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When it comes to theories of evolution, there are broadly three sensible options: if you are British, especially if you are a National Treasure, such as Sir David Attenborough, then Charles Darwin is your natural selection as the explanation for the evolutionary process. If, however, you are French, then it boils down to two choices, Lamarckian gradualism, or Cuverian catastrophism.

In the first half of the 19thcentury, the French naturalist Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) developed his theory of catastrophes. In fact, in keeping with the spirit of his times, this Master of Disaster preferred the termrevolutiontocatastrophe. Cuvier was immensely fat and thereby earned his nickname The Mammoth, coincidentally a pachydermic palaeolontogical research sphere in which he excelled. Britains greatest chess player, Nigel Short, once reduced me to helpless laughter by describing a certain, strikingly rotund, Soviet chess grandmaster as spherical. By all accounts, Baron Cuvier was certainly in that league.

According to Cuvier, the fossil record demonstrates that species, both plant and animal, aredestroyed time and time again by volcanic eruptions, meteoric bombardments, giant deluges and countless other shocks and natural cataclysms. In Cuviers interpretation of the life cycle of the planet, newspecies evolve only after each catastrophe or revolution has been completed. Obvious examples are the Permian and Cretaceous mass extinctions, also the igneous convulsions of the Deccan Traps from the early Palaeogene geological period.

A trenchant critic of Cuviers theory of cataclysmswas his one time mentor, fellow French academic, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck(1744 -1829) who held that all living thingshad originated from simple organisms, and were thus inextricably related to each other. So far, so good.

The varying species were, according to Lamarck, simply the outcome of disparate environmental conditions: in Lamarcks view, intensive use of certain body parts would result intheir reinforcement andipso facto singular growth;their neglect, on the contrary, would lead to a reversal of their development, and eventual disappearance. The propertiesthus acquired, in the growth scenario, would be passed on to offspring.

Lamarck illustrated his theory by using the example of theevolution of giraffes. Giraffes must clearly have once had short-neckedancestors whose goal was to reach forthe juiciest and highest leaves of certain trees.By constantly stretchingtheir necks, those necks grew longerand longer, a property whichthey passed on to their offspring.The extended neck of the giraffe is said by Lamarck to have come into existence in this manner over manygenerations.

Unfortunately, Lamarcks explanation sounds too close to the controversial theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The dramatic story about the viability of this explanation of evolution, with its various pros and cons, is related in Arthur Koestlers book The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971). Austrian scientist Paul Kammerer (1880-1926) sought to justify the theory that organisms may pass to their offspring characteristics acquired in their lifetime. Tragically, Kammerer committed suicide when his experiments were found to have been fraudulent, with Indian ink injected into certain parts of the anatomy of the amphibian in question, which, to add insult to injury, actually turned out to be a frog and not a toad at all.

If one is not convinced by Cuvier or Lamarck, that leaves only one winner, namely the British scientist who championed the survival of the fittest by the process of natural selection.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was convinced that features, such as the long neck of Artiodactyl ruminants, are the result of natural selection, according to conditions of existence. Accordingly, certain giraffes would have had longer necksthrough purechance, and thereby enjoyed an advantage over other membersof their species, in being able to reach formerly inaccessible sources of food.The animals passed onthis accidental by-product of nature to their offspring, who, for their part,were better able to surviveperiods of food scarcity. Over geological time, the longer neckedgiraffes survived and flourished. The shorter necks, unable to compete, died out.

Charles was influenced by his versatile grandfather Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)a proto-evolutionist, physician, poet and slave trade abolitionist, whose surviving portraits indicate, like Cuvier, a man who, if not exactly spherical, was certainly of impressive girth.

Chess, too, has developed its own theory of evolution, principally through the work of the chess champion and philosopher Emanuel Lasker.Lasker was an intellectual titan, long reigning World Chess Champion and friend of Albert Einstein (who wrote the foreword to Dr J. Hannaks biography of Lasker). Lasker developed his own concept of evolution, which he construed as strictly teleological. His independence of thought was admirable and even led him to challenge Einstein about the theory of relativity, much as Goethe had challenged Newton over light and colour in his Zur Farbenlehre.

