Monthly Archives: November 2018

November 29 – Religion’s Seeds of ‘Articulating the Noosphere’ and How to Build Upon Them Expanding On Teilhard’s View of Morality- Part 1

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a more detailed look at Teilhard’s insights into the concept of morality, how it has been taught in Western religion, and how putting it into the context of evolution can point the way to incorporating it as a tool for ‘articulating the noosphere’.

   This week I’d like to look at the five insights from last week that Teilhard offers from his book, “Human Energy” in the context of the multifaceted view that we have been building in our search for “The Secular Side of God”.  Each one of these insights is in reality just an outline, a starting point for these subjects, and offers a basis for considering the concept of morality to be a cornerstone for ‘articulating the noosphere’.

Rethinking Religion

As we have seen, one of Teilhard’s key insights was that to be able to manage our journey through the noosphere, we must first understand it. The entire history of religion shows it to be our first attempt to do so.  Born in an era which depended on intuitive insights , the early religions were simply extensions of the clans which formed the base for the societal structures that came into being.  They all reflected the need to stabilize the ever-increasing size, density and complexity of human society.  All of the early myths and stories reflected the common understanding that the world had always existed, and that it had existed in manifestations that had only superficially changed over the years.

As we have seen elsewhere in this blog, these early noospheric insights did not begin to rise from the highly subjective perspectives that had held sway for thousands of years until the “Axial Age”, some 700 years BCE.  These perspectives, while somewhat impacted by early Greek thinking, managed to remain as the prevalent mode of thinking until mid-1200’s, when more empirical and objective perspectives began to appear in the West.

When this happened, the highly metaphorical insights into the composition of the noosphere began to change, culminating in the growing understanding of first the noosphere itself and then the universe which surrounds it, from static to dynamic.

The clash between the neothink offered by the nascent scientific evidence and the prevalent static and intuitive beliefs which still reflected medieval scholasticism is well documented, and to some extent still goes on today.  They offer profoundly opposed insights into the composition of the noosphere, and reflect the significant dualism that underpins modern attempts to understand it.  So it comes as no surprise that today we find it difficult to unravel these two threads to find a way to respin them into a single strand.

  In such a single strand, the concept of morality moves beyond the dualistic secular basis for a secure society and a roadmap to successful entry into the next life, and into a set of guidelines which ‘articulate the noosphere’ in such a way that we insure our continued evolution into states of greater complexity.

Rethinking Morality

   It was in this vein that Teilhard, along with other thinkers such as Maurice Blondel, began to look at the tenets and structure of religion, particularly Western religion, in these new terms offered by science.  The five insights that we saw last week offer a summary of his understanding of how this new thinking not only could bring a new, secular and empirical meaning to the ancient teachings, but that Christianity, as one of the first attempts to see religion and reason as sides of a single coin, was well suited to do so.

Teilhard’s five insights into morality all offer opportunities to not only increase the relevancy of religious teaching, but in doing so increase its value to science.  Not only can religious teaching be better grounded in empirical facts, but in doing so can provide a much needed ‘ground of humanity’ to science.

Looking a little deeper into the first two of Teilhard’s five insights into morality:

The Evolutionary Basis for Morality

“If indeed, as we have assumed, the world culminates in a thinking reality, the organization of personal human energies represents the supreme stage (so far) of cosmic evolution on Earth; and morality is consequently nothing less than the higher development of mechanics and biology.  The world is ultimately constructed by moral forces; and reciprocally, the function of morality is to construct the world.”

   Here Teilhard asks us to recognize that what religion has been trying to accomplish, with its topsy-turvy, noosphericly-risky, ultimately very human approach is to ‘articulate the noosphere’, using the slowly accumulated understanding of the noosphere provided by intuition, metaphors and dreams, and impeded by egos, fears, and ambitions. 

   He attaches no particular stigma to the fact that we’re already some two hundred thousands of years into human evolution, and in many ways ‘we’re not there yet’.  Considering that evolution is ‘a work in progress’, the ultimate use of the tool of morality is to ‘construct the world’.  Conversely this calls for us to ‘construct morality’ even as we ‘articulate the noosphere’.

   Properly understood, morals are the building blocks of the noosphere, by which we ourselves are ‘built’..

The Evolution of Morality

“Morality has until now been principally understood as a fixed system of rights and duties intended to establish a static equilibrium between individuals and at pains to maintain it by a limitation of energies, that is to say of force.

