“Evolution and More” (SB 3.29.30)

TRANSCRIPT:  Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 29, Text 30. “Evolution and More.” Alachua – January 1, 1998 / (039)

[Text 30]

Better than those living entities who can perceive sound are those who can distinguish between one form and another. Better than them are those who have developed upper and lower sets of teeth and better still are those who have many legs. Better than them are the quadrupeds, and better still are the human beings. 

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:

It is said that certain birds such as crows can distinguish one form from another. Living entities that have many legs like the wasp, are better than plants and grasses, which have no legs. Four-legged animals are better than many legged living entities, and better than the animals is the human being, who has only two legs. 

So in this verse we have a portion of a description of the different categories of living beings based on their bodily form. So this, in one sense, could be said to form a part of the subject of biology. The Bhāgavatam term is basically placing human beings in the context of Kṛṣṇa's creation as a whole so that people will know where they stand and how the different features of the creation fit together. Human beings always want to understand their relationship with the total reality in which they exist... 

So this section here is describing the different classifications of living organisms. And then it turns to human beings and classifies human beings in different categories, one better than the other, ending finally with the human beings who execute pure devotional service without expectation of reward. So this classification is to some extent based on consciousness. At least when it comes to the human beings, most of the distinctions are based on the state of consciousness of the particular living being. And we also have anatomical distinctions; this system more or less agrees with, of course, common sense and what the biologists have to say. It implies that there is a systematic design behind living organisms. And I might make a couple remarks about that in connection with science education, because in the context of the debate in biology over the origin of species and the basic subject of evolution, what you tend to see contrasted is, on the one hand, the theory of special creation, and on the other hand, the idea that living beings have gradually evolved one... through... one from another through a series of anatomical changes. 

So the term “special creation” means that God created each living entity individually as a special act. So this would tend to imply that there will be no particular relationships between different types of living beings because each one was a special creation with its own unique features. Of course this doesn't necessarily follow logically but that's the way people tend to interpret this idea of special creation. And so one argument against special creation is based on showing that there are various relationships between living organisms which could be perhaps explained better in terms of a gradual evolutionary process. 

So an example would be the toes of a horse. So there's a basic mammalian body plan – this of course refers to the quadrupeds mentioned in this verse. Well, a basic not only mammalian, but a basic body plan for the vertebrates – the animals with backbones. And that is that they have four limbs and each limb has five digits, five fingers. So now, if you look at horses you find that each limb ends with one finger which is this one actually. Now the interesting thing is that there appear to be vestigial bones of the other toes along the side of the main bone of a horse's hoof. So basically it's walking on its finger and the other fingers have been reduced in size so they're just under the skin, and they're not functional. So this is taken as a proof of evolution because the idea is: well originally you had an animal that was walking around on its five-fingered hands. And of course, if you've ever seen an opossum, those are interesting creatures. They walk in what is called a plantigrade fashion on five-fingered hands – just blump, like that. And they're considered to be very primitive creatures also. 

[5:58] 

So the idea is that in the case of the horse, gradually over millions of years the digits on the side shrank, reduced in size, the main finger became more and more developed, and developed... the fingernail turned into a hoof, and so on. And so you have the horse as we have it today. And then the proof of this is that sometimes there's a mutation in which a horse develops actual extra toes that grow out on the sides – this happens from time to time. And the argument would be: well, some of the genetic material defining these extra toes is still there in the DNA of the horse, but normally it's not manifest. But occasionally a mutation occurs which causes that DNA again to be put into operation, and so you get those extra toes. So surely this proves evolution. This is the idea. Whereas the theory of special creation would say that: well, horses were created by God in one act of creation and they have toes, single toed feet, and so on with hooves; and opossums were created in another act of creation and so forth.

So actually one can point out, though, that all of the living organisms were created systematically according to a plan which applies to all of them. So therefore they all are tied together just as we see here. There are categories of relationships between different classes of living organisms, for example, having to do with the number of legs and so on as mentioned in this verse. So one can also argue that there's a basic vertebrate body plan which was created by design. And then by throwing genetic switches and modifying different parts of the plan you can create different modified forms of living beings. So in particular, you can throw a genetic switch which reduces the toes on the side of the horse's leg. So that's one aspect. Of course there has to be some degree of special attention to each organism.

