Are there “cogent experimental grounds’ which support Teilhard’s optimistic vision of evolution?

Today’s Post

Over the past several weeks we have been looking into Teilhard’s optimistic assessment of the future of human evolution.  We have also seen how conventional wisdom, well harvested from the weedy fields of daily news, suggests a much more dystopian human future.

As we have applied Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ to human history, despite writing in a time at which our future was anything but rosy, he managed a world view which was quite opposite from that prevalent at the time.  Having seen how his audaciously optimistic (and counter-intuitive) conclusions have been formed, we can now use the astonishing volumes of data available today to look into how they are being playing out in human evolution.

Last week we boiled down Teilhard’s observations and projections of the noosphere, into six characteristics that constitute the ‘structure of the noosphere’.

This week we will begin a survey of this noosphere as it appears today to see how contemporary objective data, Teilhard’s ‘cogent experimental grounds’, can be brought to bear on his insights.  As we will see, quantifiable data from reliable sources not only strongly substantiates his case for optimism it does so stronger today than at any time in the whole of human history.

Human Evolution Metrics

How do we go about quantifying human evolution?  One very relevant approach can be found in “Progress”, a book by Johan Norberg, which seeks to show:

“..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 a causality quite consistent with Teilhard’s ‘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 such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, and UNAIDS.

His approach is to parse the ‘metrics of human evolution’ into nine categories.  They are:

Food                                                      Sanitation

Life Expectancy                                 Poverty

Violence                                              The Environment

Literacy                                                Freedom

Equality

For each of these categories he provides, as the international news magazine The Economist notes, “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.

Norberg is well aware that his findings, all showing improvements in the areas of human life listed above, are profoundly contrary to conventional wisdom, and he acknowledges the human tendency toward pessimism.  He quotes Franklin Pierce Adams on one source of this skepticism:

“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”

   His prodigious statistics clearly, and to considerable depth, offer a look quite different from the nostalgic, sepia-tinged memories the ‘good old days’.

As Jeanette Walworth wrote:

“My grandpa notes the world’s worn cogs
And says we are going to the dogs!
…

The cave man in his queer skin togs
Said things were going to the dogs.
But this is what I wish to state
The dogs have had an awful wait.”

Seeing The Data Through Teilhard’s ‘Lens’

Over the next few weeks, we will address three of Norberg’s nine categories, summarize his key statistics, and show how they provide the ‘cogent experimental grounds’ that Teilhard saw as needed for us

“.. to be quite certain ..that the sort of temporo-spatial dome into which (our) destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

  This 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?

This week we will take a simple example, one not listed by Norberg but simple enough to illustrate our process:  that of ‘fuel’

The Next Post

This week we began to address Teilhard’s need for ‘cogent experimental grounds’ that would support our recognition that human evolution is proceeding in human life.  We identified the statistics that Johan Norberg has assembled on the increase in human welfare as examples of these grounds.

Beginning next week, we will provide examples of how such data can be seen to support Teilhard’s optimistic projections.

How does Teilhard see the process of global compression as enabling human evolution?

This Week

Last week we saw how Teilhard recognizes a ‘cohesion’ which counters the ‘compression’ of the human species which underlies the action of his ‘convergent spiral’ as it spills over into human evolution.

This week we will apply his ‘lens of evolution’ to take a closer look at how it plays out in the ‘compression’ phase of human history.

   Compression, Evolution, and The Human Person

There’s much to be concerned about in the compression phase of our evolution on this planet.  The anxiety which seems so prevalent in our society today is surely not misplaced as we cautiously tread upon the bridge to the future while we are building it. Teilhard acknowledges the anxiety that arises as we move from expansion to compression:

“Surely the basic cause of our distress must be sought precisely in the change of curve which is suddenly obliging us to move from a universe in which … divergence… still seemed the most important feature, into another type of universe which .. is rapidly folding-in upon itself.”

   At the same time, Teilhard asserts, if we know how to see it, the very compression that causes such concern can be seen as an agency necessary to our continued evolution.

Teilhard can make this seemingly counterintuitive assertion based on his six observations of the ‘noosphere’, the layer of human influence on our planet:

1. We are the latest products of evolution, and certainly subject to the same rise of complexity seen by our precedents.  Therefore, we can expect to see in ourselves the continuation of the energy of evolution that we saw at work in the previous products.  Put simply: the agency of evolution as increased ‘complexification’ will continue to find ways to assert itself in us as it had in our evolutionary precedents.
2. Just as the ‘laws’ that worked so well for these precedents in each of their evolutionary stages were not replaced, but expanded in each new stage, this trend can be expected to continue in the ‘human stage’.
3. Therefore, the inevitable compression in the human stage must contain some means of moving us forward. ‘New laws’ must be discovered.  As Teilhard puts it, humanity is

“…vitally forced to find continually new ways of arranging its elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space.”