Now the problem confronting morality is no longer how to preserve and protect the individual, but how to guide him so effectively in the direction of his anticipated fulfillments that the ‘quantity of personality’ still diffuse in humanity may be released in fullness and security.”

   Here Teilhard introduces two insights:  First the most tangible way that morality ‘constructs the world’ is by clarifying the structure of the universe so that we can better understand it.  Secondly, it offers a clearer understanding of how we are to make the best use of it in unlocking the fullness and security that is still diffuse in us.

   As we better understand morals, we better understand the noosphere, and become more skilled at cooperating with its forces to increase our personal complexification.

The Next Post                  

This week we took a second look at morality as a facet of religion which can be seen as a tool for helping us understand the structure of the noosphere as a step to managing its risks.  We did this by expanding on the first two of Teilhard’s synopses of the history and the place of ‘morality’ in the unfolding of the noosphere.

Next week we’ll continue this theme, taking a deeper look at the remaining three of Teilhard’s insights from his book “Human Energy” to see how the concept of morality can be enriched and more highly focused to enhance both the relevance of religion and offer a tool more finely honed for dealing with the noosphere’s inevitable risks.

November 22 – Religion’s Seeds of ‘Articulating the Noosphere’ and How to Build Upon Them Part 1: Teilhard’s View of Morality

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Today’s Post

Last week be began a look at religion as a tool for managing the noosphere, particularly in dealing with the risks that arise with evolution of the human.  We acknowledged the traditional ills that can be seen in various expressions of religion over its six or so thousand years of manifesting itself as a way to make sense of things, but opened the door to re-seeing it, at least in its Western manifestation, as simply an attempt to ‘articulate the noosphere’.  In this sense, it can be seen as just the ‘right brained’ counterpart to the ‘left brained’ perspectives of science.

The question remains, of course: how can such an approach to religion be developed, with its historical attachment to such things as radical and fundamentalist expressions of Islam in the Mideast, as well as

fundamentalism, excessive hierarchical structures and pedophilia in the West?  Is there a way that the teachings that have led to such obvious ‘noospheric risks’ can be reinterpreted into teachings that will lead away from them?

   This week we will begin to look at the roots of Western religion to begin rediscovery of principles which will move us forward.

Morality

One such starting place for such an undertaking is the idea of morality.  We covered the concept of morality with its companion subjects of spirituality, virtues and sacraments last December, and I’d like to expand upon this brief series of posts by looking more deeply at how Teilhard himself saw it from his evolutionary perspective (From “Human Energy”. Parentheses and italics mine):

The Evolutionary Basis for Morality

“For the old-style spiritualist who regards the spirit as a meta-phenomenon, as for the modern materialist who chooses to see it only as an epi-phenomenon, the world of moral relationships forms a separate department of nature.  For different reasons, forces and connexions of a moral kind are for both less physically real than the energies of matter.  For us who see the development of consciousness as the essential phenomenon of nature (eg from an evolutionary perspective), things appear in a very different light.  If indeed, as we have assumed, the world culminates in a thinking reality, the organization of personal human energies represents the supreme stage of cosmic evolution on earth; and morality is consequently nothing less than the higher development of mechanics and biology.  The world is ultimately constructed by moral forces; and reciprocally, the function of morality is to construct the world.”

 

The Evolution of Morality

“Morality arose largely as an empirical defense of the individual and society.  Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.  And once an arrangement was in practice discovered which more or less guaranteed to each one his due, this system itself felt the need to guarantee itself against the changes which would call its accepted solutions into question and disturb the established social order.  Morality has till now been principally understood as a fixed system of rights and duties intended to establish a static equilibrium between individuals and at pains to maintain it by a limitation of energies, that is to say of force.

This conception rested in the last resort on the idea that every human being represented a sort of absolute term in the world, whose existence had to be protected from all encroachment from without.  It is transformed from top to bottom as one recognizes…that man on earth is no more than an element destined to complete himself cosmically in a higher consciousness in process of formation.  Now the problem confronting morality is no longer how to preserve and protect the individual, but how to guide him so effectively in the direction of his anticipated fulfillments that the ‘quantity of personality’ still diffuse in humanity may be released in fullness and security.  The moralist was up to now a jurist, or a tight-rope walker.  He becomes the technician and engineer of the spiritual energies of the world.

