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’.

  How are his aspects of ‘complexification’ active in the evolution of consciousness?

Today’s Post

Last week we began to see how Teilhard articulates his ‘metric of complexification’ into discrete facets which can be seen in each stage of evolution as it unfolds in the universe.  We began by seeing how this upward force can be seen in such things as a ‘thrust forward in spontaneity’ and a ‘luxuriant unleashing of fanciful creations’ that can be seen as products of evolution unfold from one stage to the next in each step of evolution.

This week we will address Teilhard’s other five facets that can be observed in this process:

• unbridled expansion
• a leap into the improbable
• essentially new type of corpuscular grouping
• more supple and better centered organization of an unlimited number of substances
• internal onset of a new type of conscious activity and determination

With this last characteristic of ‘complexification’ we can begin to see how increase in complexity leads to the emergence of ‘consciousness’, and hence to the threshold of the evolutionary phase of ‘thought’.

Teilhard’s Facets of ‘Complexification’, Continued

Unbridled expansion

As can be seen in the increasing numbers associated with stages of evolution in the first metric mentioned last week, ‘spontaneity’, there seems to be no upper limit to the potential of organization of biological products of evolution.  While the physical nature of this planet surely imposes such a limit, the process of evolution thus far seems unaware of it.

With the explosion of human ideas, quantified in the form of the zigabytes of data on the internet, there seems to be no upper limit.

Leap into the improbable

While clearly anachronistic, how could one stand at the universal stage of pre-atomic dispersal of matter at the birth of the universe, made up of particles no more complex than electrons, and predict that these bits of ‘the stuff of the universe’ would eventually self-assemble into ever more complex arrangements with ever increasing potential for further growth?  Such a prediction would seem even more improbable as evolution continues into the realm of DNA molecules instructing RNA in the fabrication of proteins that would specify how cells would develop their amazing range of functionality.  Seen thusly, not only is the future ever more ‘fanciful’ but seems also increasingly ‘improbable’.

Essentially new type of corpuscular grouping

All this new functional complexity by necessity comes layered upon structural complexity.  The increase in the atom’s functional potential to arrange themselves into molecules, for example, is clearly accompanied by an increase in structure.  The groupings of proteins seen in the intricate windings of DNA could not have achieved the potential eventually realized in the cell without finding a way to enclose themselves into self-contained, skin-enclosed and ‘centered’ configurations.

Teilhard mentions many times that matter is the enclosure for the agency of increased complexity.  As we will see later, this simple but undeniable observation is essential to understanding such slippery subjects as ‘consciousness’ and ‘spirituality’.

More supple and better centered organization of an unlimited number of substances

Again, in Teilhard’s example of the cell, we can see yet another characteristic of ‘complexification’.  In the cell,

“We find a triumph of multiplicity originally organically contained within a minimum of space.”

   For the molecule, already achieving an unprecedented level of complexity with its spiral of interconnected amino acids which find ways to replicate themselves, we can see in the cell a ‘packaging’ in which these spirals can fold in upon themselves and form a ‘vehicle’ which is now able to not only replicate, but to ramify and therefore explore all available avenues for further increases in complexity.  The complexity of this ‘packaging’ also provides something not found in the precedent molecule: a center.   And, as can be seen in the study of biological evolution, those products that are more ‘centered’ are more ‘supple’ and hence evolve their ‘complexity’ more quickly.

Internal onset of a new type of conscious activity and determination

This last of Teilhard’s quantifications of ‘complexity’ opens the door to addressing the slippery concept of ‘consciousness’.  Much of science has addressed it, from psychology to neurology, without coming to a consensus on either its ontology or its mechanisms.

Teilhard correctly recognizes that the locus of consciousness in is better situated within the phenomenon of complexity.  Simply stated: “the more complex a product of evolution is, the more consciousness it contains”.  From his perspective, ‘consciousness’ does not appear only in the ‘higher’ orders of living things, such as brain-centered animals, but is present to some degree in each element of matter everywhere in the cosmos.  That it only manifests itself to the eyes of science in its more advanced form is a limitation of the instruments we use to detect it and not evidence of absence.

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

Next Week

This week we looked at the remaining five of Teilhard’s facets of ‘complexification’ as they can be seen to be active in the process of evolution as it continues in the cosmos.  In the fifth facet we begin to see how the phenomenon of consciousness is not ‘layered onto’ an inanimate universe but instead rises slowly as it unfolds through all its stages.

Next week we will look at this phenomenon as it breaks through into the third of Teilhard’s evolutionary phases, “thought”.

