Professor Steve Jones began the first in this year’s series of Enlightenment talks at the University of Edinburgh with a map of Thomas More’s Utopia. Professor Jones's controversial lecture, “Is human evolution over?” signals Utopia as a vision of an ideal future, and he goes on to argue that we have indeed reached this point— genetically.

We are treated to a quick lesson in evolutionary theory, where Professor Jones explains what's necessary for evolution to take place. First, it requires mutation on which to act; there need to be differences in order for those differences to be selected. Next, selection has to take place, either through differences in survival rates or differences in reproductive success. Finally, evolutionary change can also occur through genetic drift; that is, more or less random changes in the gene frequencies in populations.

Each of these have, arguably, been made impotent in the developed world. There’s been no great increase in mutation rates and, due to economic development and other improvements, survival rates have rocketed while fertility rates have fallen. This means “opportunity for selection” has been dramatically reduced. Lastly, considering that evolutionary change relies to a large extent on inbreeding in small populations, genetic drift has largely lost its power due to growth in worldwide travel and cosmopolitanism.

All of this, however, comes with some caveats. Firstly, we are talking about evolution in the popular sense, rather than using a geneticist’s definition. And, as Jones admits, his argument only really applies to the developed world and doesn't hold with regard to the rest of the globe.

So in one sense Jones makes a reasonable assertion in saying, “human evolution is over” in the developed, global north. The real problem with Jones's argument is that his way of framing the discussion is trapped in an Enlightenment conception of progress.

Contrary to popular belief, evolution doesn’t have a singular direction. Organisms necessarily started off simple before some could become more complex. But complexity is not a measure of success— some of the most evolutionary successful organisms are unicellular bacteria. Nor is complexity a measure of superiority. The anthropocentric idea of a general progression from “lower”, simpler organisms to “higher”, more complex ones is idealist and echoes prevalent ideas from and prior to Darwin’s day about the nature of progress in human history.

Jones might very well understand all of this but his popular writing and discussion, which cites Utopia as the goal of evolutionary progress, does little to help public understanding of how these theories might apply to our society.

Maybe human evolution is over—so what? Contrary to Jones’s conclusion, this doesn’t mean we are living in Utopia—we can’t look for idealism in our genes. Things can and will continue to change; the forms that society have taken have evolved much faster than our biological make up. If we want to change the world, or build a 'Utopia', it will be achieved through social action, not natural selection.