On the New York Times site is a preview for this weekend's magazine article about longitudinal studies of anxiety prone people. The article features a few 20+ year studies of subjects all interviewed consistently from 4 months on. The scientific conclusion is that the babies more prone to an anxious temperament were the ones who grew up as worriers and with a predilections for Anxiety Disorders. Not revolutionary but still important. Towards the end of the article the question turns to the evolutionary standpoint. Why did anxiety evolve?
First of all, I wonder if you think that this evolutionary question is fair. Since Darwin evolutionary theory has been the love of almost every science field. I guess we still ask why something evolved because it hasn't failed us yet. The process of an evolution question is really just a question of the scientific method. It is the search for cause and effect. Asking why evolution evolved is merely asking us to look back as far as we can and find a missing link connecting humans without anxiety and humans with it.
Disclaimer aside, the article proposes that in prehistoric tribes it would have made sense if a couple of the group members were anxious. It would be these members who would perceive everything as a threat and be super-cautious. It is this type of caution that might end up saving the group from a real threat and it would allow the non-worriers to apply their efforts elsewhere. If we think of the group as a cell aren't the anxious the walls, or at least the sentries on the top of the walls that announce outside danger. It is they who bring support to reinforce the walls.
If there is any accuracy to this can we not then abstract into a greater understanding of society and group modes as an organism? Through the division of labor aren't we all adding to something greater than ourselves? If we think of all the institutions that are greater than a single individual it hard to find fault in this reasoning. And really this is not a revolutionary thought as Plato even touched on it. But I wonder if it is not a futile pondering? What good is there to think of the group as an organism? Does it offer further insight to its running and our position inside? This brings my question back to evolutionary theory. After a certain point is there any use to thinking of something as evolution? If everything is evolutionary theory than doesn't the word lose all meaning? I think I'm being annoyingly surreal, but I'm really just wondering if there is any basis in applying biological thought to society's realm? Where does the cross-over exist between the two?
