Some recent examples of the misuse of the concept of evolution:
1."The Frodo Franchise details the history and evolution of the books to films and the surrounding organic marketing and hysteria that resulted, and was used to great effect, by the film-makers." (Book review from Otago Daily Times.)
2. MJT [a company that makes buses) "has evolved from one of the largest commercial vehicle workshops of the country. To¬day MJT is among the leading Hungarian bus manufacturers." (ENP Newswire)
3. "Off the field their families became close, while Vrabel and Bruschi's friendship evolved into a chops-busting contest that nearly imploded." (Sports Illustrated)
4. “We have not reached the end of the road on the nuclear deal. Efforts are on to evolve a broad-based national consensus.” (Manmohan Singh, prime minister, quoted in India Today)
5. "...the iPhone is built to evolve." (Time)
6. "Matt had some chords and I had the beat on an old MPC drum machine; and it literally evolved from there." (One of the songwriters for The Spice Girls, discussing the writing of the song "Wannabe", in Music Week)
Well, that's enough to start with. We can have fun looking for more examples later. For now, let's look at what we have found. (By the way, the links are to the homepages of the sources, not to the stories themselves.)
1. How, exactly, does a book "evolve" into a movie? Was there a copy of The Lord of The Rings sitting on a shelf somewhere that spontaneously mutated into a script? Did it have to pass through the "radio broadcast" and "cartoon" stages first? Obviously, the writer is speaking metaphorically. Does the metaphor work? Some script writers had to take the material from the book, and form it into a shape that could then be used as the basis for filming the movie. One could say, accurately, that the book was adapted to the screen. But this is different from evolution, which would require the book to adapt to the screen, not to "be adapted" to the screen. If anything, what happened to the book is closer to an act of Creation than to one of Evolution: not unlike clay formed by a potter into a vase. (Although this analogy is also flawed: the book was obviously not as unformed as a lump of clay.)
2. A commercial vehicle company evolved into a leading maker of Hungarian buses? Aren't buses commercial vehicles? It would be more appropriate to say that the company grew into the leading maker of Hungarian buses.
3. I suggest that the move from friendship to "chop-busting" contest hardly represents progress. "Devolved" rather than "evolved". Or "deteriorated".
4. Can a national consensus "evolve"? I suppose dialectics could apply: thesis meets antithesis, and forms synthesis. Again, though, this is unlike evolution, where random changes lead to progress. (Aside: reaching "consensus" does not necessarily represent "progress". Think of the near-unanimity of view in a lynch mob.)
5. This scarcely requires comment, though I will note that Ann Coulter has a chapter in one of her books (Godless, I think) with a title like "How the Sony Walkman Evolved Into the iPod by a Series of Random Changes". Like the book-to-movie example, we can certainly expect the iPod and iPhone to be adapted to changing needs and new technologies; not to adapt.
6. Skipping right past the misuse of "literally" (which has come to mean "figuratively"), how does a song "evolve" from some chords and percussion? Surely the words to the song did not arise from the beat. The song, of course, did not "evolve". It was created.
All of this discussion has a point beyond nit-picking, which I hope to explore in depth as we go along. If we apply the wrong template to our surroundings, we will come to profoundly wrong conclusions. If we cannot distinguish between random events and guided events, we risk applying solutions that are irrelevant; or actively make things worse. We will try to control that which cannot be controlled; or we will yield control in situations where we could make a difference.
I also, having written this post, notice a commonality in many of the examples: a confusion between the active and passive voices. There is a difference between a thing being adapted, and a thing adapting. In the first instance, an external intelligence must be applied.
Which could lead us to a discussion of Intelligent Design.
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I think what we may have here is an example of the "prescriptivist/descriptivist" debate, i.e. an exercise in semantics. The concept of evolution has been greatly expanded, until it covers (rightly or wrongly) any progression of any entity, in any direction.
Said concept now must be qualified, as in "Darwinian Evolution" in order to remain meaningful.
"Adaptation" is a more accurate word, while "evolution" is more dramatic.
It's interesting that the process as applied to LOTR has "evolved" in several stages, many of which failed along the way, leaving gaps in the history of conversion from print to screen. In this way it is similar to the theory of "Darwinian evolution," in that there are unexplained (unexplainable?) gaps in the records used to "prove" the theory.
But in the case of LOTR we have explanations for the gaps -- Bakshi ran out of money, the Tolkien family's reluctance, etc, until we come to Jackson's masterpiece, which, I think, might be termed an excellent example of Intelligent Design ...
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