Latest news with #contingency
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Everything Evolves by Mark Vellend review – can Darwin explain JD Vance?
Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, but then again no one could have predicted the giraffe, the iPhone or JD Vance. The laws of physics don't demand them; they all just evolved, expressions of how (for better or worse) things happened to turn out. Ecologist Mark Vellend's thesis is that to understand the world, 'physics and evolution are the only two things you need'. Evolution, here, refers in the most general sense to outcomes that depend on what has gone before. Thus the world can be divided into things that are inescapable and things that are contingent, depending on circumstances. In the terminology he borrows from evolutionary biologist Graham Bell, the study of physical necessity is the 'first science'; that of historical contingency the second. So, the periodic table of 90 or so natural elements, which are inescapable given the laws of physics, would fall under the first science. Dung beetles and vice presidents, which aren't, fall under the second. This 'second science', Vellend argues, unites disciplines from evolutionary biology to anthropology, history, economics and political science. If we fail to teach children about evolutionary processes, we 'deprive them of understanding the fundamental set of processes that underlie not only life, but also the cultures and economies (and education systems) in which they live and work'. In developing this thesis, Everything Evolves draws on examples from technology and product design, microbiology, ecology, linguistics, and more. When biologists talk of evolution, they tend to mean the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, which incorporates three phenomena – variation, selection and inheritance. Life generates diversity: some animals, for example, can run faster than others. (Darwin didn't know how such variation arose; it is now attributed to genetic mutation.) Some of those variants help an animal survive because they're better adapted to its environment and circumstances. These are the ones that are selected for inheritance – they're passed on to the next generation, rather than dying out. But Vellend advises against a too Darwin-centric view of evolution. For one thing the theory is much more complex than this bullet-point summary. Some organisms survive by sheer luck, not adaptive advantage, creating random drift in traits. And, as Vellend explains, the nuances seem endless. For instance, the 'fitness' of some variants may depend on how rare or common they are, as he illustrates by analogy with baby names: a name might be more fit when it's unusual than when it's familiar. Fitness is also multi factorial: does a mobile phone perform better in the marketplace by virtue of being smaller, faster, nicer to look at, cheaper? How is one advantage weighed against another? As these examples show, ideas from evolutionary theory can be applied to social systems and artefacts, from corporations to computers. But this doesn't mean they too evolve in strictly Darwinian fashion. Other types of evolution are possible: ones that involve an element of planning, rather than random variation, say. What they all have in common is repeated trial and error, with some way of assessing the products and retaining what works. Vellend attempts to paint this larger picture through the metaphor of an 'evolutionary soundboard' on which a series of dials controlling factors such as variation, inheritance and differential success can be twiddled. It's a noble effort at unification – but as any engineer knows, once you have a complex system governed by many independent factors, the possibility space is vast and the task of predicting (or understanding) outcomes overwhelming. In the end, the message is simply that evolving systems are widespread and massively complicated. Vellend recognises that he is not the first to suggest a distinction between physical determinism and evolutionary contingency. In A World Beyond Physics (2019), for example, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman argued that 'physics will not tell us whence we come, how arrived, why the human heart exists, nor why I can buy nectarines in Eastsound [an island in the Pacific north-west]'. But can a description of the physical and social worlds really be split so neatly in two? On the one hand, if nature really is lawlike at the fundamental level, doesn't that mean everything that has happened since the big bang, including the evolution of dung beetles, has an inevitability about it? Certainly there seems to be some lawlike predictability to both biological and social evolution. Fluid dynamics makes it likely that many flying things would be winged and swimming things streamlined. Physical principles prevent humans growing 20 ft tall or trees topping about 300 ft. There is a physics that describes traffic jams and networks like the internet or Amazonian ecosystems. On the other hand, quantum mechanics is probabilistic: we can't say what will happen at the microscopic scale, only what might. It's widely thought that the large-scale structure of the universe carries the imprint of quantum fluctuations – of chance – laid down when the cosmos was still around the size of an atom. So in a sense there is a contingency to absolutely everything that exists. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Vellend's proposal for a restructuring of the academic curriculum into the first and second sciences is, then, open to debate. Yet he does a valuable job of reminding us how little fundamental physics explains, or ever will. 'Everything,' the zoologist D'Arcy Thompson is said to have once opined, 'is the way it is because it got that way.' Vellend's title might be truer than even he recognises. Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More Than We Think, From Proteins to Politics by Mark Vellend is published by Princeton (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
BreakingNews.ie
2 days ago
- Politics
- BreakingNews.ie
UK government working on contingency plans after ruling on Epping migrant hotel
