Everyone thinks they know about evolution, what is it really?

01 When you think of evolution, what comes to mind?

Isn't it Darwin's: "The survival of the fittest, the survival of the fittest"?

Yes, these are the concepts we are most familiar with in our daily lives.

We have even successfully introduced these concepts into our workplaces, our workplaces, our schools, and they have become the most inspiring theories of success.

The French biologist Jacques Monod said something interesting. Monod said an interesting quote, "A curious feature of evolution is that everyone thinks they understand it."

What exactly is evolution? What is the significance of its existence? How can we ordinary people properly understand evolution?

With these questions in mind, I finished reading "Lectures on Evolution by Liming Wang".

The author of the book is Wang Liming, a young and promising post-80s man. He has a PhD from Zhejiang University and is also a teacher.

In his book "Lectures on Evolution", he systematically dismantles the scientific theory of evolution and takes the reader along to examine how evolution explains and predicts the operation of the human world.

These are interesting points in it and worth sharing.

02 What are the roots of evolution?

When it comes to evolution, we instinctively think of it as something that happens naturally in the course of human development.

As we evolved from sea creatures to land creatures and then to walk upright, we had to evolve in order to better adapt to the natural environment, survive and reproduce, otherwise we would have to perish under the cruel conditions of nature.

But Wang Liming goes deeper into the roots of evolution, which are selfishness and scarcity.

He explains in his book that if a species is selfless, if it does not care about the interests of its own race and always thinks of others, it will sooner or later be eliminated.

So selfishness is a fundamental attribute of living things, and this is in natural contradiction to the limited resources in the environment.

Limited resources, to put it another way, means scarcity.

The instinctive selfishness of organisms and the scarcity of resources in the environment are the original drivers of biological evolution and the root cause of evolution.

When a species wants to dominate a territory and the food on it, it needs to reproduce, expand its numbers and better occupy its territory, while at the same time, to prevent food from being plundered by other species, it needs to become stronger and more powerful and run faster.

Selfishness and scarcity have then contributed to the evolution of this species, allowing it to grow and flourish over the long years of its existence.

Take us humans, for example.

The greatest driving forces behind the evolution from hominid to human and finally to the king at the top of the food chain are the selfish nature of the creature and the scarcity of resources.

03 What is the direction and purpose of evolution and where does it end?

We have a simple perception that evolution is the progression of species from lower to higher levels, from simple to complex.

At first glance, this statement sounds correct, but it is not precise enough.

Evolution tells us that the complexity of organisms does not increase indefinitely.

The digestive system of parasites and the visual system of burrowing animals, for example, have long since lost their original function in the course of evolution.

This is genetic mutation.

In this sense, the direction of evolution is also indeterminate and does not necessarily involve increasing sophistication and sophistication.

Similarly, there are those who wonder whether there is an end to evolution.

The answer given in the book is that there is an end to biological evolution if environmental conditions remain stable and unchanged.

There is an end to evolution.

The factor that has the greatest influence on evolution is the environment.

When the environment changes, the direction and the end of evolution changes.

For example, nuclear pollution can mutate the genes of a species, and a four-legged toad can grow into a three-legged one.

04 Learn evolution well to win in business competition

In his Origin of Species, Darwin clearly pointed out that the so-called competition for survival is not only a struggle between two individual organisms of the same kind, but also includes three kinds of competition: intra-species competition, inter-species competition and environmental competition.

These ideas can be applied to the business world.

For example, price wars.

Because the characteristics of each product are not identical, and the production processes and costs of different manufacturers are very different.

Why should we fight for price?

Because it is the only thing that users and the market can perceive and influence their decisions.

The customer doesn't care about the management and cost control of the company, but he does care about the price he pays for the product.

This kind of competition is what evolution calls "intra-species competition" and it is fierce and brutal.

But we all know that price wars are not good for all manufacturers.

This kind of competition should be stopped in its tracks, and we can go from interspecies competition, that is, competition between species.

For example, the competition between a certain Bao, a certain Dong and a certain Duo has reached the level of interspecies competition.

These three are significantly different in terms of product range, pricing strategy and target user segmentation, and although competition is fierce, it is not so fierce as to be a fish out of water.

The third level of competition is environmental competition, between the organism and its external environment.

My personal understanding of this is that the organism has to cultivate and improve its environment, and then use the improved environment to help itself improve its competitiveness.

In his book, Wang Liming gives a case study.

In 1914, Ford introduced the "Five Dollars a Day" campaign to raise workers' wages, ensure their income, and improve their standard of living so that they could have a better life, or at least be able to afford the cars that Ford workers produced themselves (which cost US$240).

In this way, worker satisfaction increased and loyalty to the company increased.

Ford's reputation and influence throughout society increased, improving the entire social ecology of the time.

Its product sales also went through the roof.

This is typical of environmental competition.

Many business elites like to talk about evolution.

For example, the business professor Leon McKimson's quote: "The company's reputation and influence have increased. McKimson's quote, "The species that survives is not the strongest or the smartest, but the most adaptable to change."

In my view, there are many practical insights in the theory of evolution.

For example, evolution is not always positive, which tells us that product quality and technology, both of which have ceilings, stop rising when they reach a certain point.

Another example is that when you are working on a product, you always have to look at what is happening in the external environment.

It is pointless to engage in a price war.

Interspecies competition is cheap and brutal, and we need to change our thinking about competition to one that emphasises new living spaces and unique competitiveness in the environment.

This is the business inspiration brought to us by the theory of evolution.

As author Wang Liming says in his foreword: Evolution may be the only reliable science of success on earth.

Although it is a seemingly dry textbook, it is still interesting to read.

It is a testament to the power of evolution that the origins of life have persisted for 4 billion years.

Learn a little common sense about evolution, learn about the origins and reap the rewards of the future.