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 would 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 appear 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: sciences’ 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 category (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 process 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 Darwin’s 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?

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’.