Today’s Post

Last week we saw that one way to deal with the ‘noospheric’ risks (those associated with the risks brought on by the milieu of our collective humanity) 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.”

   If we’re going to manage the risks, we must better understand the milieu that we are creating as we evolve. Teilhard’s approach to any subject is to place it 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. As a result, instead of continuing to spread, we begin to press in on ourselves, requiring replacement of those tools that served us so well in the ‘expansion’ phase with ones which will support our ‘compression’.

In the same way, he uses the metaphor of the spiral (Jan 9) to illustrate how ‘the stuff of the universe’ evolves 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 sees the cosmic energy which powers evolution, active in each element of the universe, acting in three ways:

• First, he notes a ‘tangential’ component of this energy by which the granules of the ‘stuff of the universe’ have the potential of uniting with each other.
• Secondly, he notes a ‘vertical’ component of this energy by which such union increases complexity
• Thirdly he notes a ‘radial’ component of this energy by which the components become not only more complex, but more capable of increasing their unification and therefore becoming more complex .

Hence the convergence of the spiral pulls these components not only closer to each other but also closer to the ‘axis’ of the spiral (Teilhard’s ‘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.

Thus, in this simple graphic metaphor, Teilhard shows the universe evolving as union brings complexity which in turn increases the potential for further union.

A very simple example of this tri-vectored evolutionary force can be seen in the Standard Model of Physics. Electrons can unite to become atoms, which by definition are more complex. The few types of ‘the stuff of the universe’ represented by electrons become the many types represented by atoms. The atoms in turn contain more potential for unification than did the electrons, and therefore become a larger set of granules which are not only more complex but whose potential is increased in such a way that they can unite to become highly complex molecules.

In such successive ‘trips around the spiral’ do we see the incredible simple electron evolving into the highly complex amino acid which is one of the building blocks of the cell.

Applying Teilhard’s spiral 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?

Th Empirical Spiral

We are surely very early in the process of building an integrated understanding of all the facets of energy acting on us, much less an understanding of how to cooperate with them. Even so, 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 more 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 ensues. There is no current scientific explanation of how the ‘stuff of the universe’ manages its slow but very sure rise in complexity as it moves from the undifferentiated level of the big bang to the highly differentiated human which is uniquely capable of an awareness which is 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 ‘discontinuities’ 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.