 

The Morality of Balance (appropriate to a static universe) vs the Morality of Movement (appropriate to an evolving universe)

(From this perspective) “The morality of balance is replaced by the morality of movement

-The morality of money based on exchange and fairness vs the goodness of riches only if they work for the benefit of the spirit

– The morality of love based on the material founding of a family vs loving in response to a personal creative force

– Individual morality to prevent him from doing harm vs working with the forces of growth to free his autonomy and personality to the uttermost

To the morality of balance (“closed morality”) the moral world might seem a definitely bounded real.  To the morality of movement (‘open morality’) the same world appears as a higher sphere of the universe, much richer than the lower spheres of matter in unknown powers and unsuspected combinations.”

Religion and Morality

“By definition, his religion, if true, can have no other effect than to perfect the humanity in him.”  In that case, if there was, as we have agreed, a deeply humanizing intuition in the idea which unfolded in the 18th century that each of us is a conscious and responsible unit in a universe in progress, it was inevitable that this intuition should sooner or later raise an amplified echo in the heart of Christian consciousness.  At the first stage, Christianity may well have seemed to exclude the humanitarian aspirations of the modern world.  At the second stage its duty was to correct, assimilate and preserve them.”

Morality As A Basis For Dealing With The Noosphere

“So as long as our conceptions of the universe remained static, the basis of duty remained extremely obscure.  To account for this mysterious law (love) which weighs fundamentally on our liberty, man had recourse to all sorts of explanations, from that of an explicit command issued from outside to that of an irrational but categorical instinct.”

The next Post                   

This week we took a second look at morality as a facet of religion which can be seen as a tool for helping us understand the structure of the noosphere as a step to managing its risks.  We did this by looking at Teilhard’s synopsis of the history and the place of ‘morality’ in the unfolding of the noosphere.

Next week we’ll continue this theme, taking a deeper look at each of Teilhard’s (above) insights from his book “Human Energy” to see how the concept of morality can be enriched and more highly focused to enhance both the relevance of religion and offer a tool more finely honed for dealing with the noosphere’s inevitable risks.

November 15 – Religion as a Tool for Understanding the Noosphere

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a second look at Teilhard’s first step of managing the Noospheric Risks by better understanding it.  We saw how a deeper understanding of the structure of the Noosphere involves recognition of and cooperation with the universal agent that for fourteen billion years has invested itself in the continuation of complexity that has eventually given rise to humans.

As we have seen over the past several weeks, this rise is no longer based on instinctual, biological and physical processes: it must be consciously grasped and capitalized upon if it is to continue in the human species.  The ‘noospheric risks’ which we have identified must be consciously overcome if evolution is to continue through our species.

A major step in understanding the noosphere so that those risks can be managed, as Teilhard suggests, is to ‘articulate’ it, to understand how it works to effect our continued evolution, both in ourselves as well in our societies.

One such tool is, properly understood, religion.  This week we will take a first look at religion to understand how it can be seen as a tool to achieve such a goal.

Why Religion?

One of the foundational concepts that the great Western awakening known as “The Enlightenment” introduced was the diminishment of religion’s role in society and government.  One of the results of this diminishment was the rise of atheism, which placed many of the world’s ills (eg ‘Noospheric risks’) at the doorstep of organized religion.  Both the leading Enlightment thinkers, and the atheists which ensued, valued objective, empirical thinking over the subjective and intuitive intellectual processes that had informed medieval Western thinkers.  As we have discussed many times, the rise in ‘left brain’ thinking began to surpass that of the ‘right brain’ as a method of ‘articulating the noosphere’.

Given the many ills of religion that can be seen today in the Mideast governments infused with radical and fundamentalist expressions of Islam, as well as Western religions weighted down by fundamentalism, excessive hierarchical structures and pedophilia, It would seem that these post-Enlightenment perspectives are indeed superior to legacy religion in helping us make sense of what’s happening in the noosphere, and how to navigate our way through it.

Can there be a way that religion can be seen as a tool for helping us ‘articulate the noospere’ or is it destined to end up on the dust pile of history: a perspective that has ‘seen its day’ but is no longer relevant in this new and technical mileu?

One way to look at this question is to see it as evidence of yet another, very fundamental ‘duality’.  We have looked at the concept of ‘dualities’ through the eyes of Jonathan Sacks previously in this blog.  He, like Teilhard, saw such dualities as a way of seeing things as opposites, such as ‘this world’ vs ‘the next’, or ‘human’ vs ‘divine’.  In Teilhard’s insight, most dualities simply reflect an inadequate understanding of a situation, and can be overcome with the proper perspective.