Lasker (1868-1941) was one of the most dominant champions, and he is still regarded as one of the strongest players ever to grace a chessboard. In 1906 he published a booklet titledKampf(Struggle), in which he attempted to create a general theory, relevant to all competitive activities, including chess, business and warfare. Laskers philosophy can be summed up in this quotation from his writings: By some ardent enthusiastschess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but itsprincipal characteristic seems to be whathuman nature mostly delightsin a fight.

Lasker advanced his idea of evolution based on struggle, by postulating the possibility of the macheide,meaning son of battle, a being whose attributes are so sharpened by evolutionary struggle, that it always chooses the best and most efficient method of perpetuating its own success.

On the chessboard, for example, the macheidewould always make the best move, which would result (as one chess masterremarked) in the sad result that after the first game between twomacheides, chess would cease to exist.

What the macheide chiefly invokes to my mind is comparison with the evolutionary thought experiments of a slightly earlier German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).In a particularly freezing winter at the end of 1969, after the end of the official term, I decided to stay on in my rooms at Trinity College Cambridge, adjacent to those of my fellow student H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, and readall ofNietzsches works in the original German. What follows are the conclusionsI reached from my snow bound ivory tower.

In my mind, Jackboot or Genius? was the chief question. Nietzschehas sufferedfromabad press in England.This is in part due to his unfortunate, thoughunintentional, andcertainlyunpremeditated association with 1930s National Socialism in Germanyand consequentlytoan excoriating onslaught by Bertrand Russell in his A History of Western Philosophy.

Published soon after the SecondWorld War, Russells book unequivocally identified Nietzsche as a potentsource for the ideological inspiration underpinning the beliefs of Adolf Hitlerandthe tenetsof the Nazi party itself. Tellingly adopting the homely simileof a cricket match (what could be moreEnglish), Russellclaimed that Nietzsche and his followers had had their innings, but were nowto be ineluctably swept from the field.

Russell was not only misguided in savagingNietzsches reputation, he was also motivated by acrudely political agenda, which deliberately distorted thesubtle message behind Nietzsches philosophy. Russell was presumably, blissfully unaware of the irony that during World War I, Hitler had formed his own cricket team to play against British prisoners of war.

Nietzsche expressedhimself in metaphors, and his chief metaphorwas the assertion that God is dead. In the Old Testament it is writtenthat, without vision the people perish. This is normally interpretedeither as prophecy or as an aspirational nostrum, centring on goaldriven targets.As Virgil put it in The Aeneid, book V:Hos successusalit, possuntquiaepossevidentur.For those will conquer who believe they can, in Poet LaureateJohn Drydens concise translation.

From its context, however,inthe Book of Proverbs it is clear,to me at least, that the word vision is infact a mistranslationfor supervision. The powerful Biblicalidea which I believe is expressed here, is that human society cannot function properly,unless it is well and firmly governed;and if the celestial governorhas abdicated responsibility, oreven worse, perished, then the worldis in deep trouble.

Nietzsche did indeed fear that his world was in precisely that kind ofdeep trouble. With the erosion of belief in any kind of just or ruling deity,swept aside by 18thand 19thadvances inscience and the creed ofpseudo-rationality which reached its apogee with the FrenchRevolution,what was to prevent great and terrible wars, horrific injusticesand mans inhumanity to man from running rampant?

Indeed,with two world wars, a Nazi-orchestrated genocidal holocaust, and a coupleof thermonuclear devices dropped in anger, within the next halfcentury to come, who could deny Nietzsches prophesy?

Nietzsches second great metaphor was the EternalRecurrence (Ewige Wiederkehr). Nietzsche proposed a model of the universe that repeats itself identically in infinite iterations of recycling. What has happenednow has happened an infinite number of times before and will continue toreplicate itself infinitely into the future. Whether this theory is scientificallytenable is not the point the metaphor is designed to convey meaninglessness and futility on a cosmic scale. What meaning can there be in an everlastingly recyclable universe, with no God supervising what is just and what is right?Evidently none all issmoke,mirrors and pygmy hominid delusions of fakegrandeur and puffed upself-importance.