   How does Teilhard’s ‘lens’ show how complexity manifests itself in the evolution of the universe?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw Teilhard’s first step toward understanding evolution as the recognition that its common denominator in every phase of the unfolding of the universe is ‘increase in complexity’.  We saw how he sees the appearance of the cell as a specific instance of a ‘step of complexification’.  As he put it, the cell is just one example of

“… the stuff of the universe reappearing once again with all its characteristics- only this time it has reached a higher rung of complexity”.

Given that the cell illustrates one step of the multitudes needed to grow the universe to its current complex state over fourteen billion years, how can the characteristics of complexity be seen as active in each of the steps?

This week we will review two of seven of Teilhard’s insights into how complexity can be objectively observed as a general phenomenon present in every stage of evolution.

The Cell as a Specific Example of Universal Complexification

In the ‘Phenomenon’, Teilhard lists seven characteristics of the cell that can be seen as ‘new’ when compared to its molecular predecessor.

– Thrust forward in spontaneity

– Luxuriant unleashing of fanciful creations

– Unbridled expansion

– Leap into the improbable

– Essentially new type of corpuscular grouping

– More supple and better centered organization of an unlimited number of substances

– Internal onset of a new type of conscious activity and determination

   Having recognized these characteristics, we can go on to see how each one of these can be seen as active in every step of universal evolution from the quark to the human person.

Thrust forward in spontaneity

The cell clearly shows an increase in spontaneity when compared to the complex molecular evolutionary products (DNA, RNA, proteins) from which it emerged.  With its greater potential for connectivity, the cell is now able to carry the simple molecular activity of ‘replication’ into the biological activity of ‘ramification’.

This step requires the repackaging of DNA into a configuration with more potential for branching into ever more complex forms.  As Richard Dawkins explains, DNA itself cannot evolve.  It can only provide instructions to RNA to manufacture proteins.  However, these ‘instructions’ are susceptible to occasional failures, such as seen in tissue growths induced by x-rays.  The cell provides a vehicle for the modified DNA to prove its worth as it is exposed to the environment by the increased mobility of the cell.

Each new step of evolution, from the formation of electrons to atoms to molecules to proteins, and cells to neutrons to brains, is accompanied by such an increase of functionality as well as potential for more complexity.  A simple metric which illustrates this phenomenon can be seen in the increasing number of ‘new’ products that result from groupings of their fewer number of precedents.  Examples include the hundred eighty types of atoms that result from groupings of their four constituent components, or the many thousands of types of molecules that result from these hundred eighty atoms.  The hundred million neurons in the human brain also provides quantification of this phenomenon.

Luxuriant unleashing of fanciful creations

In capitalizing on the ‘replication’ potential of DNA, the cell offers another example of complexification.  Teilhard uses the word ‘fanciful’ to denote the ‘branching’ (or ‘ramification’) of biological products which leads to ever more complex arrangements. The increased complexity of the cell endows it with the ability to more fully exploit its environment.  Many attempts have been made to show the staggering proliferation of biological configurations (the ‘tree of life’) that science believes to have emerged from the one or two original cellular prototypes that emerged some three or so billion years ago on this planet.  Again, this can be seen to a lesser extent in ‘pre biological’ evolution (as in fabricating proteins from amino acids) and becomes even more so with the ramification seen at the other end of the biological scale: in human culture.

Next Week

This week we began a look into how Teilhard understood the action of ‘complexification’ which is active in all stages of evolution as it unfolds in the universe.

Next week we will expand this list of ‘complexification’ actions on the way to seeing them as active in the current phase of evolution, ‘thought’.

   What does Teilhard see as the single underlying phenomenon in cosmic evolution?

Today’s Post

Last week we began to see how Teilhard’s insight into evolution departs significantly from that of traditional science and religion.  From science, it broadens the scope of evolution from the biological era to the whole era of existence of the known universe.  For religion, it adverts to a process by which the underlying agency of this evolution can be seen as active in each human person, and if acknowledged, can lead us on to, as Karen Armstrong suggests, “a greater possession of ourselves”.

But such a vision requires some sort of ‘metric’, evidence for a tangible activity which is active in all stages of the uplifting of the universe.  This week we will begin to address Teilhard’s insights into such a metric.

‘Complexification’ as the Essence of Evolution

Teilhard proposes such a succinct and universal metric in his suggestion that the process of evolution in all stages and at all times of the universe can be seen in the increase of complexity of the elements of matter over time.