4. Thus the ‘outer push’ of compression must somehow be accompanied by an ‘inner pull’ which occurs if the human elements are to find new ways to connect which expand their ‘personness’ and become more of what they are capable of becoming. This transition from an external force which pushes us ever closer, to an internal force which pulls us together by freeing us from our limited possession of ourselves, allows compression to effect complexification. In this way Teilhard understands love as the latest manifestation of the basic force of evolution:  the only energy capable of not only uniting us by what is most unique in us but in doing so increasing our uniqueness.
5. Human ‘invention’ is a manifestation of ‘finding new laws’ (# 3 above). John McHale, in his book, The Future of the Future, echoes Teilhard when he notes

“At this point, then, where man’s affairs reach the scale of potential disruption of the global ecosystem, he invents precisely those conceptual and physical technologies that may enable him to deal with the magnitude of a complex planetary society.”

6. Teilhard does not underestimate the risk, stressing the importance of choice, which requires the existence of faith:

“At this decisive moment when, for the first time, man… is becoming scientifically aware of the general pattern of his future on earth, what he needs before anything else, perhaps, is to be quite certain, on cogent experimental grounds, that the sort of temporo-spatial dome into which his destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

   Teilhard sees the need for “cogent experimental grounds” for us to have faith in the evolutionary process in which we are enmeshed.  The problem of course is that neither traditional science nor religion have thus far developed a clear picture of how evolution proceeds through the human, much less the ‘cogent experimental grounds’ which would articulate it.  In many cases, both often question the concept that it may do so at all.

It’s been some eighty years since Teilhard made his case for optimism about the evolutionary future of the human species.  Since then, human society has become ever more proficient at gathering data; we are drowning in it today.  With all the facts at our hand, is it possible to find some ‘cogent experimental grounds’ in this data to meet the need that Teilhard identifies?

The Next Post

This week we turned from using Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ from seeing ourselves as moving from expansion to compression to a more detailed look at how he sees this transition manifesting itself in the ‘noosphere’, the layer of human-induced changes to our world.  We noted his identification of both the risks that are present in this transition, as well as the need for faith in the fourteen billion year rising tide of evolution that will usher in a new phase in which compression brings complexity in the form of ‘personization’.  We noted that with all the data generated in today’s ‘dataorcacy’, is it possible to see examples of such a counterintuitive process occurring?   Next week we will begin to overview how examples of such ‘personization’ can be seen in today’s events.

   How does Teilhard’s ‘lens’ help us to see the benefits hidden in human compression?

This Week

Last week we saw how human history presents the development of the human species as an ever-increasing compression as we fill up the globe, but how the application of Teilhard’s ‘lens’ helps to uncover its potential benefits.

This week we will use his ‘lens’ to recognize the continued rise of evolution’s fourteen billion march toward ‘fuller being’.

A Second Look at Compression

As mentioned above, the idea of ‘compression’ continues to have negative overtones today.  In the past few hundred years, humanity has experienced many examples of ‘compression’ which degrade human life.  In 1800, Thomas Malthus, citing such examples, predicted that future population increases would doom humans to extinction in a very short time.  Mao Zedong demonstrated that the deliberate political compression of society would lead to the deaths of millions.
Teilhard, however, takes a different view of ‘compression’.

“…the more mankind is compressed upon itself by the effect of growth, the more, if it is to find room for itself, it is vitally forced to find continually new ways of arranging its elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space.”

   From his viewpoint, the external forces of ‘compression’ must be countered by ‘inner’ tactics of ‘cohesion’ if human evolution is to continue.

“…what appeared at first no more than a mechanical tension and a quasi-geometrical re-arrangement imposed on the human mass ..” must “.. now take the form of a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

   The obvious question to one caught up in the compression of society is, how can our ‘rise in interiority and liberty’ take place in a ‘whole made up of reflective particles’?  Further, how can these reflective particles (human persons) become more ‘harmoniously interrelated’?

Part of Teilhard’s answer falls into his identification of a positive aspect of societal compression.  He relates ‘compression’ to human evolution when he states that compression

“…simultaneously and inevitably increases each human element’s radius of action and power in penetration in relation to all the others; and in proportion as it does so, it has as its direct effect a super-compression itself of the noosphere.  This super-compression, in turn, automatically produces a super-organization, and that again a super-‘consciousisation’: that in turn is followed by super-super-compression and so the process continues.”