So for example, if you look at the hoof of a horse, it's an extremely remarkable structure because it's actually a lot more than just an enlarged fingernail. You can imagine trying to run on your fingernails – they would quickly disintegrate. Well, the horse's hoof has a very remarkable container of fluid which serves as a pad to absorb the shocks. This is situated between the bones of the horse's leg and the hoof. It's a very remarkable design. So you can ask: well, then where did the design come from? The evolutionist can only say: well, it came about because of random mutations. The DNA was just zapped at random and the result was a very nice container of fluid properly situated to cushion the shocks. Of course you can see that's a real engineering challenge to design something like that, because if you don't do it right then of course the container of fluid will burst under the stress, and then the horse will become crippled, and so on. So one can argue that what you really have in the array of species that you see in the biological world is a set of systemic relationships based on an original basic body plan, and these are modified in specific ways, and then specific additional features are added by a complex design. 

[10:00] 

Another example would be the baleen whales. There are two kinds of whales: one type has teeth and the other type does not have teeth. Instead of teeth they have a sieve in their mouths consisting of many little plates and fibers that have holes through them. So what the whale does is it opens its mouth and swallows a huge mass of water in which little shrimp and krill and so forth are swimming, and then it squirts the water out through all the holes in the sieve, and it's left with the shrimp and so on which it then swallows. So it turns out that sometimes, I think in the embryo of the whale, you'll see teeth beginning to form, and then they stop forming and this sieve arrangement grows in their place. And the argument of course is made that: well, these vestigial teeth are remnants of the past history of the organism in the course of evolution. It used to be an animal that had teeth, then gradually it lost the teeth, but still it has some genes that can partially manifest teeth from time to time. So the argument then is that: well, this is proof of evolution. But it's also possible that you could through design say: okay, we'll throw some genetic switches that shut down the production of teeth even though the basic rules for tooth production are still there. And then we have to introduce a whole new program of genes to create this sieve, which is something you don't find in animals in general, and that would be a special creation just for the sake of the whale and its unique method of feeding. So there are a lot of examples like this in biology. An interesting thing, by the way, is that the human body is very close to the primitive vertebrate body plan, because for one thing, we have five fingers and we still have five toes; and in all respects, the human body is actually remarkably primitive in form. But another way of looking at it is to say that the human form is closer to the original plan and various animal forms have been produced by modifying the human form – that can be argued quite systematically. So those are a few observations concerning biology. 

There are a number of different categories of scientific study in which the empirical evidence is very much in line with the conclusions of the philosophy of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. One area would be this whole question of evolution because the theory of evolution is beset with all kinds of difficulties. Basically, the theory of evolution has to explain the origin of species by random events, by an accumulation of accidents which then produce something that survives better. Of course, the struggle for existence is something that certainly is real and organisms that are better equipped in the struggle for existence will survive in preference to those who are not as not so well equipped. But the question is: where does the equipment come from? And here you run into all kinds of problems. 

So there are remarkably developed structures such as the horse's hoof and so on, or the human eye, for example, what to speak of the brain. If you consider the very fact that you can speak, which no other organism can do, it will be said that this is due to neural circuitry in the brain. But just try to design neural circuitry that will produce speech. With all the effort that's been made in building computers, no one has yet built a computer that can talk. It would be very nice instead of having to click a mouse and everything, if you could just say to the computer, “Please do this for me,” then the computer would comply having understood what you said. But nobody can build a computer like that. But supposedly the brain can do it and the brain acquired that capacity just by accumulation of accidents. So this is a problematic theory. So this is an area where much can be said.

[14:50]

Another scientific category where there's a lot of evidence that basically supports the Kṛṣṇa conscious position would be the broad area dealing with consciousness. There’re quite a number of different important lines of evidence. For example, there is empiric evidence suggesting the reality of reincarnation, which is quite a remarkable thing. One of the soundest studies in this area would be the work of Ian Stevenson, who's a psychiatrist at University of Virginia, who has studied memories of past lives in children. And at this point he's accumulated thousands of cases in which a child, usually upon learning to speak, will talk about experiences in a previous life, even naming people, relatives, describing where he lived, what his occupation was, and so on and so forth. And in many cases these accounts can be verified.

There are, in a minority of cases, situations in which the investigators found out about the child who was reporting a previous life before anybody had any idea about the existence of the previous family in which that person had existed. And then the investigators went out and were able to track down that family and show that it actually existed, even though the people associated with the child had no connection with that family and no knowledge of its existence. So the question is then, how did the child know these things? So there's a lot of evidence there, which has quite a few interesting features. For example, typically children who remember previous lives report that in the previous lives they died violently. The percentage is far above the percentage of violent deaths in the general population. So this seems to have something to do with the fact that the memory is recalled. So that's another whole area of investigation. 

