was so tightly intermixed that nobody knows how to change it anyway. Yet computers are still amazingly versatile devices, just like organisms encoded in DNA. Just that while any code appears superficially easy-to-alter, for historical reasons parts of codes become so hard-to-alter that we could not do it even if we wanted too. DNA code too contains all the foibles of a history of realties. There are various length instruction words and interspersed data and instructions. There is functionless DNA, which could alter with no effect, but other DNA and RNA is so crucial that alteration of a single base pair in a billion years would disrupt all life. Only unlike with computer code DNA does form a three-dimensional structure with polarizing effects along its axis, which makes some DNA more hard-to-change than other DNA. We suspect too that over billions of years of evolution there was strong selective pressure to have stable traits expressed by the stable structures.

Plus we must understand what we mean by a code. In modern society, wealth is measured by money. It flows through society almost by its own laws. There is a correlation of work to wealth, but that law is not nearly as strict as the law that accounting books need to be tallied in certain ways. If a being who had never seen money observed human society it might not realize that people had existed long before money in terms of which was controlling what. This is analogous with DNA. Just as humans at first did not have money the first organisms did not have DNA. (The analogy is crude. The first organisms were simpler than the first people and early replication began with some code, that later evolved into better codes.) DNA possibly evolved as a way of coding the cost and efficiency of evolutionary change. Just as societies with money soon displaced those without, organisms that had DNA were so efficient at evolving they soon competitively displaced organisms without DNA. But although the organisms existed first and DNA evolved to assist the organisms, like with people and money, it is now hard to tell which is controlling what. In human society, because money is easy to change it does not mean people are easy to change, or accounting rules or laws are easy to change. Or in life, because DNA by itself is easy to change it does not mean that traits, organisms, structures or replication and expression machinery is easy to change. It just means that life on Earth is now highly evolved from simpler, early life. So distinction into easy and hard to alter traits in DNA-encoded life is there, but it is not always easy to discern.

We can introduce terms that explain the issues better. When a species evolves in a set direction, we will call this a fitness pathway. An example is humans evolving along a pathway that maximizes the options of behavior. So, if we say a trait is hard-to-alter we mean some force is holding it to a strict fitness pathway. If a trait is easy-to-alter the pathway is not so tight, though we must explain why. We could also say that sequences for DNA or RNA evolve along pathways, but a better term is to call an original sequence the trajectory. The RNA sequence AUCACCUC exists in all achaebacteria, the first life forms, and in 91% of all eubacteria, which evolved slightly later. So, AUCACCUC is the trajectory of this sequence, which has not altered in three billion years. All great apes have 24 chromosomes but due to fusion of Chromosomes 2 and 3 humans have 23. 24 chromosomes was the original trajectory, which diverged slightly for human evolution. Similarly, the H4 histone varies one amino acid sequence in 105 between yeast and mice. Because yeast evolved before mice, the yeast sequence is the more likely original H4 trajectory. In modern genomes millions of bp's are unexpressed (they do not do anything) so their DNA sequence can quickly loose trajectory, because nothing will correct it back to its original path. So, a DNA sequence is hard-to-alter if it is being held in a tight trajectory, but it is an easy-to-alter sequence if it easily looses trajectory, though in each case we must explain why.

Only if we have a Lego set, assembling the blocks in different ways is an easy change and can be done by a small child. But manufacturing new blocks is a hard change (for the child) and must be done in a factory. Looking at the blocks we can see the easy and hard to alter attributes directly. If we had a Lego set of chemistry blocks (such things exist, but not enough for children) we could also see easy and hard to alter attributes as the physical and chemical properties of matter. But once we examine advanced life, we no longer see blocks and their assemblage in such simple terms. Instead, we talk of pathways and trajectories through a medium often called design space. But this is the dispute. Take the AUCACCUC sequence. It has eight places for a letter, and each place can be occupied by any of four letters (A, C, U, or G). This gives 65,000 possible combinations, or it would do, if the design space were unrestricted as we might simulate on a computer. But the AUCACCUC trajectory has barely altered in three billion years. In fictitious design space the AUCACCUC trajectory is easy to alter, with 65,000 possibilities. But in life it is hard-to-alter with only one or two possibilities. Some property of life is restricting expressed attributes (individuals, traits, organs, and species) to strict fitness pathways, and it is holding some sequences (of DNA, RNA, amino acids, polymers, etc.) within strict fitness trajectories.