   This assertion is quite a mouthful, but points back to his ‘convergent spiral’ and four levels of human evolution.  The phenomenon of ‘compression’ is very real and can be seen daily in the plethora of news which engulfs us.  He suggests, however, that the compression itself, since it pushes us closer together, unleashes a new phenomenon, that of ‘super-consciousisation’.  Effectively, by coming closer together, our individual ‘radius of action’ is extended, and those more economical ‘arrangements of elements’ can spread more quickly and efficiently.  While beneficial to the ‘monad’ and ‘dyad’ levels of human evolution, it is of immense value to the ‘psychism’ and ‘noosphere’ levels.

This reflects Richard Dawkins grasp of the advancement of human evolution by the spread of ‘memes’ (units of insight) transmitted through the ‘vehicle’ of human culture.  The tighter the fabric of human society is woven, the greater the opportunity for transmission of those insights which will most benefit it.

Once again, this reflects Teilhard’s ‘convergent spiral” and shows the recursive influence of each of his four levels.

   At the ‘monad’ level, the individual person becomes ‘fuller’ by assimilation of the cultural values available in the noosphere.

   At the ‘dyad’ level, his insights, and hence his maturity, are enhanced by the close relationship afforded by love.

   At the ‘psychism’ level, this fullness is increased by the extension of this dyadic energy to a wider group.

   At the level of the ‘noosphere’, the collective insights from the individual’s enrichment from the noosphere, through enhancements afforded by his relationships, are refined and added to the noosphere.

   Thus, the ‘super-compression’ speeds up and intensifies this recurring activity, leading not only to its ‘convergence’ but to an ever-increasing enrichment of not only the individual, but the pairs, the groups and ultimately to the noosphere.

One of Teilhard’s familiar insights can be seen anew in this ontological dance.

“Fuller being from closer union and closer union from fuller being.”

   To return to our fears of increased compression, this recurring action also illustrates the ‘cohesion’ phenomenon precisely required to offset the ‘compression’ and therefore insure our continued evolution.

Next Week

This week we saw examples of how Teilhard’s four levels of human evolution, from the ‘monad’ to the ‘noosphere’ serve as the ‘inner pull’ which counters the ‘external force’ of compression as universal evolution spills over into the milieu of human life.

Next week we will refocus our look at the compression of evolution through Teilhard’s ‘lens’.

How can we use Teilhard’s ‘lens’ to help us to recognize an ‘axis’ in our evolution?

This Week

   Last week we took a first look at how, despite all the discontinuities that can be seen in our ever-unfolding understanding of the universe, whatever universal process that is at work must, by definition,  be active in all components of the universe.  More importantly, by the same definition it must be active in ourselves.

This week we will take a second look at how Teilhard traces this process through the expansion and compression phases of human history.

‘Compression’ in Human Evolution

Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ permits us to see human evolution as powered by the same energy by which the universe has increased its complexity over time.  He begins by stepping back and observing human history through his ‘lens’.

First, a simple look at the history of humans on our planet shows that a key aspect of human evolution has been expansion into every possible nook and cranny of the biosphere.  In Teilhard’s geometric metaphor of the development of human society, humanity starts out from the southern pole of an imaginary sphere, and ramifies into many threads: races, tribes, and nations.  In its expansion northward, it spreads into an ever-increasing space. Because of this it is possible for many centuries for one arm of ramification to remain unaware of the others.

 Second, it is obvious from this simple graphic that as humans reproduce and expand, eventually the threads will reach the midpoint, the ‘equator’ of Teilhard’s imaginary sphere.  As it does the threads begin to converge and hence encounter each other.  When we eventually expand into space occupied by others, we cross the imaginary equator where expansion begins to give way to compression and hence from divergence to convergence.

As is obvious from history, crossing this equator causes the emergence of new tactics of contact, conflict, and conquest.  To this day, many believe that the dire consequences of these tactics are simply an unwanted but inevitable consequence of population increase.

However, as seen in the ‘Axial Age’, (800 BC, early in this new compression stage), new paradigms of cultural evolution begin to emerge.  Karen Armstrong, in her book, “The Great Transformation”, sees civilizations across the globe beginning to rethink “what it means to be human”, and, more importantly, “what it means to be a person among persons”.