The UK government is working on contingency plans for housing asylum seekers after a court ruled that they should be removed from a hotel in Epping, Essex. UK ministers are now bracing for further legal challenges from councils across the country. Advertisement UK security minister Dan Jarvis told Times Radio on Wednesday: 'We're looking at a range of different contingency options following from a legal ruling that took place yesterday, and we'll look closely at what we're able to do.' Asked whether other migrant hotels have the proper planning permission, Mr Jarvis said: 'Well, we'll see over the next few days and weeks. 'Other local authorities will be considering whether they wish to act in the same way that Epping (Forest) District Council have. A STATEMENT FROM NIGEL FARAGE This is a victory for the parents and concerned residents of Epping. They do not want their young women being assaulted on the streets. This community stood up bravely, despite being slandered as far right, and have won. They represent the vast… — Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) August 19, 2025 'I think the important point to make is that nobody really thinks that hotels are a sustainable location to accommodate asylum seekers. Advertisement 'That's precisely why the Government has made a commitment that, by the end of this Parliament, we would have phased out the use of them.' Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has indicated that councils run by his party will consider their own legal challenges. However, a number of these councils do not have responsibility for planning permission, which may limit their ability to launch legal challenges. Mr Farage also called for peaceful protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers to put pressure on local authorities to take the same route as Epping Forest. Advertisement Writing in The Telegraph, he said: 'Now the good people of Epping must inspire similar protests around Britain. 'Wherever people are concerned about the threat posed by young undocumented males living in local hotels and who are free to walk their streets, they should follow the example of the town in Essex. 'Let's hold peaceful protests outside the migrant hotels, and put pressure on local councils to go to court to try and get the illegal immigrants out; we now know that together we can win.' On Tuesday, a High Court judge ruled the former Bell Hotel in Epping must stop housing asylum seekers by September 12th. Advertisement Epping Forest District Council had asked a judge to issue an interim injunction stopping migrants from being accommodated there. The hotel has been at the centre of a series of protests in recent weeks after an asylum seeker who was staying there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Our work with international partners is vital to stopping small boat crossings to the UK. A joint intelligence unit involving the @NCA_UK and French counterparts has helped dismantle at least 52 organised immigration crime gangs operating in France. — Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) August 17, 2025 The UK Home Office had warned the judge that an injunction could 'interfere' with the department's legal obligations, and lawyers representing the hotel's owner argued it would set a 'precedent'. Now, Conservative-run Broxbourne Council in Hertfordshire has said it was taking legal advice 'as a matter of urgency' about whether it could take similar action to Epping Forest District Council, which is also run by the Tories. Advertisement The latest Home Office data showed there were 32,345 asylum seekers being housed temporarily in UK hotels at the end of March. This was down 15 per cent from the end of December, when the total was 38,079, and 6% lower than the 34,530 at the same point a year earlier. New figures – published among the usual quarterly immigration data release – are expected on Thursday, showing numbers in hotels at the end of June. Figures for hotels published by the Home Office date back to December 2022 and showed numbers hit a peak at the end of September 2023 when there were 56,042 asylum seekers in hotels.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Government looking at contingency options for where to house asylum seekers after Epping court ruling
Update: Date: 2025-08-20T07:43:46.000Z Title: Government looking at contingency options for housing asylum seekers after Epping hotel court ruling Content: Security minister Dan Jarvis has said the government is looking at contingency options for where to house asylum seekers after a court ruled on Tuesday that they cannot live in a hotel in Epping, Essex. According to the PA news agncy, he told Times Radio on Wednesday: We're looking at a range of different contingency options following from a legal ruling that took place yesterday, and we'll look closely at what we're able to do. Asked whether other hotels housing asylum seekers have the proper planning permission, Jarvis said: Well, we'll see over the next few days and weeks. Other local authorities will be considering whether they wish to act in the same way that Epping [Forest] district council have. I think the important point to make is that nobody really thinks that hotels are a sustainable location to accommodate asylum seekers. That's precisely why the government has made a commitment that, by the end of this parliament, we would have phased out the use of them. Keir Starmer's asylum plans have been plunged into turmoil after a high court ruling blocked people seeking refuge from being housed in the Essex hotel. Epping Forest district council was granted an interim injunction on Tuesday to stop asylum seekers from being placed at the Bell hotel, after continuing protests nearby. More on this story in a moment, but first here are some other developments: The government has agreed a new deal with Iraq to return illegal migrants as part of wider moves to limit small boat crossings. The deal, signed by Home Office minister Dan Jarvis, will set up a formal process to return Iraqis who have arrived in the UK with no right to stay in the country. The head of the British armed forces will tell his American counterparts the UK is prepared to send troops to defend Ukraine's skies and seas but not to the frontline with Russia, as planning intensifies for a postwar settlement. Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, will on Wednesday attend meetings at the Pentagon designed to finalise what 30 different countries are willing to commit to Ukraine's national security. UK inflation rose again last month to a higher-than-expected 3.8% amid higher food prices and travel costs, adding to fears that the Bank of England will delay further interest rate cuts. Figures showed the annual rate as measured by the consumer prices index climbed from June's 3.6% reading, sitting above the central bank's 2% target for the 10th consecutive month. The UK Space Agency (UKSA) is set to be absorbed by Whitehall as the government seeks to cut the cost of bureaucracy. The agency will merge with Peter Kyle's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in April 2026, in a move the government said would cut 'duplication' and ensure 'clear ministerial oversight'.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Everything Evolves by Mark Vellend review – can Darwin explain JD Vance?
Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, but then again no one could have predicted the giraffe, the iPhone or JD Vance. The laws of physics don't demand them; they all just evolved, expressions of how (for better or worse) things happened to turn out. Ecologist Mark Vellend's thesis is that to understand the world, 'physics and evolution are the only two things you need'. Evolution, here, refers in the most general sense to outcomes that depend on what has gone before. Thus the world can be divided into things that are inescapable and things that are contingent, depending on circumstances. In the terminology he borrows from evolutionary biologist Graham Bell, the study of physical necessity is the 'first science'; that of historical contingency the second. So, the periodic table of 90 or so natural elements, which are inescapable given the laws of physics, would fall under the first science. Dung beetles and vice presidents, which aren't, fall under the second. This 'second science', Vellend argues, unites disciplines from evolutionary biology to anthropology, history, economics and political science. If we fail to teach children about evolutionary processes, we 'deprive them of understanding the fundamental set of processes that underlie not only life, but also the cultures and economies (and education systems) in which they live and work'. In developing this thesis, Everything Evolves draws on examples from technology and product design, microbiology, ecology, linguistics, and more. When biologists talk of evolution, they tend to mean the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, which incorporates three phenomena – variation, selection and inheritance. Life generates diversity: some animals, for example, can run faster than others. (Darwin didn't know how such variation arose; it is now attributed to genetic mutation.) Some of those variants help an animal survive because they're better adapted to its environment and circumstances. These are the ones that are selected for inheritance – they're passed on to the next generation, rather than dying out. But Vellend advises against a too Darwin-centric view of evolution. For one thing the theory is much more complex than this bullet-point summary. Some organisms survive by sheer luck, not adaptive advantage, creating random drift in traits. And, as Vellend explains, the nuances seem endless. For instance, the 'fitness' of some variants may depend on how rare or common they are, as he illustrates by analogy with baby names: a name might be more fit when it's unusual than when it's familiar. Fitness is also multi factorial: does a mobile phone perform better in the marketplace by virtue of being smaller, faster, nicer to look at, cheaper? How is one advantage weighed against another? As these examples show, ideas from evolutionary theory can be applied to social systems and artefacts, from corporations to computers. But this doesn't mean they too evolve in strictly Darwinian fashion. Other types of evolution are possible: ones that involve an element of planning, rather than random variation, say. What they all have in common is repeated trial and error, with some way of assessing the products and retaining what works. Vellend attempts to paint this larger picture through the metaphor of an 'evolutionary soundboard' on which a series of dials controlling factors such as variation, inheritance and differential success can be twiddled. It's a noble effort at unification – but as any engineer knows, once you have a complex system governed by many independent factors, the possibility space is vast and the task of predicting (or understanding) outcomes overwhelming. In the end, the message is simply that evolving systems are widespread and massively complicated. Vellend recognises that he is not the first to suggest a distinction between physical determinism and evolutionary contingency. In A World Beyond Physics (2019), for example, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman argued that 'physics will not tell us whence we come, how arrived, why the human heart exists, nor why I can buy nectarines in Eastsound [an island in the Pacific north-west]'. But can a description of the physical and social worlds really be split so neatly in two? On the one hand, if nature really is lawlike at the fundamental level, doesn't that mean everything that has happened since the big bang, including the evolution of dung beetles, has an inevitability about it? Certainly there seems to be some lawlike predictability to both biological and social evolution. Fluid dynamics makes it likely that many flying things would be winged and swimming things streamlined. Physical principles prevent humans growing 20 ft tall or trees topping about 300 ft. There is a physics that describes traffic jams and networks like the internet or Amazonian ecosystems. On the other hand, quantum mechanics is probabilistic: we can't say what will happen at the microscopic scale, only what might. It's widely thought that the large-scale structure of the universe carries the imprint of quantum fluctuations – of chance – laid down when the cosmos was still around the size of an atom. So in a sense there is a contingency to absolutely everything that exists. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Vellend's proposal for a restructuring of the academic curriculum into the first and second sciences is, then, open to debate. Yet he does a valuable job of reminding us how little fundamental physics explains, or ever will. 'Everything,' the zoologist D'Arcy Thompson is said to have once opined, 'is the way it is because it got that way.' Vellend's title might be truer than even he recognises. Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More Than We Think, From Proteins to Politics by Mark Vellend is published by Princeton (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