The term can be a little slippery.  We live in a ‘complicated world’, one in which the complexity of our environment continually invades our calm even while it is adding to our comfort.  Who among us does not long for ‘simpler times’?  Using the term ‘complexity’ to suggest some sort of improvement in our lot over time can seem somewhat contradictory.

Teilhard uses the term rigorously, as he does with all those which he uses to address his insights into the organization and processes of the universe.  He simply notes that when addressing the process of evolution we can see that

“In each particular element energy is divided into two distinct components: a tangential energy which links the element with all others of the same order (that is to say, of the same complexity and the same centricity) as itself; and a radial energy which draws it towards ever greater complexity and centricity- in other words: forwards.”

   He takes note of the scientific concept of evolution that new things come from the connectivity of precedent things but adds the missing agency: the new things can be more complex than their individual precedents.  This should be obvious: if the new things remained at the same level of their precedents, the universe would not evolve in the way that science has discovered.  For example, if atoms remained at the elemental organization of their component neutrons, protons and electrons, there would be no stars, planets, molecules, cells, or brains in the universe.

He goes on to say

“In its own way, matter has obeyed from the beginning that great law. to which we shall have to recur time and time again, the law of ‘complexification”.

Explaining Complexity

If we are to differentiate between ‘complicated’ and ‘complex’, a little more description will help.  Teilhard’s definition goes well beyond the simple addition of structure and addresses how complexification can be seen to increase as the universe evolves.

“In every domain, when anything exceeds a certain measurement, it suddenly changes its aspect, condition or nature.  The curve doubles back, the surface contracts to a point, the solid disintegrates, the liquid boils, the germ cell divides, intuition suddenly bursts on the piled-up facts…Critical points have been reached, rungs on the ladder, involving a change of state-jumps of all sorts in the course of development.  This is the only way in which science can speak of a ‘first instant’.”

   In ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ he uses the cell to describe a specific example of ‘complexification’ in the evolution process.  With the cell,

“We find a triumph of multiplicity originally organically contained within a minimum of space.”

   As Richard Dawkins explains it in his book, “The Selfish Gene”, matter has reached a ‘rung of complexity’ seen in the complex arrangements of amino acids into such products as proteins, DNA and RNA.  This arrangement of matter has itself evolved to the point that not only can its components unite in ways which increase their complexity, they can also replicate it.

Dawkins notes that the next step, that seen in the further encasing of this complex molecular machine into a ‘sheath’ of skin which encloses it and increases its sphere of activity, is not such a great step as science has thought.  He would seem in agreement with Teilhard, who saw it this way:

“In this cell…what we have is really the stuff of the universe reappearing once again with all its characteristics- only this time it has reached a higher rung of complexity and thus, by the same stroke…advanced still further in interiority, ie in consciousness.”

Next Week

This week we began a look at Teilhard’s groundbreaking concept of ‘complexity’ as the underlying characteristic that quantifies the universe’s unfolding into what we see today.  He uses the cell as a specific example of how the increase in complexity can be unequivocally seen in a critical step along the way.

Next week we will expand this example into a more general look at Teilhard’s ‘complexification’ process to see how occurs not only in biological evolution but in our personal and cultural evolution as well.

   How does Teilhard see ‘evolution’ differently from traditional science and religion?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw that Teilhard considered his ‘lens of evolution’ to offer a way to clarify the reality in which we are enmeshed.  The concept of ‘evolution’, however, especially as Teilhard understood it, itself needs to be clarified if we are to do so.

This week we will look at how his insight is quite different from traditional perspectives, and thus opens a path to the integrated and wholistic perspective that Teilhard developed.

The Evolution of Evolution

Nearly all scientists and many religious thinkers (at least from the liturgical Christian expressions) recognize that the things we see around us emerged as part of a process generally referred to as ‘evolution’.  Simply stated, this term refers to the assertion that all things come to be from things which preceded them.  This simple assertion is the starting point for Teilhard’s insight that evolution offers a lens to understand reality:

“Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.”

That said, there is a decidedly wide spectrum of understanding how this action of ‘coming from’ can be seen to occur.  At one end of the spectrum, strongly held in the conservative religious camp, a supernatural being simply created, ‘from nothing’, everything that exists.  To conform to the scientific fossil record, it all didn’t occur instantaneously but was sequentially created to give the appearance of doing so.  At the other end, strongly held by the more materialist scientists, the process by which things come to be what they are is understood as governed by pure chance, combined with ‘Natural Selection’ in which those random combinations of cells which survive will engender offspring and those that don’t will not.