The Roman adaptation of Christianity by Constantine was an example of this shift.  While certainly less religious than political, it nonetheless reflected the same rethinking.  As Bart Ehrman explains in his book, “How Jesus Became God”, Constantine saw the integrative potential of Christianity as a political tactic for ensuring the smooth assimilation of the new Northern European Celts and Franks as they were incorporated into his empire.  While not abandoning the ‘compression’ tactics of contact, conflict, conquest, and subjugation, Rome was beginning to adopt tactics which would add a cultural level of assimilation and accommodation.

Third, that this new paradigm was slow to take hold is obvious, considering the ensuing two thousand or so years of human conflict, particularly in the West, frequently among those espousing the new religion.  The success of the new tactic, however, could be seen in the emergence of the new paradigm of democracy, underpinned by the belief in human equality first envisaged in the Axial Age.

In these three millennia of world history, we can see the ‘crossing of the equator’ and the gradual transition from ‘expansion’ to ‘compression’.  Seen through Teilhard’s ‘lens, this transition from one to the other also maps the evolution of human relationships from ones in which the individual is reduced by this compression to one in which the individual can potentially become enriched by it.

This is truly an astounding paradigm shift, first asserted by Confucius in the Axial Age, and a tactic necessary for human survival as it compresses itself:

“Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.”

“In order to enlarge oneself, one should try to enlarge others”.

   These simple adages are not only reflected in nearly every religion, but they also offer the earliest use of self-reference as essential for understanding the nature of human co-existence.

Teilhard recognizes that as humanity enters the compression stage, the historical relationship between conquerors and conquered, common in the early compression stage, will no longer satisfy the need to continue evolution. The paradigm of ‘enrichment of the conqueror by diminishment of the conquered’ must give way to a different paradigm if the universal rise of complexity is to continue by the enrichment of the human person so essential to the survival of the species.

An approach more in line with Confucius than with Caesar is required.  Teilhard suggests that the tactic required is one which can unite human persons in a way in which increases their potential. In his words

“The human mass on the restricted surface of the earth, after a period of expansion covering all historic time, is now entering (following an abrupt but not accidental acceleration of his rate of reproduction) a phase of compression which we may seek to control but which there are no grounds for supposing will ever be reversed.  What is the automatic reaction of human society to this process of compression?  Experience supplies the answer (which theory can easily explain) – it organizes itself.  To adapt themselves to, and in some sort to escape from, the planetary grip which forces them ever closer together, individuals find themselves compelled (eventually they require a taste for it) to arrange their communal lives more adroitly; first in order to preserve, and later to increase their freedom of action.”

To him, the ‘external’ force of compression must be met by an ‘internal’ force which uses this compression to effect their fuller being; the emergence of a ‘pull’ to counter the ‘push’.  As he puts it in “The Phenomenon of Man”

“Fuller being is closer union.”

Next Week

This week we saw Teilhard’s insights into the historical spread of humanity from an ‘expansion’ stage to one of ‘compression’, and how this introduced yet a new danger to human evolution that would require humans to develop new modes of relationships to overcome.

Next week we will look at how the dangers of the compression phase of human history can be not only mitigated but forged into new modes of evolution.

How does Teilhard’s ‘lens’ help us put human evolution into the context of universal evolution?

This Week

   Over the past few weeks, we have looked at human history from Teilhard’s four ‘levels’ of human evolution:  The ‘monad’, the ‘dyad’, the ‘psychism’, and finally, the ‘noosphere’.  At each of these levels the march of universal evolution can be seen to continue in the ‘complexification’ of the human person and society.

This week, we will step back and review this drama of universal unfolding from a broader perspective.

The Continuity Beneath the Discontinuity

While Teilhard recognizes an ‘axis of evolution’ in the rise of universal ‘complexity’’, he also notes that this rise is highly discontinuous.  He cites the many ‘jumps’ in evolution that science has uncovered, such as the sudden appearance of mass, the new ability of molecules to fabricate themselves, the astounding appearance of the cell, and the unprecedented arrival of the human person, marked by a consciousness that is aware of itself.   These ‘jumps’ would seem to contradict the idea of a steady undercurrent in which such discontinuities are simply brief surface eddies.

While Teilhard acknowledges the occurrence of discontinuity in evolution, he also shows how an underlying fundamental activity flows beneath these discontinues, a continuous current which powers the ‘axis of evolution’.  He notes that at each such step, the evolved element of ‘the stuff of the universe’ (atoms, molecules, cells, neurons, humans) rises not only in its complexity, but in its uniqueness.  Each new product of evolution, while initially retaining its similarity to its parent, eventually becomes more distinct and sharply distinguishable from the other products. This applies to evolution at every phase, from the Big Bang to the present.

