Structural Constraints, Spandrels, and Exaptation 1215
and I ventured to hope that I had, at least, presented a richer and more systematic
analysis to demonstrate the centrality of this underappreciated principle, which
operates so effectively as a bulwark for structuralist perspectives in evolutionary
theory—thus setting the location of the topic within this book. (I wrote in 1982,
epitomizing the meaning of this theme for the general subject of constraint as a
structural channeler of adaptation (Gould and Vrba, 1982, p. 13): "Exaptive
possibilities define the 'internal' contribution that organisms make to their own
evolutionary future.")
Then, in 1998 and thanks to the broader vision of my (then) graduate student
Margaret Yacobucci, I discovered that Friedrich Nietzsche had brilliantly elucidated
this principle, with its full spate of implications, in one of his most celebrated works,
The Genealogy of Morals, first published in 1887.
Throughout his career, Nietzsche (18 44 - 1900) struggled to identify and define
the root motives behind our conventional beliefs about morality, philosophy and
religion in Western traditions. He viewed these beliefs as secondary and functional
expressions of a primary, generating source: "the essence of life, its will to power"
(1967 edition, p. 56). And he recognized that we would never understand the nature
and character of this primary source if we only analyzed the current utility of its
secondary manifestations.
Nietzsche has received a bum rap from history, and for reasons clearly beyond
his intention or control. In identifying traditional beliefs as secondary expressions of
a will to power, he did not wish to deny their potency or their value, but only to make
a proper logical separation so that their sources of origin, which we must also
understand if we wish to achieve a full appreciation of their history and status, might
be disentangled from their current utility. The later fascist misreading of Nietzsche
did try to validate the worth, and to promote the pure expression, of a will to power
on no basis beyond its mere existence—the very illogical step that Nietzsche
analyzed so clearly in the work discussed in this section.
Nietzsche became mentally incapacitated in 1889, and lived the last years of his
life under his sister's care. She later became an ardent Nazi, and used her control over
Nietzsche's literary estate to further her own purposes, including the publication of
notes that Nietzsche had discarded, and even some minor forgeries of her own. We
owe Nietzsche far more respect and admiration than he receives from those who
know him only for a common misunderstanding of his concept of the "Ubertnensch"
or "superman" (not a Hitlerian defense of domination by the more powerful, but
Nietzsche's ascetic description of a person who could accept complete repetition
("eternal recurrence" in his terms) of life, with all its horrors, rather than wishing for
an edited version); and from those who may feel ambivalent towards Richard Strauss'
tone poem on Also Sprach Zarathustra (Nietzsche's treatise on the tibermensch), the
source for the stunning opening theme of Stanley Kubrick's film 2001, and a bit scary
in its apparent glorying of a transcendence that might not always be kind to the
majority left behind.
In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche addresses the differences between
historical origin and current utility in section 12 on the nature and meaning