Another issue which separates these two poles is the question of time span.  In the former, God can create what’ he’ wants in any order, beginning with the finest grains of ‘the stuff of the universe’, in as little as six thousand years.  To the scientist, this ‘stuff’ must somehow get to a very high degree of organization before Natural Selection can kick in, and this requires billions of years.  For example, it is necessary for evolution to first effect very complex inorganic molecules, such as amino acids, proteins and DNA before the emergence of the very first, most simple cells can begin.

The concept of evolution is so common today that it is difficult to realize just how recently it has risen in our collective consciousness.  It was only a little over a hundred years ago that Darwin published his thesis on biological evolution, an evolutionary ‘blink of the eye. This thesis, albeit with many variations, still stands as the most accepted scientific approach to understanding the origin of living things on this planet.

Within fifty years after Darwin, however, science began to extend its inquiry beyond living things on our planet and into the nature of the entire cosmos.  With thinkers such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, supplemented by advanced instruments and computational systems unimaginable in Darwin’s time, science has begun to grasp the true immensity of the universe, not only in space but in time as well.

This new awareness of the seemingly infinite duration of time that it took the universe to organize into the configuration we see today also opened the question of “how did this happen?”  The discipline of Physics has continued the task of expanding our understanding of this organization with its ‘Standard Model’.  The Standard Model of the late twentieth century identifies the basic building blocks of matter, the order of their appearance and their energies of interaction, although with many gaps still to be filled.  Many of its basic assumptions have been independently tested and verified, thus offering our best and most comprehensive understanding of matter in a universal context.  Its underlying assumption is that the universe becomes what it is via the processes identified in the Standard Model; from such minute granules as quarks, through increasingly intricate components such as electrons, atoms and molecules into those which are capable of supporting the functions that we refer to as ‘living’.

Science’s monumental expansion of insight into cosmic reality, however, still possesses a gaping hole.  While the evolution of living things is somewhat explained by Natural Selection, there is no underlying concept for how the elemental granules identified by the Standard Model came to be configured into complex entities, such as DNA, which are necessary for the emergence of the cell.  The passage of time alone cannot alone account for the rungs of complexity mounted by the elemental ‘stuff of the universe’ as it precipitated sequentially from a featureless quantum of energy into such increasingly complex entities as electrons, atoms and molecules.

There’s a third stage of evolution to be considered in addition to the material and biological, that of ‘thought’.  The theory of Natural Selection works well in explaining the evolution of living things, but less so in explaining the rise in biological complexity leading up to the human, seen in such phenomena as ‘consciousness’ and ‘culture’.  Further still, the principles of biological Natural Selection would seem to apply poorly to the explanation for the subsequent evolution of the individual human person in the context of society.  The phenomenon of consciousness and an understanding of how it plays out in human culture therefore continues to be at the edge of the grasp of biology.   It is common for biologists to simply ignore human evolution at the level of consciousness, other than in the biological sense of random genetic mutation of human ‘morphology’.  That humans continue to evolve, however, cannot be denied even if the underlying principles of their evolution remain obscure.

Thus, we can see that while the term, ‘evolution’ is quite commonly used, the actual process to which it refers is much more comprehensive than can be seen at first glance.

Next Week

This week we took a first step into seeing Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ by recognizing that the term, “evolution” does not have a common meaning

Next week we will use Teilhard’s lens of evolution to see how this ‘phenomenon’ is the essential activity in the universe as it unfolds into its current complex state.

 Last Week

Last week we introduced a new edition of the blog, “The Lens of Evolution of Teilhard de Chardin’.

This Week  

This week we will see how Teilhard understood that the most essential aspect of universal evolution can be found in the tendency of matter to become more complex over time.  Understanding how this tendency can be found in all aspects of the universe’s coming to be, including how it manifests itself in human is essential to the ‘sense making’ that Teilhard’s lens can provide.

Teilhard’s Unique Understanding of Evolution

Before we can begin to understand how his ‘lens’ can be used to make sense of everything we see and to address and heal the many ‘dualisms’ that have risen in humankind’s attempt to understand reality, we must first address his comprehensive understanding of ‘evolution’.  In his masterwork, “The Phenomenon of Man”, he emphasizes in very strong terms how he considered evolution as such to be an underlying context for understanding reality.

“Evolution: a theory, a system, a hypothesis? Not at all, but much more than that, a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems, must henceforth bow and satisfy if they are to be thinkable and true. A light illuminating all facts, a curve all lines must follow: such is evolution.”