Still, opponents of evolution (such as Hoyle or the creationists) assert that the design spaces are open all the time, so that the odds against order emerging are astronomically huge. The ultra-Darwinists (Dawkins, Dennett, etc.) are saying that the design space only begins open, but natural selection rapidly closes on a solution. In computer studies natural selection does close rapidly on a solution from open initial conditions. Only on a computer the solution can lie in any direction (it cannot, but that is another argument) so ultra-Darwinists claim that in life too the solution can lie in any direction. In a statement he will regret, Dawkins has claimed that "given sufficient time pigs can fly". But this is the issue. Since their type appeared 50 myrs ago pigs have done no more than evolve into better pigs. So, while natural selection rapidly closes on solutions these lie along pathways that open to some solutions, but closed to others. There are 65,000 ways to write an eight-letter word in four-letter code. But once Ribosomal 16S closes on the AUCACCUC sequence that combination closes forever. Its possibilities are 1 for achaebacteria and 0 for eukaryotes. If the computer were simulating life exactly evolution of the AUCACCUC sequence would appear not as a continuous variation, but a step. The program would close on a solution, but once it found it, the sequence would stop altering no matter how much longer the program ran. The AUCACCUC "solution" lay along a pathway. Natural selection would search the path until it found the solution. That pathway would then close forever, while only new pathways for different sequences would stay open.

But why do pathways close?

Why after prokaryote and eukaryote cells, did no more cell types evolve? Why once their type forms, do pigs not evolve wings after all, but only become better pigs? Or once the first vertebrate evolved, why was that pathway then closed, so no rival vertebrate design could evolve in parallel? Or why once they start to evolve, will humans evolve along a pathway of maximizing the options of behavior, and not some other pathway?

We must be careful of questions like this. Evolution is also a history of random events, so it is like asking why Russia is large and Luxembourg is small. There are reasons, but we cannot derive laws from them. Pigs cannot fly because birds and bats can already fly very well. And a pig could not evolve wings in the time and effort that a bird or bat could adapt to fly more efficiently than it does now. But if birds or bats were wiped out, and pigs somehow survived, the evolutionary pathway of flight would open again to some large creature. After all wings are analogous evolution, and evolved about six times already. Yet, the history of life also has numerous examples of homologous evolution where a basic structure, like vertebrae, has proved so efficient at what it does the first time that no rival design can displace it. This applies to the origin of life. Because of the ubiquity of the RNA code we assume life evolved from a single source. But first life might have appeared in several places. Just organisms using RNA (and later DNA) were so much more efficient at evolving that they wiped out all rivals, and closed of forever the pathway for non-RNA/DNA life evolving on Earth.

Still, our premise of easy and hard to make changes in life and the universe can help define the problem. In the innate universe, it takes energy to form structure. Fundamental particles take tremendous energy to form them, so they can only form in the early universe when such energy is available. In the modern universe, elements cannot form as easily as molecules, because it takes huge energy to bind the nucleus, but only small energy to chemically bond elements together. We make a general precept that there is a cost to change, so easy changes are those that extract a lower cost to enact than difficult ones. In life too, some changes require a larger cost to enact than others. At one point in evolution an organism absorbs that cost, possibly to survive in niche that has become saturated with simpler forms.

Only if the initial cost was great, no organism in rivalry, in a less saturated environment, can afford the cost to evolve the new trait again. There might have been a large initial cost to evolve the first vertebrate body plan. But once it did evolve, it opened opportunities for organisms to adapt easily into millions of vertebrate varieties. On the other hand, because the vertebrate design was hard to evolve the first time no organism not already a vertebrate could afford the fitness cost to evolve one again. Especially, it could not afford the cost in competition with organisms that already are vertebrates, and would leverage the vertebrate design to adapt more quickly to change than the non-vertebrate could. In a world of invertebrates, the pathway for one of these to evolve into a vertebrate is open. But once the first one does, the pathway closes because of fitness, competition, and the cost of further change.

2.2.3 The Cost of Evolution

What determines the "cost" of evolutionary change?