Enter the Ubermensch or Superman! Nietzsches Superman, his prototype version of Laskers Macheide, is not some jack-booted fascist,oppressing lesser breeds who have failed a crudely misinterpretedtest ofDarwins aphoristic formulation Survivalof the Fittest, but that person who can, with full spiritual conviction, continue to act andfunction,as if there were meaning, but in a meaningless universe. It is the power of the brain,not of the boot, which Nietzsche extols, and Russell was surely aware of the stickiness of his wicket, when he hypocritically consigned Nietzsche to the historicalscrapheap ofrejectedand defeated Nazi detritus.

The tarnishing of Nietzsche by association with the Nazis was originally the work of his sister. Elizabeth Foerster Nietzschewasan opportunisticright wing fanatic who had tried, and failed, to establish a German extremist colony in the jungles of South America. It wasshewhotook control ofNietzsches literary heritage after his death and perverted the messageof the Superman to fit the deranged fantasies of the new would be worldcolossus, Adolf Hitler. The Great Dictator often visited the NietzscheMuseum to greet the sister of the Great Philosopher, but it is doubtful whether Hitler ever read a word of Nietzsches,or would have understood it,even if he had.

The influences on Nietzsche are manifold andcomplex.In terms, though,of literary antecedents it seems to me that the grand soliloquy in Shakespeares Macbeth:Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to daywhere the eponymous anti-hero fantasises on the futilityofexistence,but nevertheless decides to soldier on, must have playedsome part in Nietzsches philosophical grounding. Even more likely is thatGoethes Faustepic, predicated on the morally, scientifically and religiouslyvariegatedcareerofa man whoachieves salvation through personal striving (Werimmerstrebendsich bemueht, den koennen wirerloesen) must have underpinned Nietzsches concept of the Superman, as one who imbues existence with meaning, solely by the exertion of iron will and personal effort.

Nietzsche lived alone for much of his life,and died in mentalisolation, immobile, insensate, and cared for by asister who loathed him but loved the potential wealth and prestigeconcealed in his writings.The time has come, therefore, for those who have, at least, made some effort to understand him, to refurbish his reputation, andensure that this, at any rate, no longer stands alone against artificiallymanufactured tides of prejudice and wilfulmisinterpretation.

Chess has now acquired its own evolutionary Macheide and Superman in the shape of Demis Hassabiss AlphaZero program. How long did it take for this to evolve into a chess super brain? Just eight hours, during the course of which it grew in strength by playing billions of games against itself at the speed of light. This sounds more like arevolution of the rotund Baron Cuvier to me, rather than the alternative species of evolutionary gradualism promulgated by Darwin or Lamarck.

Take this weeks game Alpha Zero (computer) vs Stockfish (computer)to which I also referred in my column, Arise Sir Demis. Far from killing off chess, this reborn Macheide of the sixty-four squares has opened up remarkable new vistas for creative potential. Is it a surprise, therefore, thatthe wordsMacheideandmachineappearto share the same root in Ancient Greek?

AlphaZero wins by breaking all human rules. It invests material for vague compensation; its queen dashes around the board, with illusory aimlessness, even visiting that Ultima Thule of the chessboard, h1, one would have thought the least promising square from which a Queen might launch an attack. Finally, while serious material in arrears, it positively encourages exchange of pieces, ostensibly a suicidal decision. The final diabolical blow comes in this variation:

Diagram after Whites 36th move.

Here is the critical diagram for the Alpha Zero win. Black, who has been a knight ahead for a long time, developed its extra piece with Blacks 36th move Nd7 when the following move, Whites 37th, Rd1 pinning the Knight, wins for White. But what if Black defends, instead of apparently blundering, by choosing an alternative and seeminglymuch safer knight move?

1 Na6

But now comes the supremely cunning manoeuvre:

2 Qe5+ Qf6

And the death blow.

3 Rh7+

Winning Blacks Queen and thus winning the game.

Evolution on the chessboard? If the Macheide or Uebermensch comes in the form of an AI program, capable of such rich beauty and astonishing depth, then I am all for it.

Game Changer(published by New in Chess) is the book by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, which I extolled earlier this year. It is unrivalled as an account of the adventure of the creation of AlphaZero and it has gone on, deservedly, to scoop the Book of the Year awards from both the English and World Chess Federations.

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Survival of the Fattest: Macheide and Superman - TheArticle