   His repetition of the term ‘all’ indicates his belief that putting everything that can be seen into the context of evolution will result in a significant clarification of the reality which surrounds us.  Such a context, however, is not one that can be easily found in ‘conventional wisdom’.

To begin with, the term ‘evolution’ itself is not one which on which significant agreement exists.  The most common use seems to be that of biology’s theory of ‘Natural Selection’, first proposed by Charles Darwin and limited to a process of successive reproduction and differentiation on a small planet during the small universal time scale of a few billion years.  Teilhard, recognizing the incompleteness of such an approach, insists that any perspective which purports to address all of reality must address, as Julian Huxley says in his introduction to the “Phenomenon”

“…the material and physical world,… the world of mind and spirit.. the past with the future; and of variety with unity, the many and the one.”

      Thus, if Teilhard’s use of the term ‘evolution’ is to meet his lofty intent it must offer an approach to understanding all phenomena over all stretches of time and all expanses of space.

Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ embraces everything by placing it into a natural context which can be approached in empirical terms, from physical events in the past, to the oft confusing cacophony of current human affairs.  It goes forward to address the bridges to a future that will take us to the ‘fuller being’ that the fourteen billion years of uplift in the universe suggests is possible.

To identify evolution as the underlying principle which explains the appearance of things as quarks, atoms, molecules, cells, neutrons, humans, poems, songs and cultures, it is necessary to first identify a metric which is common to all, and therefore by which all things can be seen in a unified context.   Again, from Teilhard

“Fuller being is closer union: such is the kernel and conclusion of this book.  But let us emphasize the point: union increases only through an increase in consciousness.  And that doubtless is why the history of the living world can be summarized as the elaboration of every more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is always something more to be seen”.

   And in that ‘elaboration’, Teilhard suggests, can be found the missing metric.

“There is not one term in this long series (from quarks to persons) but must be regarded, from sound experimental proofs, as being composed of nuclei and electrons.  This fundamental discovery that all bodies owe their origin to arrangements of a single initial corpuscular type is the beacon that lights the history of the universe to our eyes.  In its own way, matter has obeyed from the beginning that great law of biology to which we shall have to recur time and time again, the law of ‘complexification”.

   Hence, recognizing that the universe unfolds in the direction of increased complexity is a necessary first step for understanding how everything fits together.  This “increase in complexity” is therefore one of the first things to be seen as we look through the ‘lens of evolution’.   Seen through his ‘lens’, the phenomenon of evolution is expanded from the narrower context of biological replication on a small planet over a relatively short period of time into a truly universal process by which everything that can be seen comes into being.

Science is in general agreement that biological evolution proceeds by way of ‘Natural Selection’, but Teilhard shows how not only is Natural Selection dependent on a ‘pre-biological’ stage of evolution (producing such things as atoms, molecules and DNA), but leads on to a ‘post biological’ stage in which things such as human relationships, conscious decisions and cultural norms are required for future development.
Such a triad of modes of evolution can also be seen, although rarely, by others.  The evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins addresses these three waves of evolution in his book. “The Selfish Gene”:

“I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet.  It is still in its infancy, drifting around in its primordial soup, but is already achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.  The new soup is the soup of human culture” and the new replicator “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission”.

   Dawkins acknowledges that genetic evolution is still active in the human, but, as he puts it, is “panting far behind” that of human cultural transmission as humans continue to evolve.  In Teilhard’s insight of ‘complexity’ as the essential ingredient of universal evolution, we can use his ‘lens’ to trace its rise through human history, how it manifests itself today, and to begin to see how it can continue its unfolding into the future.

More importantly, we can begin to trace the tracks of increasing cosmic complexity upon our individual lives if we know how to look.  He provides an example of the focusing of his lens when he says

“I doubt 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 (becomes human) in him.”

Next Week

This week we took a first step into seeing Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ by understanding that the fundamental metric at work in the evolution of the universe is the ‘phenomenon of increased complexity’.

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

September 25, 2024 – Introduction to the ‘Lens of Evolution’ Of Teilhard de Chardin

   Developing a perspective in which everything can be seen to make sense

This Week

This weekly blog has been in process for several years now.  It has focused on the writings of the Jesuit priest and scientist, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, and on how they offer a wonderful and highly integrated insight into the universe we inhabit, and more importantly, the part we play in it.  The blog continues to grow as my awareness of the world, as seen through his unique perspective, slowly begins to take shape.

