While Dawkins substantiates Teilhard’s insights on evolution, Norberg documents them
Today’s Post
For the past four weeks we have seen how Richard Dawkins, brilliant geneticist and vociferous critic of religion, manages to nonetheless substantiate Teilhard’s optimistic insights into the nature of cosmic evolution, even to the point of quantifying how evolution proceeds through the human species.
This week we will begin to see how the huge treasure trove of contemporary data can substantiate Teilhard’s vision of our continued evolution.
Teilhard, Norberg and Human Evolution
There are other secular sources of empirical information that substantiate Teilhard’s vision of evolution’s path to the future. One of the strongest is Johan Norberg, analytical historian, who offers a wealth of global current and historical statistics which very clearly support Teilhard’s insights into the continuation of evolution in the human species. His two books, “Progress” and “Open” provide accumulations of data from the World Economic Forum, UNICEF, World Bank, UNESCO, WHO, OECD and many others to chart a distinct and exponential rise in global human welfare over the past hundred fifty years. This data articulates the history of human welfare in his book, ‘Progress’. In them, Teilhard’s vision of an advancing humanity is strongly substantiated. When the human development of venues and strategies for such advancement is presented in his book, “Open”, Teilhard’s concept of the noosphere as both a human product and a tool for its continuation is also articulated.
Thus, in Norberg’s two insights into the quantification of human evolution and his analysis of its tools for doing so, Teilhard’s insights and forecasts for the future can be seen to take on an increasing tangibility.
Quantifying Human Evolution
How can human evolution be quantified? Biologists see a very clear continuation of morphological evolution in the human species due to small, incessant, slow, and random changes in the DNA molecule which controls life’s florescence. This type of evolution continues in the form of ‘Natural Selection’ through random changes in the molecular structure of the human cell. These changes in turn result in the slow emergence of new characteristics of human physiology over time.
While these processes are certainly in play today, their extremely slow pace does not explain the much more rapid explosion of changes in human culture and society that can be seen in human history. These changes, unlike that of biological influences, have had a drastic impact on both the dimensions of human life and the human footprint on our planet.
As Norberg sees it, this development can be seen in two ways that reflect Teilhard’s insights of human ‘psychsms’ (groups of humans working collaboratively) and the ‘axis of evolution’.
“..the amazing accomplishments that resulted from the slow, steady, spontaneous development of millions of people who were given the freedom to improve their own lives, and in doing so improved the world.”
In doing so he alludes to the existence of an innate ‘energy of evolution’:
“It is a kind of progress that no leader or institution or government can impose from the top down.”
Norberg doesn’t reference Teilhard or cite religious beliefs. Instead, he refers to findings from public surveys, Government data, international media, and global institutions.
His approach is to propose nine categories in which human evolution can be objectively and empirically understood.
Food Sanitation
Life Expectancy Poverty
Violence The Environment
Literacy Freedom
Equality
For each of these categories he provides, as the noted international news magazine The Economist characterizes, “a tornado of evidence” for the “slow, steady, spontaneous development” of the human species. He compares these statistics across the planet, from Western societies, to near- and mid- Eastern Asia, to China and India, and to super-and sub-Saharan Africa. And, to the extent possible, he extends trends from antiquity to the current day.
This look at objective and verifiable historical data will serve to put Teilhard’s highly optimistic vision of the future to the test. Does the data show that we humans are continuing to evolve? If so, in what ways, how quickly, and is the trend positive or negative?
While our approach to Norberg’s findings is merely summarized here, it can be seen in much more detail in earlier posts.
Next Week
This week we began to look at the huge trove of data which Johan Norberg culls to quantify how evolution can be seen to increase human welfare.
Next week we will see how his data clearly substantiates Teilhard’s insights on human evolution.