The common room was unusually quiet. Professor Quillibrace sat by the window reading. Miss Stray was making notes beside a stack of books. Mr Blottisham was staring thoughtfully at a sheet of paper covered with numbers.
After several minutes he looked up triumphantly.
“I have solved fitness.”
Quillibrace lowered his book with visible caution.
“You have?”
“Yes.”
Miss Stray glanced over.
“In what way?”
Blottisham pushed the paper across the table.
“I've designed a system.”
Quillibrace examined it.
Across the page appeared:
Quillibrace looked up.
“What is this?”
“A fitness report.”
“For what?”
“For organisms.”
Silence.
Blottisham looked pleased.
“One simply calculates the total and discovers which creatures evolution prefers.”
Miss Stray leaned slightly forward.
“You believe evolution keeps scores?”
“Obviously.”
Quillibrace closed his book.
“Mr Blottisham, what precisely is receiving these scores?”
“Organisms.”
“And where does the score reside?”
Blottisham looked puzzled.
“Inside them.”
“Inside them.”
“Yes.”
“Alongside their organs?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“Well... perhaps in the bloodstream.”
Quillibrace sighed softly.
“You see the difficulty.”
Blottisham frowned.
“No, I believe I see several blood vessels.”
Quillibrace folded his hands.
“The problem is that fitness is habitually treated as though it were a property.”
Miss Stray nodded.
“As though organisms simply possess it.”
“Precisely.”
Blottisham looked uncertain.
“But don't they?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Blottisham stared.
“But everyone says fit organisms survive.”
“Yes,” said Quillibrace, “in rather the same way people say the sun rises.”
Blottisham blinked.
“The sun doesn't rise?”
“Not in the relevant sense.”
Miss Stray smiled faintly.
“We are accumulating quite a list of things that appear not to be doing what they confidently claim.”
Blottisham looked wounded.
Quillibrace continued.
“Fitness is not something an organism carries around like a spare kidney.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
Quillibrace considered.
“It is a description of the stability of a relational configuration under particular constraints.”
Blottisham stared for several seconds.
Then:
“Good heavens.”
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
“So fitness isn't a thing possessed by organisms.”
“No.”
“It describes whether particular configurations continue successfully across repeated interactions.”
“Exactly.”
Blottisham frowned.
“But surely a fit organism remains fit.”
Quillibrace looked at him.
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
“What if the environment changes?”
Blottisham paused.
“Oh.”
“What if population structure changes?”
“Oh.”
“What if food sources change?”
“Oh.”
“What if a trait becomes common?”
Blottisham slumped slightly.
“Oh dear.”
Miss Stray tapped her notebook.
“So fitness changes because the relational structure changes.”
“Precisely.”
Blottisham looked troubled.
“Then organisms don't have fitness.”
“No.”
“They enact patterns of persistence.”
“Yes.”
He stared sadly at his scoring sheet.
“So there is no cosmic ranking table?”
“No.”
“No annual prizes?”
“No.”
“No evolutionary gold medals?”
“No.”
Miss Stray glanced at the page.
“What were you planning to do with the Character: 9/10 category?”
Blottisham looked defensive.
“I thought it rewarded admirable effort.”
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
“Evolution appears regrettably indifferent to admirable effort.”
Blottisham sat quietly for a moment.
Then he looked up.
“So if fitness isn't a score…”
“No?”
“…then what exactly are we measuring?”
Quillibrace smiled faintly.
“We are observing which relational forms keep happening.”
Silence.
Blottisham looked at the paper again.
Slowly he folded it in half.
“I see.”
Another pause.
Then:
“Do you think persistence deserves at least a certificate?”
Miss Stray began writing in her notebook.
Quillibrace looked over.
“What have you written?”
She looked up.
“Just a small observation.”
“What observation?”
She smiled.
“Mr Blottisham appears disappointed that reality has no prize ceremony.”
Quillibrace nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
Blottisham sighed.
“It explains why evolution never sent me any results.”
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