Making Sense of Things

We live in a reality which often does not make sense.  While global human welfare in general can be seen to increase over time, and most of us obviously benefit from it, the future today seems ever more unreliable in comparison to a past which becomes more tolerable as we move further from it.  Today’s currents are felt to be carrying us into a fickle tomorrow in which the successes of yesterday are not guaranteed.

Our ever-increasing technology, while it grants us certain respites from the labors of the past, seemingly undermines this ‘progress’ by exposing the possibility of a future of diminished energy, shortages of necessities and one rife with human conflict.  Even the unprecedented tightening of the web which connects us on so many levels is shot through with a dystopic framing of current events. News of conflicts, pandemics, and shortages all reflect a generally negative view of the human condition.

And, adding to this is the sense of the world closing in on us.  With the ever-increasing human population on a planet of restricted space and limited resources, one scarcely able to bear our weight upon it today, surely there will come a time that the human wave will crest and crash back into a dark void.

The Economist, a well-respected global magazine, reported on this pervasive sense of dread a few years back. They cited the many polls that identify generally comfortable people who nonetheless report that they are unhappy, a phenomenon which is relatively new in human history, breaking a long-sensed bond between ‘comfort’ and ‘happiness’.  This new ‘dualism’ can be seen in the newly emerging group of individuals who are relatively well-off and well-educated: the ‘middle class’.  Evidence of this ‘satisfaction paradox’ can be seen when seemingly comfortable people vote for political parties which would upend a status quo which had previously supported a high level of life satisfaction.

The statistics presented by Johan Norberg in his book, “Progress”, outline how the general improvement in global human welfare very clearly suggests an upward trend towards a positive future.  However, Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, notes a rising sap of pessimism, particularly strong in the West, that either ignores such data or rejects it outright.

Obviously, such dystopia requires a view of reality that is antithetical to the data which it seems to reflect.  What is needed is a perspective grounded in an objective assessment of existence, in which such phenomena can be put in context.

A casual look at our two major systems of understanding reality, science and religion, quickly surfaces their limitations in such assessment.  Religion’s many tangled threads of supernaturalism, otherworldliness, dogmatism and antiscience compete with its positive insights into human nature for our attention.  Science, on the other hand, with its astounding success in articulating what we see in the universe around us, still fails to offer succor for the threads of fear that persist in our existence.

Both, however, carry threads of insight into both the human condition and the place of the human species in the cosmic scheme of things.  What is needed is an integrated context into which these threads can be knitted.

Such an integrated context can be found in the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,    Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, and philosopher is most noted today for his insights into religion, spirituality and mysticism, but in this book we will widen the net to explore the application of his thinking to the wider scope of universal evolution and how it is playing out in human affairs today.   In seeking a more comprehensive grasp of reality, and our part in it, we will explore the phenomena of evolution, religion, science, and life in Teilhard’s integrated context.

The Evolutionary Perspective

Humanity’s earliest records address attempts to ‘make sense of things’.  Such ‘sense making’ seems to be required for humans to not only survive in a world rife with danger, but to arrange themselves in increasingly complex arrangements in doing so.  Evidently, belief in an underlying causality of events helps to add the confidence necessary to deal with them.  As the many early writings found in ‘sacred texts’ reveal, attributing both ‘natural’ and human-caused phenomena to supernatural beings was effective in developing the confidence to deal with them.
The sophistication of ‘sense making’ increased with the complexity of society.  The ‘Axial Age’ (some eight hundred years BCE), for example, ushered in a trend towards a ‘person-centered’ causality instead of one centered on the supernatural.  As Karen Armstrong puts it in her book, “The Great Transformation”, during this time civilizations across the globe were beginning to rethink “what it means to be human”.
One of the results of this ‘rethinking’, also charted by Jonathan Sacks in his book, “The Great Partnership” was the rise of ‘empirical’ (as opposed to ‘intuitional’) thinking in ‘making sense of things’.  This of course led to the emergence of science in the great human enterprise.

The resultant conflict between this new mode of thinking and the traditional, well-entrenched institution of religion is well documented, as is the popular belief that while they might co-exist, collaboration is unlikely.