From the traditional perspective, science and religion are often seen in terms of a duality.  This viewpoint reflects a mode of seeing in which ‘right brained’ and ‘left brain’ perspectives are understood as ‘opposites’.  To see them thusly is to forget that there is only a single brain, although it may have many modes of operation.

Teilhard’s method of resolving ‘dualities’ is simply to put them into a single context, as he does with ‘evolution’.  In such a context, the ‘opposites’ now appear as ‘points in a single spectrum’.  By this method, the continuation and coherence between the ‘opposites’ can now be understood.

So, the question above now gives way to a second question: “How can the legitimate ‘right brained’ perspective offered by religion be seen to help us, like the ‘left brained’ perspectives of the Enlightment have done, “make sense of what’s happening in the noosphere, and how to navigate our way through it.”

As we saw in our series on Norberg’s ‘Progress’, the human actions of innovation and invention, obviously the fruit of ‘left brain’ activity, nonetheless turned on the pivot points of personal freedom and human relationships, which are much more the domain of the ‘right brain’.  So, on the surface, it would seem essential for these two modes of human thought to operate less like the commonly understood ‘opposites’ than as the two facets of a single thing that biology shows us that they are.

Earlier in this blog, I have suggested that one measure of increasing human evolution is the skill of using the neocortex brain to modulate the instinctual stimuli of the lower (reptilian and limbic) brains.  Just as important is the corollary of using the whole neocortex, both left and right hemispheres, intuition and empiricism, in making sense of things.

As the above example from Norberg shows, articulating the ‘right brained’ concepts of personal freedom and relationships, while essential to our continued evolution, is not something we can request from science.  Requesting it from religion, as religion is commonly understood, is neither up to the task.  Traditional Western religion has only slightly evolved from its medieval perspectives, and as such would seem to offer little to a partnership with science in the enterprise of ‘articulating the noosphere’.  Extending Teilhard’s approach of understanding difficult questions by putting the subject into an evolutionary context, for religion to be germane in the answering of questions, it must evolve.

The Evolutionary Roots of Western Religion

Re-reading the Christian New Testament with Teilhard’s evolutionary context in mind offers a starting place for such evolution.  There are many concepts that appear with no precedent in the NT, that have been poorly carried forward as Christian theology developed, such as:

–          Understanding the presence of God in all created things (Pau) ,and particularly in the human person  (John), which is contrary to a God eventually taught as ‘external’ to creation

–          Understanding that we are bound together via a force which fosters our personal growth (Paul)

–          Recognizing that this growth enhances our uniqueness while it deepens our relationships

–          Recognizing that this uniqueness gives rise to the characteristic of human equality (Paul)), as opposed to the imposition of hierarchy

So a first step toward maturing religion would be to return to its evolutionary roots, many of which have sprouted anew in secular organizations, as so brilliantly seen in Thomas Jefferson’s reinterpretation of these evolutionary roots in purely secular terms.

       

The next Post                   

This week we took a first look at religion as a tool for helping us understand the structure of the noosphere as a step to managing its risks.  Next week we’ll continue this theme, taking a look at how religion has traditionally ‘articulated the noosphere’, and how the seeds for a more evolved articulation can be found among them.

November 8 – Managing the Noospheric Risks, Part 4- Understanding the Noosphere: The Conscious Spiral

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at a way to deal with the ‘noospheric’ risks, suggested by Teilhard:  to better understand the noosphere itself and what part we play in it.

In a nutshell, Teilhard saw that over the fourteen or so billion years of existence, the universe can be seen to follow the basic principle of matter entering into more complex (and hence less probable) organizations under the influence of a basic ‘energy of becoming’ which is built into the ‘stuff of the universe’.   He sees this principle manifesting itself more explicitly as the complexity of the ‘stuff of the universe’ becomes more pronounced over time, and therefore sees how the actions of this energy are reflected in in human lives as we participate in our own evolution.

   Last week we looked at Teilhard’s metaphor of the ‘spiral’ as evolution’s rise can be seen as convergent through the first eight or so billion years.  This week we will see how this convergent rise continues through the life era, and to its current state of consciousness aware of itself.

The Conscious Spiral

Last week we saw how evolution proceeds through ‘discontinuities’ in which new and unexpected functionalities, such as a greater potential for union, and increased facilities of each new entity (such as influence over its environment, mobility, vitality and potential for further increase in complexity through future unions).