Energy is involved, but so are other factors. Organisms have to be designed using DNA "information" but over time information can accumulate, so good designs beget better ones. It is like with wealth or knowledge. Wealth initially just tallies a persons possessions or labor, and knowledge is passed on by custom. But once humans have money and writing, wealth and knowledge can build up over time, take new forms, and move from place to place. Today it would be prohibitively expensive to colonize the planets, but the wealth and knowledge for such a project will accumulate, so what is prohibitive today will be possible tomorrow. DNA effectively allows time to accumulate information. So behind the sudden appearance of major new life forms in the Cambrian Explosion lay three billion years of prior accumulation of how to build complex life forms. Just like behind the sudden industrialization of the last two centuries lay thousands of years of accumulation of human wealth and wisdom. Later, we will introduce a radical hypothesis; that the best way for humans to measure the cost of evolutionary change is the way nature does, by the change in DNA. Except this is the debate. Ultra-Darwinism infers that that human behavior requires gross changes to DNA mostly in the final spurt of human evolution, making the fitness cost of human behavior emerging in a short the time prohibitive. But this is the opposite of how evolution works. Over the whole five myrs of human evolution expressed genes only altered 1-2% from chimp relatives. So to understand human behavior we need to know not just which genes modified in the last spurt of human evolution, but the processes which acted, building up to this, over the entire 3.5 billion years of prior life.

Also, at times during evolution circumstances arise in which organisms "pay" a higher cost to evolve a trait than normally under stable competition. In human history, if every government stayed an autocracy, they all would, because there would be a cost to change. But for historic or geographic reasons some country will find it can no longer afford to stay an autocracy. It pays an up-front cost (war, rebellion,) to make the change, although the move will ultimately force all governments to alter. Similarly, the equilibrium state of evolution would be when organisms are still evolving, but in an orchestrated synchronism of none paying too much fitness cost to alter. But events like an asteroid strike, geological or climate change or invasion across a land bridge can disrupt equilibrium. Or, as in computer simulations, after countless iterations a single species might randomly strike a step improvement. Or ranges in which species compete at low cost of change might become saturated, so other species are pushed into peripheral ranges such as the dark, cold, desert or the shoreline, where individuals can be fit against a higher cost of change. Such events will result in a statistical hard-to-alter change, simply because such change opportunities do not occur all the time.

We see an example of a statistical hard-to-alter change in evolution of the four-chamber heart. Opponents of evolution often cite the eye as an organ too complex to evolve by chance. Yet eyes evolved about forty times, so whatever the odds against eyes evolving they were overcome many times. On the other hand, fish have an undivided two-chamber heart, amphibians partially divide the first chamber, and reptiles almost fully divide the first and part divide the second chamber. Dividing the heart chambers better separates used from oxygenated blood, so it would seem a simple adaptation to fully segregate both chambers. Yet although dinosaurs and other reptiles evolved in parallel with early mammals, only mammals fully divided the second chamber, and only ever will. This is not because of DNA, as extending the length of anything is an easy-to-enact change. Among reptilian predators a single mutation could as easily produce a slightly longer claw as a slightly extended ventricle divide. DNA can express both changes, but only one is fitter at the time. Full division of the second chamber will yield a more efficient heart, but it will only yield a gross fitness advantage for activities like running in coordination with other improvements, like better lungs, more efficient respiratory tracts and warm blood. Only while each of these improvements has its individual advantage it takes thousands of generations to accumulate the total effect. But evolution is "the quick and the dead", so if all a reptile needs is to run faster, in a single generation it can evolve a slightly bigger heart, or slightly longer leg and still beat its rival.

This is why, despite its complexity, the eye can evolve many times. Any improvement of vision, however slight, yields an immediate advantage. (Unless a creature adapts in darkness, then it is fitter to atrophy the eye quickly, and improve something else.) In evolution, a longer claw, sharper tooth, streamlined shape, or improved vision is an easy-to-enact, low cost enhancement, because it can yield single generation fitness gains. So, while any of the great dinosaurs might have benefited from a four-chamber heart none had the opportunity to evolve one in the face of simpler, quicker, lower cost ways that a rival dinosaur can enhance its fitness. Conversely, accumulations that must integrate many improvements to yield significant fitness gains often evolve in a "peripheral' niche, such as the cold, dark, or shoreline, slightly removed from the fierce mainstream of low cost enhancements. The four-chamber possibly evolved first for thermal regulation during the long nights, not for the bursts of physical activity it is now so good at. Similarly, feathers, which only evolved once, possibly evolved in a peripheral niche as thermal protection rather than for flight. If four-chamber hearts evolved directly for running, or feathers for flight, they would not have been fit enhancements at the time, against less costly pathways to slightly improved running or flight. Of thousands of species that might have benefited from a more efficient heart, only a tiny creature, isolated in the nocturnal niche, outside of the evolutionary mainstream for 100 myrs, bore the evolutionary cost of evolving one.

