Phenotypic Plasticity, the Baldwin Effect, and the Speeding up of Evolution: the Computational Roots of an Illusion

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the Baldwin effect, showing through analytical and computational methods that it may not be as crucial for evolution as previously thought, challenging its role in solving complex adaptive problems.

Contribution

The authors provide new analytical and computational evidence questioning the necessity of the Baldwin effect in evolutionary processes.

Findings

Standard population genetics can solve complex adaptive problems without learning.

The Baldwin effect's supposed role in evolution is less fundamental than previously believed.

Theoretical foundations of the Baldwin effect need reevaluation.

Abstract

An increasing number of dissident voices claim that the standard neo-Darwinian view of genes as 'leaders' and phenotypes as 'followers' during the process of adaptive evolution should be turned on its head. This idea is older than the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance and has been given several names before its final 'Baldwin effect' label. A condition for this effect is that environmentally induced variation such as phenotypic plasticity or learning is crucial for the initial establishment of a population. This gives the necessary time for natural selection to act on genetic variation and the adaptive trait can be eventually encoded in the genotype. An influential paper published in the late 1980s showed the Baldwin effect to happen in computer simulations, and claimed that it was crucial to solve a difficult adaptive task. This generated much excitement among scholars in various disciplines that regard neo-Darwinian accounts to explain the evolutionary emergence of high-order phenotypic traits such as consciousness or language almost hopeless. Here, we use analytical and computational approaches to show that a standard population genetics treatment can easily crack what the scientific community has granted as an unsolvable adaptive problem without learning. The Baldwin effect is once again in need of convincing theoretical foundations.