This characteristic is very important to the recognition that human evolution occurs in the same way that all such steps have occurred in universal evolution.

Thus, an important step in seeing human evolution through Teilhard’s ‘lens’ is to recognize that human life is powered by a cosmic agent by which, to the extent that we can recognize and cooperate with it, we will be lifted toward ‘fuller being’.  In Teilhard’s words:

 “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 in him.”

   Understanding this essential current in human life helps us to recognize how we fit naturally and fundamentally into the fourteen-billion-year process which has raised the universe, as Richard Dawkins observes, “into its present complex state”.   So, if we are to understand ourselves as Teilhard suggests, we need the ‘scales to fall from our eyes’ so that we can not only take in the breadth and scope of the universe, but recognize that we fit into it naturally, as a child to a loving parent.

However, our history has shown that such a ‘descaling’ exercise is difficult to undertake.  How can a look into human history show any movement toward it?

Next Week

This week we began a look at human history in which Teilhard’s assertion that seeing ourselves through his ‘evolutionary lens’ will aid us in a ‘descaling’ exercise by which we uncover the rise of evolutionary evolution in both our lives and that of our species.

Next week we will refocus our look at human evolution through Teilhard’s ‘lens’.

How do Teilhard’s projections for the future help us to gain a correct perspective on our lot today?

This Week

Today I’m departing from Teilhard’s insights into the phenomenon of universal evolution to focus on one a little closer to home.  How can we read today’s events in the context of his universal perspective?  In short, is there any way that we can see the world today as ‘the best time to be alive”?  We will see next month a long list of statistics from Johan Norberg (“Progress”) which substantiate Teilhard’s optimism (and today’s data), but after reading Nicholas Kristoff’s article in today’s New York Times, I’m jumping the gun in presenting Norberg’s thoughts on this subject.

Kristoff begins his article with a sentiment that I regularly receive from readers of this blog.  As he puts it, such optimism

“..sees it as disrespectful of all the tragedies around us.”

   He lists such tragedies as:

• The suffering of children in Gaza
• The atrocities in Sudan
• The wildfires in Los Angeles

And finally, one particularly tragic to a liberal such as himself:

• An unstable threat to Democracy moving into the White House

So how to put such grim news in perspective?   He begins with what he considers the worse thing that can happen: “the loss of a child”.  He follows this with an unexpected statistic that seems highly orthogonal to conventional wisdom.

“2024 seems to have been the year in which the smallest percentage of children died since the dawn of humanity.”

   As we will see later from Norberg in more detail, Kristof offers a timeline:

150 years ago: over 50% of global newborns died

70 years ago: 25% of global newborns died

Today: 3.8% of global newborns died (All United Nations statistics)

   Another way to look at this is that since 2000, eighty million children’s lives have been saved.

A second way to put today’s news in Kristoff’s perspective: reduction in global extreme poverty.  We will look at Norberg’s more extensive data later, but Kristoff points out that last year this figure has plummeted to 8.5%.  Another way of looking at this is

“Every day over the past couple of years, roughly 30,000 people moved out of extreme poverty.”

Still another perspective is in the areas of education and literacy, “the greatest forces empowering human beings, yet when I was  a child, the majority of human beings had been  illiterate.”  He sees a distinct contrast in today’s literacy rate.  “Now we’re approaching 90% literacy worldwide, and the number of literate people is rising by more than 12 million people each year.  Every three seconds, a person becomes more literate”.

Summarizing a few other topics:

• • While AI is evolving rapidly, with its perceived threats, so is its applicant to new medical breakthroughs.
  • While threats to the environment continue to mount, for the first time in history paths to the decarbonization of the glove are emerging.

Kristoff suggests that we take a deep breath and make a New Year’s resolution to look at the data and recognize that

   “For all the challenges we face, there is no better time to be alive.”

   Happy New Year!

How is the noosphere an active agent in human evolution?

 This Week

Last week we saw how Teilhard and others recognize the influence of  ‘accumulated cultural wisdom’ on our evolution as humans.

This week we will look at human history to see how this ‘noosphere’ contributes to our continued evolution even as we contribute to its development.

