From Mitochondria to Emotion and Deception
POWER IS EVERYWHERE AND IS THE BASIS OF, WELL, EVERY-thing. Without it, literally nothing can happen. Exploring the origins and evolution of power helps us better grasp how it shapes the human world todayâand why our recently developed abilities to dramatically magnify and concentrate human power now threaten both humanity itself and the natural world on which we all depend.
While we have come to dominate other species and to transform our planet, and some of us have grown far wealthier and more influential than others, our powers are puny in universal terms. The universe is shaped by cosmic forcesâgravity, which is nearly undetectable as an attractive force between two human-sized masses, but which shapes galaxies and the orbits of planets; nuclear fusion, which occurs due to forces in atomic nuclei and causes stars to emit enormous amounts of energy; and the electromagnetic force, which is responsible for the intense magnetic fields in rapidly rotating, charged black holes that can accelerate particles to spectacular speeds and energy levels. One particular star, our Sun, is the ultimate source of most power on our planetâwhether itâs the physical power of a hurricane, or the social power of a successful political movement (after all, the people who form that movement have to eat, and the energy in their food comes from the Sun).
The Sun radiates energy, largely in the form of light, far and wide throughout space, but only a tiny fraction of the Sunâs total output falls on Earth. Even so, this minuscule portion is enough to heat the planetâs surface so as to keep most ocean water in a liquid state, and to drive the weather that stirs our atmosphere.
Sunlight has also powered the most amazing development in the entire solar systemâthe evolution of living things. The process by which biological evolution got started is still the subject of research and speculation (weâll explore it more in a moment), but the resultsâafter over four billion yearsâare all around us in the forms of millions of species of plants, animals, microbes, and fungi, and of complex ecosystems, each containing many species, each species adapted to others, and all adapted to particular regimes of moisture, temperature, and climate.
Every organism is able to capture some of the Sunâs energy as that energy flows through Earthâs systems.1 And each organism has found a way to dissipate that captured energy in a controlled way. In doing so, every living thing wields powers of its own.
Indeed, evolution favors those organisms, and systems of organisms, that use power more effectively than others do. Early natural scientists and philosophers, including Gottfried Leibniz and Vito Volterra, deduced somewhat intuitively that evolution works this way, but the process wasnât described in detail or given a name until the 20th century. Ecologist Howard Odum, who worked on the problem in the 1960s by building on the earlier efforts of biophysicist Alfred Lotka, called this evolutionary tendency the maximum power principle. Itâs a key concept for understanding power anywhere and everywhere in the living world.2 One way to think of this principle is that the species that exploits a given resource most effectively will tend to crowd out competing species.
But if evolution favors power maximization, then why didnât a single powerful organism emerge early in Earthâs history and dominate the planet from then on? The diversity of life results from the fact that there are many ways to exert power, and many different environments in which to do so. As weâll see during the course of this book, one species has recently taken charge of virtually the entire planet as a result of its ability to maximize power in a host of waysâ and we, of course, are members of that species.
However, many fundamental powers began to evolve in organisms long before humans appeared. While this book is mainly about the evolution of power in human societies, especially in recent decades, itâs much easier to grasp the nature and sources of human power if we ground our exploration of the subject in the wider evolution of power throughout natural systems. Doing so also reminds us of some biological principles that weâll refer back to as we consider natural limits to the seemingly endless extension of human powers.
In this chapter, weâll take a look at some of the powers that arose in living things long before humans emerged. Then in subsequent chapters weâll see how humans have amplified these already existing potentials. Weâll see how the drive for power makes us both cooperative and competitive; how all organisms have learned to limit their powers in order to develop and diversify; and how evolution turned higher animals like us into worshippers of beauty that are often willing to sacrifice some of our other powers for purely aesthetic purposes.
SIDEBAR 2
Powers in Math