Yet once the four-chamber heart design had matured, no creature without the new design could afford the fitness effort to evolve a four-chamber heart, facing competition from creatures with the new design. Similarly, feathers are a complex new material, so no creature, including pterosaurs, could evolve feathers for flight in the time that a rival pterosaur could slightly streamline its shape or increase its wingspan. Yet, once birds did evolve feathers away from the open sky, and then took to the air, the new material was so efficient at flight that no creature could ever afford the cost to evolve feathers again, in rivalry to what birds had done already. (There exist feather look-a-likes, but the bona fide material has only ever evolved once.) In the history of life on Earth the "opportunity" pathway to evolve a new type of eye, or to evolve wings, opened several times. But the "opportunity" pathway to evolve other traits, such as vertebrae, limbs, feathers or a four-chamber heart opened only once, then closed forever for present life on Earth. We call traits that encounter many opportunities to evolve easy-to-alter, and traits that only encountered a unique pathway hard-to-alter.

However, we can also quantify the cost of evolution as change of DNA. Whenever a species changes or evolves, over the lineage of the species its DNA will move a genetic distance from what it once was, to traits that the new creature now expresses. Only in any generation the individual bearer of change can only move a limited genetic distance governed by how far a rival can move to achieve equivalent fitness. Competition from rivals, who might be fit from a shorter genetic move, places an evolutionary "cost" on any move an individual makes. Individuals can 'jump' short distances by a lucky mutation, but changes like the evolution of mammals encompass huge distances over millions of generations. Yet, mammals and dinosaurs both split from a common ancestor about 300 myrs ago. Over the next 240 myrs they both evolved, but mammals evolved a far greater 'distance' than dinosaurs because they were evolving in a "peripheral" niche that allowed genetic distance to accumulate at a faster rate. Plus they were on a fitness pathway that selected change with greater directionality. But after 240 myrs of high rate, directional evolution, no other creature could catch up the genetic distance covered by mammals, especially as mammals can still evolve at that high rate if forced to. So, although DNA is easy to change, no amount of change of DNA can now transform a reptile into a mammal. Evolution of mammals was a had-to-enact change because it involved a massive accumulation of DNA 'distance' in unique circumstances that are unlikely to ever be repeated within foreseeable life on Earth.

The evolution of life is directional then, in that easy and hard to alter properties of the innate universe carry into life. DNA as a code being easy-to-change only reinforces this effect as DNA is itself an evolved code, whose modern structure would be exceptionally difficult to alter. Plus DNA only evolved to its dominant position in life on Earth because in a universe of hard-to-alter attributes complex life needs a reliable code to record the cost of each change. It also needs a method to accumulate incremental design improvements over time so hard-to-alter changes to the structure of life are possible, once sufficient DNA design capital has accumulated over time. Just that once the expressed traits of life are encoded in DNA we can no longer see the directionality of possible change with the simplicity of observing Lego blocks. Instead, directionality manifests as fitness pathways through possible design spaces or over design landscapes. DNA too, despite its chemical ease of change in the dynamics of life becomes confined to fitness trajectories, which in turn differentiate into easy and hard to alter sequences. The process of complex life becomes so involved that the best science often cannot differentiate if phenotype (organism) pathways are confining coded sequences (DNA, RNA, polymers) in tight trajectories, or if the trajectories themselves now determine the possibilities of complex life.

Yet, the directionality we speak of here only refers to the properties of existence, not direction in the sense of any goal or end result. The properties of the universe being easy or hard to alter does not prevent complex organs like eyes separately evolving forty times, though it can stop the ventricle divide of the heart chamber closing more than once in the history of life on Earth. But why could it not be the other way round? If some properties of life are easier to alter than others why could hearts not evolve forty times and eyes only once? Is there another direction to life, in that some properties can evolve in one direction only?

The issue focuses when we arrive at human behavior. After a huge journey through life, in which everything is obfuscating, we see that psychology is genuinely easier-to-alter, and biology difficult by comparison, without needing metaphors of fitness pathways or design spaces to explain the distinction. But psychology, like every other attribute of life to emerge suddenly must have a history of build-up of how it came to be. And though humans appeared suddenly in the time scales of evolution (in 0.1% of the time life evolved) could we logically connect human emergence with all the previous events of evolution?

Finding a genuine directionality to evolution, such as it might explain the emergence of complex creatures, is one of the great challenges of modern theory. Let us see how we explain it in this book.