The Noosphere in Human History

In antiquity, societies which were rising certainly contributed to their noosphere, which in turn empowered their rise.  History is rife with examples. Early on, once these early isolated bubbles of ’rise’ popped, adjacent societies had few means of continuing their fragile body of practices, ideas, and insights they had built.  It wasn’t until general modern times before the ‘fruits of the noosphere’ of a successful culture, such as those contributed by religion, could begin to take root in adjacent rising cultures.  It was not that other ‘bubbles’ did not emerge in history outside of the West, such as can be seen in the great cultures of Sumeria, Egypt, Phoenicia, and China, or that their contributions to the noosphere had less value.  But it was only in the relatively recent West that the bubbles rose less in isolation than in congregation.  By recent times, the state of the globe had reached an unprecedented level of stability in which books were no longer burned by invaders or by inquisitors, enabling the survival of insights so necessary to an ‘opening’ process.

As Lord Action saw it in his “The History of Freedom”, an early indication of this shift can be seen as Europe emerged from its ‘Dark Ages”.

“”Western Europe lay under the grasp of masters, the ablest of whom could not write their own names.  The faculty of reasoning, of accurate observation, became extinct for 500 years, and even the sciences most useful for society, medicine and geometry, fell into decay, until the teachers of the West went to school at the feet of Arabian masters.”

   In the reconquering of Spain in the 15^th century, intellectually impoverished Europe began to uncover the riches that the world of Islam had recovered from a ‘fallen’ West and continued their enrichment.  As Johan Norberg puts it

“No treasure in conquered Spain meant more for medieval Europe that all the manuscripts by Arab, Jewish, Greek, Persian and Indian authors that lined the shelves of Muslim libraries.  European scholars marveled at the breadth of the intellectual heritage and scientific findings they discovered.”

   He goes on to see this as pivotal to the eventual rise of Europe.

“This was in effect the Renaissance foot in the medieval door, since it supplied reason and empirical research with its own domain and gave latitude to curious philosophers and scientists to explore the world empirically.”

   As Norberg relates the general rise of collective wisdom seen in the evolution of European thought from the Renaissance to the arrival of the age of ‘Enlightenment’, it offers an example of not only such continuation, but of the subsequent rise of human welfare that resulted from it.

 “We humans innovate, and we imitate, rinse and repeat, until we create something special.  Enlightenment ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tore down barriers to intellectual and economic open-ness, which supercharged innovation and brought unprecedented prosperity.  In the last two hundred years, life expectancy has increased from less than thirty years to more than seventy, and extreme poverty has been reduced from around 90 percent of the world’s population to 9 percent today.”

   We will go on to later see objective and empirical evidence of this rise, but this example of ‘rise and fall’ in human history exemplifies one of the earliest effects of Teilhard’s fourth level of evolution’s convergent spiral, the ‘noosphere’.

Unlike earlier ‘rinse and repeat’ historical cycles, some manifestation of the ‘noosphere’ managed to survive from the ‘fall’ of Europe into the ‘rise’ of Islam and returned, elaborated and enriched, to Europe to precipitate the Renaissance.

Without a doubt, this was not without the resistance of dogmatists and had to survive their attacks on the now-threatening ideas first promulgated by pagans such as Aristotle.  As late as 1231, for example, Aristotle’s books were banned by Pope Gregory until they had been examined and ‘purged of errors’.

Even with this, books, and more importantly their seemingly seditious ideas, survived as the noosphere became more robust as the overall rise of social order fermented in the West began to spill over across the face of the planet.

Thus, in Teilhard’s concept of the ‘noosphere’, we can see an insight later elaborated by Richard Dawkins’ concept of ‘cultural evolution’ and substantiated by Johan Norberg’s statistics.  Teilhard’s ‘noosphere’ is exactly the ‘vehicle’ that Dawkins proposed as the ‘transporter’ of human ‘memes’ which carry us to the future.  Norberg’s statistics offer copious examples of how it is doing so today.

Next Week

This week we saw examples of how Teilhard’s ‘noosphere’ serves as the new ‘vehicle’ for expanding universal evolution into the milieu of human life.

Next week we will refocus our look at evolution through Teilhard’s ‘lens’.

How can the ‘noosphere’ be seen to play a role in human evolution?

This Week

Last week we introduced Teilhard’s fourth ‘level’ of human evolution in his concept of the ‘noosphere’, which acts not only as the retention of evolutionary ‘information’, but as an agency in its own right which acts to stimulate our personal and collective evolution.

This week we will look more closely at how this ontological relationship between humans and their collective cultural information trove can be seen to play out in history.

