End Up Here · Living systems
Working page / Updated weekly
How the long history of life helps us understand the bodies we inhabit, the minds we carry, the societies we make and the future we might choose.
The field
Evolutionary biology studies how living things change across generations through inheritance, variation, selection, drift, development and the changing environments in which life persists. It is not a story that says everything is “designed” or inevitable. It is a way to investigate trade-offs, histories, constraints and possibilities.
For End Up Here, this matters because technology is changing the environments around human beings. Understanding what we have inherited can help us ask what to preserve, what to redesign and what kinds of abundance might let people live more freely.
Boundary: the links to End Up Here are Martin’s interpretations and questions. They are not statements of endorsement by the scientists discussed here.
Two important guides
Edward O. Wilson (1929–2021) connected meticulous work on ants with larger questions about sociobiology, biodiversity, biogeography and humanity’s relationship with the living world. His idea of biophilia—that human beings have an innate tendency to attend to life—offers a powerful bridge between science, conservation and culture.
E.O. Wilson Biophilia Center ↗Lieberman studies why the human body looks and functions as it does. His research on walking, running, physical activity, diet, the human head and health makes evolutionary history practical: modern chronic problems can arise when bodies meet conditions very different from those under which they evolved.
Harvard profile ↗Lieberman’s mismatch lens is not a demand to return to a mythical past. It asks which recent environmental changes interact badly with inherited physiology—and how better environments, habits, technologies and institutions might reduce the damage.
Why Lieberman feels close to this project
Lieberman’s work begins with a grounded question: why does the human body function as it does? His answer follows energy, movement, anatomy and evolutionary trade-offs. In The Story of the Human Body and Exercised, he explains why health advice becomes clearer when we understand the environments our bodies encountered over deep time.
That resembles a question running through Martin’s work: if our inherited arrangements no longer fit the world we are building, can we consciously create conditions that support agency, care, exploration, rest and meaningful activity? The similarity is a starting point for inquiry, not proof that biological evolution supplies a political programme.
One difference matters. Lieberman’s published work here is primarily about human evolution, physical activity, diet and health. End Up Here extends the mismatch question into technology, economics and social possibility. That extension belongs to Martin’s project and needs its own evidence.
Questions for the next version
Which features of modern life are genuine evolutionary mismatches, and which are simply unequal access, poor design or political choice? How can evolutionary explanations illuminate without becoming excuses or prescriptions?
Can technology reduce avoidable suffering while leaving people with more room for movement, relationship, care, learning, nature and chosen work? This page will be revisited weekly as the reading and the questions develop.