Monthly Archives: November 2024

November 14, 2024 – How Are Teilhard’s Facets of Complexity Active in Human Evolution?

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   How does Teilhard understand ‘complexity’ as underlying human evolution?

Today’s Post

Last week we took a closer look at how, through the ‘lens of evolution’, Teilhard’s ‘complexification’ can be seen to continue in the third of his three stages of universal evolution, at least on this planet (matter, life and thought).  Following Richard Dawkins’ recognition of human culture as the ‘vehicle’ of the transmission of ‘memes’ (“units of cultural imitation and replication”, AKA, ‘ideas’), human evolution can be expanded from the simple Darwinist “survival of the fittest” into a new and unique ‘re-instantiation’ of the cosmic principles which have guided ‘the stuff of the universe’ through its first fourteen billion years of evolution via ‘complexification’.

This week we will apply Teilhard’s seven facets of this ‘complexification’ to what we can see happening as the universe continues its evolution in the human species.

Complexity as a A Common Metric

In Richard Dawkins’ identification of a ‘causality’ for the third phase of evolution, ‘thought’, he addresses the question raised last week:

“What remains in charting the rise of ‘complexity’ through the evolution of the universe is to understand how such a thing as ‘human consciousness’ can be seen as a new ‘vehicle’ which can continue the fourteen billion rise of evolution into the future.   How can this ‘new vehicle’ be understood?”

   And in providing insight into evolution as it continues into this third phase of ‘thought’, Teilhard’s concept of ‘complexification’ as the common denominator in universal evolution is complete (at least thus far on this planet).

For those who know how to look, Teilhard’s seven characteristics of universal complexity can be seen as alive and well in the continuing drama of human evolution.

  • An underlying characteristic of nearly every cultural and social mode of organization can be seen in the unleashing of fanciful creations. The ‘Natural Selection’ of biology, as Dawkins sees it, manifests itself in a new form as the human species continually explores new ways to not only maintain itself, but to increase its success in furthering itself.
  • Both society and human activity, when fostered, burst forward in waves of spontaneity. Those branches of human organization which foster the ability of its constituents to exercise their potential for ‘spontaneity’ are always rewarded with increased potential for action.
  • The expansion of the human species across the globe is unprecedented. And the unrest that accompanies the waves of human expansion as they collide are offset by the emergence of new insights on coexistence.
  • Human social experiments are exceedingly improbable. These new insights are not always obvious, and do not occur spontaneously.  The idea of democracy, for example, required a long history which culminated in placing a risky trust in government in the hands of collective wisdom.
  • Humans find ever new and innovative ways to organize, tap into, and assure the continuation of their collective wisdom. The social norms and civic mandates (laws) that emerge over time are constantly evolving.
  • Governments, at least in the West, have developed more supple and better centered organization and use of their resources. Those governments that put a priority on in the importance of the human person (as seen in the fostering of their spontaneity) and on the necessity for ensuring their relationships have evolved cultural norms which have led to a measurable and rapidly increase in global human welfare.  We will later address the many ways that this increase can be seen, as well as its dependence on the values of human personal freedom and insurance of human relationships.
  • Historically, each new cycle has been accompanied by an onset of a new type of conscious activity and determination. In the rise and fall of great societies in the spiral of humanity as it evolves, a continuation of insights can be traced.

We will see later how the wheat of human evolution can be distinguished among the many elements of chaff when we later address specific objective examples of these seven characteristics.

Next Week

This week we not only saw how Teilhard’s seven characteristics of complexity are active in human evolution, but how the human person and his culture serve as the ‘vehicle’ for Dawkins’ ‘meme’ as it replaces the cell as the essential building block of evolution

Next week we will look a little more closely at how this phenomenon of ‘complexification’ can be seen as the essential activity active in the universe as it unfolds into the state that can be seen today.

 

November 7, 2024 – How is Teilhard’s Concept of Complexity Active in Human Evolution?

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   How does universal evolution continue in human life?

Today’s Post

For the past several weeks we have been exploring Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ as a tool which can help us see the whole of existence in a single context so that we could better understand ourselves and how we fit in.  Starting with Teilhard’s unique insights into evolution itself, we have gone on to see how he saw the phenomenon of ‘increasing complexity’ as the underlying characteristic of this evolution, and how he quantifies it.

In the last two weeks we saw how Teilhard’s seven characteristics of ‘complexification’ can be seen in each stage of the evolution of the universe, leading to the essential characteristic of ‘consciousness’.  As a necessary step to understanding evolution holistically, we saw how these characteristics are active in each new step as the universe evolves to each new stage.

