Big History and selectionist evolution

From the H-world list
Discussion of Maps of Time, by David Christian:
David Christian writes:

John Landon writes: "history is not physics and . what is of interest, and what science can't provide is an account of the transition from evolution to history."
And also this, replying to above:
"In Maps of Time I offered a specific hypothesis about the nature of the bridge from the sciences to the humanities. I argued that humans are products of natural selection, but we are also characterized by a new "emergent" property: symbolic language. This allows humans to share information with such precision that shared knowledge can accumulate from generation to generation. As a result, humans can adapt to their environment collectively not just individually. "Collective Learning" (aka "culture") counts, therefore, as a new adaptive mechanism added on to the instinctual mechanisms and the capacity for individual learning that we share with many other organisms. This, I believe, is the transition Landon is looking for from evolution to history."

John Landon:
You've stated my problem here. The transition is made via natural selection. This is nearly dogma at this point. But where's the proof? There is none, absolutely none. And the fact that there is none is not even discussable in current science. Everything is to be constructed by natural selection, from language to free will to religion to consciousness. And yet there is not a shred a really closely tracked proof for this extraordinary assumption. Karl Popper tried in vain to make a similar point with his charge of 'metaphysical research program', but was silenced. But in general the point is clear. We simply don't know how man evolved. Current thinking simply changes the subject whenever this is pointed out.
In fact, we must strongly suspect we are missing something fundamental.

In my own version of Big History I offer a careful demonstration that the transition is NOT via natural selection in visible world history, and that therefore due to probable elements of homogeneity over time it is likely that this argument works for early stages of man's evolution.
We see the transition from evolution to history (speaking formally in my sense) inside world history itself. This takes the form of a distinct, detectable form of 'macroevolution' (taken as a cover term) visible in a slow rhythm detected by very careful periodization. Correct description of this long evolutionary sequence is easy to document if we adopt a careful tracking method, then the basic pattern of non-random evolution in history stands out.
Related to this is the muddle, yet very important, of the Axial Age. This is one of the beats in the sequence.
We must track incremental stages of relative evolution, consider the global aspect of the process, and distinguish between a high level system and the individuals inside that system.
In general, natural selection is incapable of producing real evolution which proceeds by another process altogether.

That language is an emergent process arising as adaptation via natural selection is to me an absurdity. This nonsense simply goes on and on, without proof. Chomsky became suspicious a long time ago about this. It simply makes no sense, and yet the dogma has been thrust on a whole generation via repitition and simple refusal to even discuss other possibilities.

In any case, none of this gainsays the issue of Big History as such. It is simply that selectionist dogmas have produced nonsense in the field of world history, and it is not surprising that working historians tend to ignore reductionist theories in practice. What else could they do?
Seen in this light it is suddenly obvious that natural selection in history is a dangerous rip tide current that can threaten to destroy the gains of real evolution. Such things makes it important to critique the ideology of natural selection as it falls into the hands of those well prepared to use it in dangerous ways.

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