While the above manifestations of evolution occur in scientifically verifiable steps, each of them represents a highly discontinuous step from the preceding plateau of evolution.  On an evolutionary time scale, the transition to each new state of complexity can be seen to occur at an increasingly rapid rate.  Even to the stage of reflectively conscious entities (humans) the increasing convergence of the spiral can be seen.

Last week we looked at this phenomenon in the ‘material’ realm.  Recognizing that Teilhard makes no sharp distinction between this realm and the ‘realm of the spirit’, we can see how this rise of evolution through discontinuous steps spills over into the ‘conscious’ realm.   While the early days of humanity are only vaguely understood, this convergence of the spiral of evolution can be seen to continue (all dates approximate):

–              Very early humans began to invent intuitive modes of thinking, based on instincts and clan relationships some 200,000 years ago

–              The evolution of primitive ‘laws’ of society evolve from clan norms about 15,000 years ago

–              ‘Axial Age’ concepts of person and society emerge from primitive concepts into ‘philosophies’ based on intuitions and instincts 3500 years ago

–              ‘Left brain’ modes of thinking arise in Greece from the traditionally universal ‘Right brained’ thinking of earlier systems some 3000 years ago.

–              Merging of left and right ‘modes’ of neocortex functions begins with the introduction of ‘left brain’ thinking into the legacy ‘right brained’ mode as Jewish-inspired Christianity becomes more influenced by Greek thinking 2000 years ago

–              Scientific/empirical thinking evolves from the Christian right-left merge 1400 years ago

–              The ‘Enlightenment’ emerges from the prevalent right-brained post medievalism at the same time as establishment of the personal as locus for the juridical (Jefferson) three hundred years ago

–              The abrupt increase in human welfare (as documented by Norberg) begins two hundred years ago.

 

Each of these ‘discontinuities’ illustrate the three key steps ‘up the convergent spiral of increasing complexity’ that Teilhard identifies:

–              They are all initially similar to the less complex entities which preceded them

–              They all in turn effect an increase in both the vitality and potential for union from the components in the preceding stage

–              All such effects require a new and more complex way of uniting with other components in such a way to increase their differentiation, vitality and power to unite.

It’s also important to note the timeline: each discontinuity took less time to effect a step increase in complexity than the preceding.

The Continuity Beneath the Discontinuity

Thus, while Teilhard notes the occurrence of discontinuity in evolution, he also shows how underneath these discontinues lies a basic fundamental, continuous current which powers the ‘axis of evolution’.  He notes that at each such step, several things happen no matter which stage of evolution we are addressing:

–              The evolved element of ‘the stuff of the universe ’rises not only in its complexity, but in its uniqueness.  Each new appearance, while initially retaining its similarity to its parent, is highly distinguishable from its precedent.

–              This characteristic is very important to the recognition that human evolution occurs in the same way that all steps have occurred in universal evolution.  As Teilhard puts it:

“True Union Differentiates”, and this applies to evolution at every phase, from the Big Bang

       to the Human person

Thus, an important step in understanding the noosphere is to recognize that our lives are connected to a cosmic agent which, to the extent that we can recognize and cooperate with it, we will be lifted ever upward.  In Teilhard’s words:

 “..I doubt that whether there is a more decisive moment for a thinking being than when the scales fall from his eyes and he discovers that he is not an isolated unit lost in the cosmic solitudes and realizes that a universal will to live converges and is hominized in him.”

   Understanding this connects us to a fourteen billion year process which has raised the universe, as Richard Dawkins observes, “into its present complex existence”.   So, if we are to understand the noosphere, as Teilhard suggests is a step towards managing its risks, we need the ‘scales to fall from our eyes’ so that we can not only take in the breadth and scope of the universe, but see that the noosphere fits into it naturally, as a child to a loving parent.

The Next Post                   

This week we took a second look at ‘understanding the noosphere’ in terms of a rising, converging spiral, this week looking at the nature of the spiral as it rises from ‘complexifying’ matter to ‘enriching spirit’.  In understanding that the current state of human evolution is a sure and steady continuation of such rise over the preceding fourteen or so billions of years of universal existence, and that the basic nature of our lives is nourished and assured of survival by this personal agent of evolution, we need only to open our eyes to it, recognize it as active in our lives, and learn to cooperate with it if we are to be successful in dealing with the ‘noospheric risks’.

Having taken a closer look at those risks which can impede human evolution, and looked at a better understanding of the ‘noosphere’ as a start to managing them, next we will return to the core topic of this blog, ‘reinterpretation of religion’, to see how religion can be employed as a enterprise to build on Teilhard’s “clearer disclosure of God in the world” to assure our future.