By the late eighteenth century, Science’s increased technology had enabled its inquiry into reality to extend to the entire cosmos.  Not only was ‘reality’ now considered much bigger in size but seemed to have a history of immense time as well.  These two recently discovered aspects added a third observation, that of universal evolution.  The universe, considered static for generations, was now seen as dynamic.
In this same time frame, while most Western theologians were resisting such ‘modernism’, a few were beginning to recognize how such cosmic insights might not be antithetical to the tenets of religion, but actually inform religious beliefs in a way that might stem the tide of secularism that science seem to be fostering.
One of the first was Maurice Blondel (1861-1949) who believed that this new cosmic vision could lead to a reinterpretation of traditional Catholic concepts in a way in which their inherent message could be seen as more relevant to human life.  As an example of such ‘reinterpretation’, in his book, “Man Becoming”, Gregory Baum cites such Blondel insights as

”Every sentence about God can be translated into a declaration about human life”.

   As Baum saw it, Blondel’s recognition of a dynamic universe opened the door to recognizing how such traditional Christian concepts could be mined for their relevancy to human life.  He correctly identified one of the key contributors to the drift of contemporary religion towards increasing irrelevance.

“A message that comes to man wholly from the outside, without an inner relationship to his life, must appear to him as irrelevant, unworthy of attention and unassimilable by the mind.”

   Teilhard de Chardin was no less concerned about the irrelevancy that dogged the traditional ‘extrinsicism’ of Christianity.  Like Blondel, he also recognized the immense potential that the new insights of science could bring to ‘reinterpreting’ traditional Christian teachings into terms more relevant to human life.
Unlike Blondel, Teilhard studied science much more intensely.  While Blondel opened the door to the recognition of how scientific insights could better focus religious concepts, Teilhard took the bold steps of doing so.  He recognized that a common hermeneutic between science and religion was essential to increasing religion’s relevancy.   He also saw how religion’s emphasis on the human person and his relationships could widen the scope of science to include the phenomenon of the human person.

Teilhard recognized that the starting point for such an audacious enterprise was the concept of ‘evolution’.  He envisioned a twofold expansion of this concept:

• science would open its concept of evolution beyond the Darwinist biological limitations to that of a phenomenon underpinning the evolution of the cosmos
• religion would recognize that such an understanding of the evolutionary process by which reality comes to be what it is provides an essential basis for a reinterpretation of its concepts in terms of human existence

Johan Norberg, a contemporary historian, summarizes many statistics to substantiate Teilhard’s general sense of confidence in the future (‘Progress”).  He and Teilhard both recognize, however, a headwind of pessimism that inhibits a general positive view of the direction of evolution in the human species.  This ‘headwind’ is indeed real and impossible to ignore.  It did not appear recently but depends on the existence of a dystopia that has been prevalent in human society since its beginnings and will continue as long as a narrow perspective of human existence persists.

Teilhard proposes a widening of this perspective as an antidote to this headwind.  If, he suggests, we can see ourselves in a context of reality which is evolving in the direction of ‘fuller being’, we will be able to

“..spread our sails in the right way to the winds of the earth and always find ourselves borne by a current towards the open seas.”

   This “spreading of sails” involves the recognition of a reliable causality in each of us that is always at work in our lives to bring us to an ever-fuller degree of ‘being’.  He asserts that such recognition will awaken us to our potential as human persons and provide the stimulus for our personal and collective fullness.  As he put it:

“.. 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 (made human) in him.”

   In saying this, he is stating a belief that when we, individually and collectively, see ourselves as the current manifestation of the same energy that has breathed the universe into existence over the past fourteen billion years, the emerging confidence in this energy within us will enable us to overcome all obstacles to becoming more what it is possible for us to be.  As he puts it in more poetic terms, Blondel’s insight that the universe is ‘on our side’ allows us to perceive ourselves as being held in God’s hands.

“..the one which holds us so firmly that it is merged, in us, with the sources of life, and the other whose embrace is so wide that, at its slightest pressure, all the spheres of the universe respond harmoniously together.”

   To experience oneself as being held in the hands of God can truly count as a significantly ‘decisive moment’.  A person who feels that, as Maurice Blondel put it,

“The ground of being is on our side”

    will experience life quite differently than one who feels adrift in an uncaring, or even hostile, universe.

But the act of experiencing is very dependent upon understanding.  Considering the way that understanding contributes to belief, and hence the importance of such understanding, Teilhard develops a way of seeing that can contribute to this skill of sailing.  This mode of seeing is based on his grasp of all reality as it exists in a flux of a universal ‘becoming’.  It is his ‘lens of evolution’.

Next Week

Having restarted this blog in a new edition, next week we will go on to look at how Teilhard’s unique insights into cosmic evolution can provide a ‘lens’ for seeing how the past leads to a present with such a powerful potential for a future.