Recognizing the Noosphere in Human Evolution

There are fewer compelling images in human history than that of the recurring ‘rise and fall’ of civilizations.  Johan Norberg, in his book, “Open”, goes to great lengths to show how human history proceeds by way of recurring cycles of growth and decay in human society.  In a nutshell, he outlines the ever-recurring path taken by a society which ‘rises’ as its ‘psychisms’ flourish by way of cultural norms which value the independent and unique nature of individual thought.  He then shows how such societies begin to ‘fall’ as the value of human freedom and independent thought become replaced by the seeming security provided by the structural rigidity of increased dogmatism.

He charts these recurring cycles of human society in terms of rising ‘openness’ followed by increasing ‘closedness’, and hence from ‘growth’ to ‘decay’.  In his view, once a society begins to ‘close’, the ‘safety’ of the walls that are erected to protect orthodoxy undermines the ‘vitality’ required for continued growth.  He also emphasizes how the ossified characteristic of religious dogmatism contributes to the ‘decay’ side of the curve, with particular attention to the example of Rome and the Christian Church.

In the case of Rome and Christianity, Norberg documents how Christianity’s increasing drive for orthodoxy eventually contributed to the ‘closing’ of Rome.  He does not address the other side of the coin.  In its infancy, Christianity offered a novel and highly ‘open’ approach to religion which allowed Constantine to leverage it in Rome’s expansion into the less civilized North.  As Bart Ehrman addresses in his book, “How Jesus Became God”, this approach proved highly successful in ensuring the continuation of social stability as Rome expanded into uncharted territory.

Christianity’s fundamental belief in the value of the human person and the necessity for productive relationships, while rising and falling in the endless historical cycles of growth and decay, can be seen to show a slow increase from cycle to cycle when history is seen from a wider perspective.  Glimmers of this belief can be first seen in the Axial Age, with Confucius’ assertion that humans are enhanced by their relationships, thus bringing the value of the person and his relationships to the fore for the first time.  Strands of this thread can be seen to be entwined in nearly all religious expressions but stand out most clearly in the early writings of Christianity.   These can be seen to tie the human and the ‘ground of being’ together in a totally new way with the writings of John.

While Norberg clearly documents the growth/decay cycle as it recurs through World history, he focuses on the negative influence of Christianity’s increasing dogmatism in the West.  In an unintentional reference to the ‘noosphere’, he documents the damage that structural Catholicism did to the accumulated wisdom of the West (its ‘noosphere’) with its attempt to cement its quest for orthodoxy by burning huge libraries not only found in Islam but those in the West itself.

But underneath the growth/decay cycles, he does not acknowledge the underlying phenomenon which feeds the slow increase of those cultural norms that seek to protect the value of human person by building legal structures that enhance his relationships.  As Friedrich Hyek references this incorporation in his book, “Law, Legislation and Liberty”,

“Civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge that we do not possess”.

Thus, the more of this knowledge that is retained from cycle to cycle, the more the next cycle will build a more advanced form of society.  From this perspective, Teilhard’s third vector of his evolutionary spiral, the ‘rise’, can be seen to take place beneath the seemingly endless cycles of ‘open’ and ‘close’ that Norberg painstakingly documents.

This vector announces itself not only in the elaboration, but more significantly in the increasing robustness of the ‘noosphere’.

Next Week

This week we saw how Teilhard, and others, recognize the presence of an accumulated storehouse of accumulated cultural wisdom is at play in the advance of human evolution despite its ‘rise and fall’ cycles.

Next week we will look more closely at this phenomenon to see how it does so.

   If the transmission of cultural values is necessary for human evolution, how can Teilhard’s ‘lens’ clarify it?

This Week

Last week we saw how Teilhard’s three ‘levels’ of universal evolution (monads, dyads and psychisms) play out in human evolution, but that both he and Richard Dawkins suggest that the phenomenon of ‘culture’, a product of human interaction, plays a large part.

This week we will take a closer look at this fourth of Teilhard’s ‘levels’ as we address his concept of the ‘noosphere’.

The Agency of Human Cultural Transmission

Karen Armstrong addresses one of the new insights of the Axial Age in the recognition of Teilhard’s third level of human evolution (psychisms) that we addressed in Chapter 3.

“When they (group rituals) were perfectly executed, something magical occurred within the participants that gave them intimations of divine harmony”.

