Problems in Our Vocabulary

 On Thursday we talked about the identity of the selector in "natural selection". People used phrases like "survival of the fittest", "superior", "progress", etc., when explaining that no one actively, knowingly controls the evolution of a species, but what struck me about the discussion was the nature of the words I just listed. They all rely on a concept of improvement - of forward progress. 

I'm not convinced. I think that people find the notion of gradual improvement - of a driven, even if indirectly, evolution - comforting, and therefore cling to it. Our collective notion of evolution as change for the better (I won't squabble over judgement words here, as I've already done that in class) is so internalized that our very vocabulary reflects it. That the species that are now extinct evolved before succumbing to death is ignored; the idea of ungoverned change is disquieting enough, but ungoverned, directionless change? When we can be bothered to think that we, too, are evolving, we assume that our evolution is an improvement. Yet, perhaps it isn't.

I don't pretend that no one has raised the idea of aimless evolution before. I simply wonder if the vocabulary we use for evolution would be the same, if the idea were fully explored. "Survival of the fittest" may only apply to a single moment at a time.