October 31 – Managing the Noospheric Risks, Part 4- Understanding the Noosphere – Part 1- The Spiral of Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw that one way to deal with the ‘noospheric’ risks was to better understand the noosphere itself and what part we play in it.  In doing so, we are taking Teilhard’s approach which he explains:

“Evolution is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses which all systems must

submit and satisfy from now on in order to be conceivable and true.”

   Teilhard’s approach, therefore, is to place any subject into the context of universal evolution if we are to better understand it, and the noosphere is no exception.

This week we will continue down this path of looking at the noosphere in an evolutionary context to help situate ourselves in this process of understanding ‘complexification’ as it takes place in human evolution.

The Convergent Spiral of Evolution

Teilhard used the ‘sphere’ as a metaphor for understanding how the expansion of humanity compresses us as it reaches the equator of our metaphorical sphere, and instead of continuing to spread, we begin to press in on ourself.  In the same way, he uses that of the spiral to illustrate how ‘the stuff of the universe’ becomes more complex as its components unite to increase their complexity at the same time that they are drawn ‘upwards to more complexity’ and ‘inwards towards closer union’.  The spiral that Teilhard envisions isn’t just a simple coil, like a bedspring, it’s a spiral which converges as it rises over time.

Teilhard identifies the energy which induces convergence as ‘radial’, and the energy by which the components of the ‘stuff of the universe’ become more complex in their uniting as ‘tangential’.  These two components, work together to increase the complexity  of this ‘stuff’ as the convergence  of the spiral pulls these components not only closer to each other but also closer to the ‘axis’ of the spiral (Teilhards ‘axis of evolution’.  In doing so they become closer to the source of the universal energy by which all things become united in such a way as to differentiate themselves at the same time that they are enriched.

Applying this metaphor to humanity, we can understand ourselves as the most recent manifestation of such ‘stuff of the universe’, produced as the result of these three components of energy which interact to increase the complexity of the universe.  We engage with  ‘tangential’ energy when we relate to others while enhancing and enriching our ‘persons’; we engage with ‘radial’ energy as we become more conscious of, and learn to cooperate with the ‘tangential’ energy which differentiates and enhances us, and in this cooperation both our persons and our ‘psychisms’ become more complete and enriched.

So, to the question of where are we in this universal journey from pure energy to some future state of increased complexity, Teilhard offers a suggestion:  We are early in the process of learning both how relationships and cooperation are essential to our progress.

That said, can we quantify how such process can be seen?

The Empirical Spiral

While an integrated understanding of all the facets of energy acting on us, much less an understanding of how to cooperate with them, might be so far immature in understanding at this point in our evolution,  empirical science can offer some insight.

While the light which science can show on the past may not yet be complete, Physics highlights the many ‘discontinuities’ which appear in the past evolution of ‘the stuff of the universe’, such as:

–          Matter appearing from pure energy

–          Atoms emerging from combinations of the first, simple grains of matter

–          Molecules emerging from an infinitude of combinations of atoms

–          Such molecules evolving to the relatively astonishing organization of cells

–          Cells continuing this unprecedented explosion into the relatively complex groupings found in neurons

–          Neurons find ways to compact themselves into centralized neurosystems, then to  brains

–          Neocortices emerge from limbic brains,  themselves from reptilian brains

–          Conscious brains become aware of their functionality

Each of these transitions can be considered a ‘discontinuity’ because the conditions which preceded each of them, taken out of context, do not suggest the significant change in complexity which ensues.  While science can describe the physical processes which are involved in the transitions, it cannot explain the increasing complexity that results.  There is no current explanation of how the ‘stuff of the universe’ manages its slow but very sure rise in complexity as it moves from the level of the big bang to that of the human which is capable of an awareness aware of itself.

While all these stages and their transitions can be described and to some extent understood by science, their increase in complexity following each discontinuity into human evolution requires a look into how the element of ‘consciousness’ can also be seen to evolve.

Next Week

This week we took a first step toward ‘understanding the noosphere’ by following Teilhard as he situates the noosphere in an evolutive context.   To begin this phase we saw how Teilhard used the metaphor of the ‘spiral’ to map out the manifestations  of energy which power our evolution, and how their manifestations can be seen in the ‘disconuities’ which have occurred in the history of the universe.

Next  week we will look further into the metaphor of the ‘spiral’ as we carry it forward into the realm of consciousness.