Then there's the whole topic of the out-of-body experiences, which can be systematically investigated. There... also there's evidence that has some empirical weight in support of the reality of the subtle body. Because there are cases, many cases in fact, where a person has an experience of going out of their body and they witness different things that were happening while their physical body was supposedly completely incapacitated. For example, the person may have been suffering from a heart attack in which blood flow to the brain had stopped; and the brain cannot function, according to medical science, under those conditions. But they proceeded to witness what the doctors were doing and were able to recall very specific procedures which the doctors carried out in their particular case, which may not be carried out in some other case, depending on the circumstances. So this is a whole category of evidence. 

So there are many different categories of empirical evidence that do tend to correlate with basic ideas in Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. I could go on and describe some more of these things but are there any questions or comments? Murlivadaka?

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  Well, on the whole, these studies tend to be ignored within the fields of, let's say, orthodox psychology. They're just too far out and they go against basic assumptions concerning the nature of the mind. You see, another thing that you can do, of course, is bring forward a lot of evidence indicating that the mind is tied to the brain, and the medical profession tends to be very much persuaded by this evidence. So for example, there are many different forms of injury to the brain which have resulting forms of mental deficiency connected with them. A person may receive a certain injury to the brain and he loses the ability to read, for example, or he loses the ability to speak. Rather unique patterns of loss can take place. For example, there was a man who lost the ability to recognize objects. This is a very curious thing because he could still see and he could draw things. If you showed him a pair of scissors and asked him to make a drawing of it he could make a reasonable drawing of the pair of scissors. But if you asked him what it was, he had no idea. If you then asked him “Well, do you know what scissors are?” then he could talk about scissors and explain what they are and what they're used for and so forth. But when looking at the pair of scissors he had no idea what it was. So there are things like that, which tend to convince the people in the medical profession that the mind must be simply a function of the brain. 

[21:06]

Of course, there are alternative explanations. We all have the experience of using computers more and more these days. We’re progressing in the direction of becoming cybernetic organisms, cyborgs: part human and part computer. And wait till they perfect the implants that enable you to directly communicate with the computer network! So, anyway, one can observe that if you become dependent on using a computer and something goes wrong with your hard disk, suddenly you're in a very bad situation – you lose the ability to do certain things. And this would never have come up if you never used computers in the first place. But if you do use them, you become dependent on them. So likewise it can be argued that the subtle... the soul and the subtle mind, intelligence, and false ego, become dependent on the apparatus of the physical brain. But this is still a rather radical idea for the established scientist. So they pretty much ignore the evidence of reincarnation and so forth. Yeah?

Q:  [unclear]

A:  Well, the analysis was not meant to deny the possibility of building a computer that can respond to speech. The point was an incredible design effort is required to build that computer. And in contrast to that, you have the theory of evolution, which says that the computer of the human brain, if you can make that analogy, came about by a collection of accidents. Now try to design the speech recognition computer by zapping the circuit boards at random. See if that's going to work! It's not a very good method of designing computers, I don't think. Maybe at Intel they should try this method. But yeah, so it's certainly conceivable after all whatever the brain does with speech it presumably does it in a mechanical way. But to design a machine using silicon chips and so forth to duplicate that is no easy task, and of course it's still at a very rudimentary stage. 

There's voice recognition and so on, but if you try to explain to a computer what you would like it to do, then you won't find much of a response. The computer can only do certain things that are specifically built into it. So computers are actually more or less on the level of insects, which have very remarkable instincts. For example, a spider can weave a web without even being told how to do it! So computers similarly can do things like that. So we've reached the insect level of technology you might say, but going up to the human level is a more difficult thing. So there's plenty of room for the idea of design within nature. Yeah?

Q:  [unclear]

[25:23]

A:  Yeah. When I said the human body form is more primitive, it is primitive in the sense that the evolutionists use the word – in the sense that it seems closer to the root of the development of the vertebrates, and the mammals in particular, than some other body forms such as that of a tiger or a horse or something like that, which has very specialized developments. For example the tiger has its claws that can retract and so forth. The human fingernail is more like the primitive condition and so forth. But then again, from the Vedic point of view, the human form is original. So it is closer to the root you might say. And different animal forms can be seen as modifications of the human form. So things fit together actually fairly nicely there.

Q:  [unclear]

A:  Yeah the question is: would we expect to find the same technology we have now in previous Kali-yugas? That's not completely clear to me. And there are some statements in the Bhāgavatam that seem to directly go against that. For example, there's the story of Pṛthu Mahārāja. Now he lived in, let's see, I think in the Cakṣuṣa manvantara period, one could check that. But that's the sixth manvantara in this day of Brahmā. And it is said that before the time of Pṛthu people did not live in cities. There was no organized trade and so forth, which makes you wonder of course what kind of Kingdom Pṛthu’s father, Vena was actually ruling. But in any case, Pṛthu seems to stand at the origin of agriculture and settled city life and so forth, according to the Bhāgavatam and also accounts in other Purāṇas. But many Kali-yugas took place before that. So you can ask: well did those Kali-yuga involve the equivalent of modern cities with big skyscraper buildings and so forth. Of course another obvious point is that we don't seem to see remnants of those skyscraper buildings with a strata of the earth. So that poses a problem. But I don't think there's any reason to think that they necessarily did exist. Previous Kali-yugas could have been different than this one. Yeah?

