I can't decide if I find this statement more enlightening than annoying, or vice versa. I tend to be of the mind that a lot of the process of evolution involves random mutation rather than conscious behavioural adaptations. I know that there is not one driver of evolution, and that many other factors come into play when we are discussing a significant advancement within the history of an organism, but I have never really been able to wrap my head around the idea that a learned behavior can be passed down genetically. (I know this is a thing, intergenerational trauma as an example, but I struggle to make it tangible in my mind thus far, which makes it more difficult for me to understand.) So this statement seems very chicken and egg to me, in that it speaks of the importance of the development of language as a driver of human intellect, which I do not deny, but I feel like the statement might miss the part where the brain structures necessary to acquire and articulate language must have been present for the environmental need for language being important to build upon. I don't have any better theories, I just find the subject interesting because language is still viewed as a strictly human skill, but from an evolutionary perspective the structures, or at least the foundation of said structures, would have to have been present at the moment when this particular skill was important. Which then, because all life shares common origins, causes me to wonder which other organisms possess those building blocks, and why (as far as we know) the process has not occurred in other organisms.

I think its important to note here that the fossil record is such a small percentage of what was. Preservation requires very specific conditions, whether its fossils, bugs in amber, or bog bodies. For every one we find, there are thousands that we never will, so gaps are to be expected. Countless mutations that were not favoured by the niche have been lost to time. Add to this that evolution is not a linear process, is affected by the lifespans and reproduction rates of each species, and that changes in environmental stressors can come on rapidly, I don't think Darwin was wrong, just not thinking big enough.

I found myself thinking about the whole "survival of the fittest" misconceptions when I read this. Somewhere along the way, society began equating said survival with strength rather than with the basic survival mechanism that this statement was actually getting at. I appreciate this writing because it uses the words "profitable deviation", which I think illustrates the reality of mutation in the course of evolution, rather than active physical adaptation of individuals, which is then passed on to offspring as Lamarck believed. Sometimes survival is simply the luck of being born with a beak of a different shape that conveniently makes accessing a food source easier for said individual, who then survives long enough to pass their genes on to multiple future generations, and that's ok.