 As seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens’, how can mysticism be seen as a key ingredient of human evolution?

Today’s Post

Last week we looked at mysticism as a skill required to move into the future.

This week we look at the part such a skill plays in human evolution.

The Mystical Role in Human Evolution

We have addressed mysticism as a skill which is required to move us into the future.  As such, it is a key evolutionary skill, without which human evolution would simply be replaced by an endless repetition of replication followed by decay.  (Indeed, as we have seen, many materialists consider this to be exactly what is happening.)

If we can agree that coming to recognize that whatever perception that we have of reality falls short of whatever is ‘real’, one of the challenges of life is pursuing a bridge to close this gap.  Human history is filled with examples of both failing to do so as well as those where success has led on to a clearer understanding of life and our part in it.   There have been many historical attempts to solve the enigma of the ‘one and the many’, manifested in the cacophony of social experiments which attempted to tame human self-centered tendencies while reaping the harvest of human capabilities.  They speak volumes of attempts to develop the skill of building this bridge.

Richard Rohr addresses the role of mysticism in developing this skill.

 “Charles Péguy (1873–1914), French poet and essayist, wrote with great insight that “everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.” Everything new and creative in this world puts together things that don’t look like they go together at all but always have been connected at a deeper level. Spirituality’s goal is to get people to that deeper level, to the unified field of nondual thinking, where God alone can hold contradictions and paradox.”

   This journey from mysticism to politics frames the path of human evolution.

Teilhard offers another perspective on this path.

“Truth has only to appear once, in a single human being, for it to be impossible for anything ever to prevent it from spreading universally and setting the whole world ablaze”

   Teilhard’s understanding of the slippery term, ‘truth’ is very simple.  As he sees it, it is simply that articulation of reality which is most consistent with the reality that it is addressing.  The narrower the gap between our inner grasp of reality and the reality itself, the more confidence we can have in our understanding of it.

We have referred frequently to the statistics assembled by Johan Norberg in the quantification of our human evolution in terms of human welfare.  As he sees it in his book, “Progress”, this data was summarized in the nine categories of

Food                                                      Sanitation

Life Expectancy                                 Poverty

Violence                                              The Environment

Literacy                                                Freedom

Equality

In his identification of objective historical data which shows how human welfare has exponentially increased in each of these categories, we can see aspects of the mystical basis of our journey to the future in play.

In each of these nine cases, for the specific advances which he documents, an individual or group of individuals must first become aware of some specific phenomenon, wonder as to its causality, try to replicate it, and eventually be able to reliably cause it to happen.  The first two steps are intuitive in nature, then transferring to the empirical state in the last two.  The first two begin with a single person, or with a small ‘psychism’, and as the movement to the second two occurs the ‘reach’ of the idea extends.  As we saw from Péguy above, “everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.”  Paraphrasing this in our terms: “Every idea begins with an intuition about reality which becomes articulated into the standards by which we govern ourselves.”

In the case of a tenth category, that of ‘fuel’, this can be clearly seen.  The phenomenon of ‘fire’ was experienced long before it could be caused.  The ability to control heat, of course, had obvious value to human welfare, and as Teilhard notes, the ‘truth’ of this value spread inexorably among early humans.  The next steps continued the spiral of development between awareness and articulation, as the need for greater thermal efficiency grew along with the need for surviving the inevitable downsides of each new articulation.  The deforestation related to wood burning was replaced by the asphyxiation of coal burning, then by the atmospheric damages from gas:  all resulting in ever more efficient fuel which was offset by new ecological risks.  Each step requiring new insights into our reality followed by new articulations of these insights and new effects on human evolution requiring new insights.

Thus, the ‘mystical skill’ of humans can be seen as the essential aspect of our spiral path to the future as it is followed

–     from our intuitional peering into liminal space

• through our conscious articulation into ‘ideas’
• and finally emerging as the set of social norms encoded into our cultural practices.

This winding path is the social counterpoint to Teilhard’s understanding of cosmic evolution: “fuller being from closer union and closer union from fuller being”.

Next Week

This week we took yet another look at the role played in evolution by the human consciousness mode of ‘mysticism’.

A key theme in this blog has been the seeing of reality, both of ourselves and the environment we inhabit, through Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’.  In doing so, we have seen how such a seemingly secular perspective can open traditional Western religious beliefs to a new and deeper bearing on human life, one which is not only more relevant to it but more intimate with the source of life which underlies our being insight.

Next week we will look at the play of mysticism in the weave of music in the fabric of human consciousness.