Timothy Wilken
It has been my pleasure and privilege to publish the first edition of Arthur Noll’s small book Harmony. In the second half of his book Noll begins with a discussion of reproduction:
“I’d like to go into some more detail on reproduction, since it is such an important part of the story. Lets start by remembering the logic about it I gave at the beginning.
“If any organism overpopulates, the most likely survivors are the ones that are the strongest and most efficient. One way to be more strong and efficient is to put less energy into reproduction. We see the result of this in animal populations. Predators do not reproduce at the same rate as prey does. Predators do this in many different ways. The eagle may lay only two eggs, and raise only one chick. The lion has a litter of cubs, but mother may go out hunting, not return for two or three days, and after a few episodes of this, 75% of the cubs are dead. I seem to recall that this was in desert country, and in richer country, more cubs are likely to survive, but the principle is clear. In a pack of wolves, only the dominant pair will have young. Again, this is likely to vary with the resources available, but there is a definite mechanism to limit reproduction.
“A question arises, though, when we look at herbivores like wildebeest, zebras, other large herbivores, living with the lions and other predators. These animals are frequently prey for lions, yet they give birth to one baby a year. How to explain this? We have to remember that herbivores are predators of grass, and that while they have vulnerable periods of life, growing up, growing old, when living as healthy adults in a herd, they are very difficult for predators to catch. It has been noted by biologists that it is disease that is the greatest check on their population, not more conventional predators. So such a low rate of reproduction still fits. They reproduce to fill up their ecological space, to go beyond that exposes them to problems like hunger and disease, which can knock the population a long ways down, and once again, those that put less energy into reproduction would be favored. Since they are so successful at evading lions and similar predators most of the time, it would seem that their low birth rate is a function of such success.
“People who have studied hunter gatherer groups often find that reproduction is in balance. Several factors are at play. If the conditions are difficult, northern or southern deserts, tropical forests full of disease, then people naturally die faster from the harsh conditions. Birth rates are slowed by women not conceiving well when they are always on the verge of hunger, or nursing babies, and the food is coarse and babies need to nurse longer. Marjorie Shostak writes about this with regard to the !Kung people. In richer areas of the world, warfare between groups seems to have make up the difference, this added enough stress to groups to make up for the fact that the living was easier.
“If we have understanding about the source of disease, this always gives us a little edge on the problem. If we herd animals, nurture plants appropriately, that also gives an edge on hunger. Having better tools and knowledge of microbes also allows food to be better stored for lean periods. But if people aren’t dying so much of disease, and hunger is lessened so that women conceive easily, we can and have gotten into trouble. We can’t put knowledge back in the bottle, we don’t like high death rates. But we have to choose, either we take a high death rate or we have a lower birth rate. Farmers have lessened hunger with unsustainable food production, and welcomed a higher birth rate to have labor, which they really need lots of.. But even without farming, birth rates have to come down.
“It all comes down to energy efficiency. We only have so much energy to spend on any one thing. Birth control has to be as cheap as possible. The cheapest and most effective is a mental ability to abstain from sex when conditions call for it. Under conditions of stress, that tends to happen naturally. The question is what a person regards as stressful. Someone who can see logical connections to disasters looming will feel a lot more stress and back away from reproduction. Those who can’t see will still be engaged in reproduction, unaware of danger signals. They get trapped. Pregnant women and nursing mothers can’t easily move and get away from problems. They need a lot of extra care.
” When conditions are more peaceful, there are simple solutions to the problem. Vasectomies are simple and cheap, relatively. They don’t help much right now, since they aren’t easily reversible, and we would want to survive and still be able to reproduce. There are other possibilities. Basically, they have to be energy efficient and sustainable. But right now, the best option looks like abstinence.”
Harmony is Arthur’s term for synergy. The second part of his book was published today. It can be seen online here or here.