Q:  [unclear] 

A:  Oh, the point that aquatics are lower than plants. Well that's interesting. Of course, in general, aquatic life is a rather low level of consciousness. Of course, there are plants that live in the water also. That point can be made. And then again there are some creatures that live in the water such as dolphins that exhibit a great deal of intelligence, at least as much as that of chimpanzees, and so forth, on the land. So I don't know much more about that, except that as a general rule, you have primitive creatures in the aquatic realm and more advanced creatures on the land. Plants on the land tend to be much more developed than aquatic plants, for example, with trunks and stems and leaves and flowers and so on. Yeah?

Q:  [unclear]

[31:26] 

A:  Well, of course, nobody really knows much about the origin of language. Of course, the archaeologists and paleontologists aren't in a very good position to investigate that because apart from a few bones in the neck which may be preserved in various fossils, there's no evidence whatsoever concerning ancient speech. So one can only speculate. But it is curious that so-called primitive languages in many cases tend to have very elaborate grammatical systems. And I'd like to eventually hear a little bit more about that from the linguists, to see whether that is just a folk saying that would be repudiated if you really studied it carefully, or whether it's really true that primitive languages tend to be highly developed in grammatical structure and so on. Of course, Sanskrit is an example. Sanskrit is supposedly a very ancient language. And even today, as I understand, in the study of Indo-European languages, Sanskrit is really the basis for the whole study. Even though they try to bring in other things like Hittite in order to dethrone Sanskrit from its position, still it doesn't work. But Sanskrit, and especially Vedic Sanskrit which is the older form, has an incredible grammar much more complex than that of these modern latter-day languages – English and... yeah, so how is that? And I read in general that, you know, just like Eskimo, which is a primitive language, tends to have very complex grammatical rules. And what do they need that for if they're just spearing seals up there in the Arctic?! So that's a curious thing. One visualizes a model in which Vac comes down and imprints the faculty of speech on the human being in a more advanced form than what you have now, and gradually it deteriorates. So, anyway. Yeah?

Q:  My husband has the actual transcript of a conversation between Professor Southerly [?] of Wesleyan University and Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta at the turn of the century. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta was asked by Professor Southerly [?], “How could a cultured and intelligent person believe in an incarnation of God which is a fish, or a horse, or a tortoise? And Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s very lucid answer was that actually there’s an evolution of the incarnations from the form of Varāha going all the way up to Paraśurāma, and Rāmacandra, and then Lord Kṛṣṇa and Caitanya Mahaprabhu. This shows the various intricate higher order of...

A:  Yes, and of course we also have to consider that it's not a Darwinian evolution, but it's an evolution based on a plan, a design in which all the different pieces relate to one another in a systematic way. So that's the thing. One thing about the word evolution, by the way, is originally evolution meant unfolding systematically, like when a flower grows from a bud – you could call that evolution of the flower. So that was the original meaning. But it's been converted to mean something that occurs in a meaningless way by chance and just survives because it happens to work better. But that's not the original meaning. Yeah?

[35:31] 

Q:  [unclear]

A:  Well yes, obviously. Broadly speaking, that's discussed in the Vedic literature also. Just look at what happened to Ajamila. I mean, he had an out-of-body experience, a rather interesting one, probably more memorable than most – which is why it's in the Bhāgavatam – in which he met these Yamadūtas, and then the Viṣṇudūtas came. All this occurred while he was out of his body, and then he came back and was able to tell the tale. So out-of-body experiences are certainly possible. Then the yogis... of course, the whole program of the yogis really is to create controlled out-of-body experiences. In other words, instead of just letting this happen in an uncontrolled way, when a car hits you or you have a heart attack or something like that, systematically manipulate the life air so you can leave your body and travel where you like and do all kinds of things and then come back. Or if at some point, when you've perfected your travel plans, you just leave and you don't come back. But you do it according to your plan and you don't become a victim of fate and so on. And then again in Vedic literature, concerning reincarnation, there's this term jāta-smaraṇa, which means a person who remembers his past lives. So that's there. It's recognized that sometimes people do remember. So that’s there. All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda.