Science Corner: Making Change

How does change happen? Fast, slow, locally, everywhere, smoothly or in leaps and bounds? Of course the answer can be all of the above, depending on the change and the circumstances. Still, it’s a question that came to mind as I thought about advent this year. We are rehearsing the wait for one of the most profound changes the world has experienced. We have the benefit of knowing how long we will wait and what we are waiting for, and yet the nature of the change still has multiple facets to consider.

In one sense, the whole world changed overnight. Before, there were zero physical incarnations of God present in the world, and after there was one–the only one we would ever need. The shift was so profound that we orient our sense of time around it; we reckon every event as either before or after the arrival of Jesus. But of course, that was only a retrospective assessment. No one at the time thought of themselves as living in year 1. Even with the intervention of heavenly messengers and evangelical shepherds, only a tiny fraction of living humans were aware of Jesus’ birth and even fewer, if any, fully understood the significance. To paraphrase William Gibson, the future had arrived, but awareness of it was not evenly distributed.

Furthermore, not only did everyone not know about the change right away, but the consequences of the change would only unfold over time. Jesus had to develop and grow as a human to be able to enact them. And in doing so, he was fulfilling centuries of anticipation and preparation. God arriving on earth in human form would have been profound no matter when or where it happened, but the particular groundwork that had been laid made it possible for that arrival to have more of an impact than at other times and in other places.

Reflecting on all of that brought to mind the idea of punctuated equilibrium, the notion that a species can remain fairly static for long periods of time, then change quickly–as illustrated in the fossil record. The idea gets a lot of play in various circles, and I’ve encountered it a number of times. However, it wasn’t until I read the actual Gould & Eldredge paper that coined the term that I learned they also had a model to explain the process: allopatric speciation and the related version, peripatric speciation. There are a variety of speciation scenarios; in the peripatric one, a new species arises from a small, geographically isolated subpopulation removed from the majority of the parent species. The small size of this population makes it easier for changes to become fixed–present in all or nearly all individuals–and thus differentiating the group as a separate species.

Consider last names, which get inherited in a similar fashion to genes (in many cultures; some have other practices). Imagine inventing a new last name and what it would take for even a significant fraction, let alone nearly all, of the world’s population to have that last name. In reality, last names are disappearing and the diversity is declining rather than new ones taking over. But if a few families decided to get off the grid and set up a self-contained society on an uninhabited island, chances are much better that one family’s name would wind up attached to an entire future generation.

Variations of genes likewise can become prominent more readily in a small population than in a big one. Thus a large population is more likely to stay similar over time. There may be still be plenty of diversity within that population; the equilibrium of punctuated equilibrium doesn’t mean that every individual is identical. But whatever mix exists of different kinds of individuals, the relative proportions of those different variants will tend to stay the same–as long as they are all basically equally well suited to the environment. There will be ups and downs, but they will tend to balance each other out. But in a small population, those ups and downs can have a bigger impact; for example, the numbers of a particular variant could go down to zero and thus never go back up.

Thinking about peripatric speciation brings me back around to the life of Jesus. He was born, not in the biggest population center or the seat of power, but somewhere off the beaten path. In adulthood, he invested a lot of time working with a relatively small group of people. And even when we worked with a bigger crowd, the numbers were an order of magnitude or two smaller than an audience in the Colosseum. He seemed more concerned with having a significant influence on a few rather than a little influence on many, which has since resulted in a significant influence on many.

I am reminded too of the sentiment from Luke 4:24, that “no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.” Change is hard when patterns and habits are well established. Often times change can only come in a new place, building from the ground up rather than retrofitting. We see that when folks go off to college, move to a new city, start a new job, and so forth. It is easier to establish new patterns around people who have no expectations of you.

I thought all these musings perhaps might provide some encouragement to anyone who feels they are toiling in obscurity. Maybe what feels like being excluded from “the group” is really just the separation you need to realize the changes think the world needs. Maybe you are in a more fruitful place than you realize. That is my hope for you this advent season.

May you have a Merry Christmas, and I’ll see you in the New Year.