A complex organism is better than a simple one, so natural selection favors complexity--or so it has been assumed. Is the assumption true?
Everybody knows that organisms get better as they evolve. They get more advanced, more modern, and less primitive. And everybody knows, according to Dan McShea (who has written a paper called Complexity and Evolution: What Everybody Knows), that organisms get more complex as they evolve. From the first cell that coalesced in the primordial soup to the magnificent intricacies of Homo sapiens, the evolution of life--as everyone knows--has been one long drive toward greater complexity. The only trouble with what everyone knows, says McShea, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan, is that there is no evidence it’s true.