This week we will return to the second, ‘biological’, stage of universal evolution (at least on this planet) to take a closer look at what can be seen in the action of ‘biological complexification’ as it increases the ‘coefficient of consciousness’ to that level which distinguishes the human from its ancestors.

Complexity in Living Things

After addressing the nine billion or so years during which the basic elements of the cosmos continuously structured and restructured themselves into the complex architecture of DNA, in the ‘Phenomenon’ Teilhard turns his insights into the ‘complexification’ of living matter as it increases from the cell to the human.

“The stages of this still unfinished march of nature (can be seen in the) unification or synthesis of the ever-increasing products of living reproduction:

– At the bottom, we find the simple aggregate, as in bacteria and the lower fungi

– One stage higher comes the colony of attached cells, not yet centralized, though distinct specialization has begun, as with the higher vegetable forms and the bryozoa,

-Higher still is the metazoan cell of cells, in which by a prodigious critical transformation and autonomous center is established (as though by excessive shrinking) over the organized group of living particles.

– And still further on, to round off the list, at the present limit of our experience and of life’s experiments, comes society- that mysterious association of free metazoans in which (with varying success) the formation of hyper-complex units by ‘mega synthesis’ seems to being attempted.”

This last and highest form of aggregation is the self-organizing effort of matter culminating perhaps in society as capable of self-reflection.”

Evolution: A Rose By Any Other Name…

Most evolutionary scientists ignore the ongoing development of human society, or at least avoid the term ‘evolution’ in dealing with it.  This same curious avoidance can be seen in the ‘Standard Model’ of Physics: science’s understanding of the development of matter during the ‘pre life’ era.

While the Standard Model maps the phenomenon of universal ‘becoming’, the reference to it as ‘evolution’ seems to be strongly avoided.  To most biologists, the term “evolution” must be restricted to living things, and even then, only to their ‘morphology’, the physio-chemical combinations of cells that produce various classes of life.

To some extent, the emerging science of ‘molecular biology’, even though it falls under the first evolutionary stage of evolution (‘matter’), falls close to the second stage (‘life’).  This is due to the ability of very complex (but so far still inanimate) molecules to self-organize and replicate.  The existence of viruses, non-cellular but also containing DNA, also falls into the category of ‘inanimate matter’ but one capable of evolving via Natural Selection.  However, the perspective taken by most biologists is that all other processes by which pre-living things ‘become’ fall outside of the label of ‘evolution’.

That aside, the question of whether, and if so how, evolution continues in the third stage (‘thought’) remains.  Human societies are without the DNA seemingly required by Natural Selection, so how can their development be considered as ‘evolution’?

It seems clear that to the extent that human evolution occurs, it does so in ways quite differently from the Darwinian process of Natural Selection.  The state of human society, and the personal acumen both required for and fostered by it, have both evolved today from a degree understood just a few hundred years ago.  But by what process has this happened?  If humans evolve via their society, what is the human counterpart of the ‘genes’ required by Natural Selection?

The evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, addressed this question in his book, “The Selfish Gene”, by proposing that human society evolves via “transmission of units of cultural imitation and replication”.  His name for the ‘unit of transmission’ was ‘meme’.  The lack of a consistent, rigorous, and precise understanding of what typically makes up a ‘meme’ makes treatment by science somewhat problematic, but he recognizes that the concept is sufficient to identify a third aspect of evolution: how it can be seen to proceed ‘non-morphologically’ in the human species.  As he distinguishes it from Darwinist evolution, human culture

“…  “evolves in historical time in a way that looks like highly speeded up genetic evolution. but has nothing to do with genetic evolution.”

   Thus, with ‘memitic evolution’, we are provided an example of the last of the three phases of the process of evolution in the cosmos:

  • via the increasing organization of matter in the first, pre-life stage (‘matter’)
  • followed by the process of Natural Selection through genetic changes in biologic entities during the second stage (‘life’)
  • and finally, via the transmission of ideas in human culture in a third stage (‘thought’)

Science, in its ‘Standard Model’ shows a strong belief in the underlying unity of the cosmos but thus far has failed to quantify it as it broadens its view to these three distinct manifestations of universal evolution.

Are these, as many claim, three different processes, or can they be somehow seen, as Teilhard suggests, as three manifestations of a common, underlying thread?  How can Teilhard’s seven levels of ‘complexification’ be applied to this third phase of evolution, ‘thought’?

 

Next Week

This week we took a closer look at what can be seen in the second stage of universal evolution, ‘life’, as the ‘coefficient of consciousness’ increases to that level which distinguishes the human from its ancestors.

Next week we will apply Teilhard’s seven levels of ‘complexification’ to this third phase of evolution, ‘thought’.