Thus, we are introduced to Teilhard’s fourth level of human evolution.  The first two levels, the monad and the dyad apply as equally to the vitality of subatomic matter as it does to that of the human person.  The appearance of the third level, Teilhard’s psychism, captured in the United States’ motto of “E pluribus unum”, can be faintly seen in the ‘higher’ mammals.  But the fourth level, which can be seen as encompassing the ‘monistic’, ‘dualistic’ and ‘psychism’ phenomena, is unique to human evolution.  At this level the result of the activities of the first three levels, the products of their respective unifications, are accumulated into what Teilhard refers to as the ‘noosphere’. While traces of these three phenomena can be found in our immediate pre-human ancestors, they take a significant leap in the human not only in the degree of complexity of the products, but more importantly in the retention and interaction of them as well.

Our prehuman ancestors relied on their evolutionary instincts, with stirrings of group ‘culture’ in the latter hominids, as guides to life.  With the human ability to accumulate objective cultural insights, as oral traditions are supplemented by written materials and formal education, the results of the progress made by monads, dyads and psychisms become increasingly available to their offspring as fuel for further development.

This ‘noosphere’ is unique to the human species but is much more than a simple bank of ideas, as valuable as this can be seen to be.  As Teilhard points out, human evolution not only contributes to the noosphere, but it also draws on it as a catalyst for further evolution.  Thus, as the vectors of human evolution can be seen at work in monads, dyads and psychisms, the recursive nature of the convergent spiral can be seen in the interaction between the human person and the noosphere.

The very nature of the noosphere leads to new methods of articulation, such as book printing and formal education.  These inventions themselves are further elaborated and intensified by expanded communication, which provides an increase in both the volume and the accessibility of information.  The amount of information not only increases but at the same time becomes more intimate and ultimately inextricably woven into the texture of human culture.

A parallel can be drawn with the increase of ‘information’ in the universe.  As Paul Davies sees it in “The 5^th Miracle”, universal evolution occurs because each grain of matter possesses some small quanta of ‘information’ by which it can be ushered into a connection with other grains.  He notes that the entity which results from such connection not only possesses the aggregated ‘information’ provided by its predecessors, but a new facet of information also emerges by which the next interconnection can result in an even more complex product.  This application of Teilhard’s convergent spiral can be seen in the appearance of complex molecules from amino acids, resulting in compounds such as DNA, which instructs RNA in the production of proteins, necessary for cellular function.

Thus, the noosphere can be understood as a latter manifestation of such subcellular activity.  It can be envisioned as the collection of all the ‘information’ that it has been possible for humans to assemble to date.  It is no longer necessary for each product of evolution itself to contain the increased information by which it has evolved.  With the noosphere, each product now can benefit from the accumulation of other products as well.

Such information as can be seen in this manifestation does not consist of just factual data, but also the insights, and therefore the meaning of the data which permits its valuable function as catalyst to future human evolutionary steps.  This information is not only accumulated but assimilated as humans become more adept at navigating their evolution.  In doing so, it is recursive as it is fed back into us as fuel for our continuing journey.

Next Week

This week we introduced the fourth level of Teilhard’s human steps of evolution, the ‘noosphere’, and explored its recursive contribution to human evolution.

Next week we will take a closer look at how the noosphere is active in human evolution.

   How can the energy of evolution spill over from the ‘material’ to the ‘conscious’ level?

Today’s Post

In the last two weeks, we have seen how Teilhard parses the increasing complexity of human evolution into its ‘material’ and ‘conscious’ appearances.

This week we will look into how this evolution not only occurs in the individual person itself but is interwoven in human collective enterprises.

Teilhard’s Four Levels of Human Evolution

Teilhard’s insights into universal evolution clearly show the increase in complexity which occurs as granules of matter unite in such a way as to become increasingly capable of future unity.  Seen through his ‘lens of evolution’, this phenomenon not only continues to increase in the human species but does so at a more rapid rate.

Richard Dawkins recognizes this ‘new’ (compared to biological natural selection) mode when he says

“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”.

   Such an increase can be seen once the new facets of humanity are put into context.

Dawkins’ ‘replicator’ emerges into the milieu of reflective consciousness by way of ‘cultural transmission’ and does so by way of four distinct levels of human evolution as identified by Teilhard.

The first level can be seen in the ‘monad’, the individual of the species that reflects the unique manifestation of the ‘person’.  As Teilhard asserts, in each trip around the convergent spiral of evolution (June 2, 2022 – Mapping Teilhard’s ‘Energy of Complexity’ | Science, Religion and Reality (lloydmattlandry.com) the three key vectors of the force of evolution are active in the human person.  With the two hemispheres of the unique human neocortex brain, resting on the foundation of two pre-human brains (the ‘reptilian’ at the base and the ‘limbic’ above it), the human person is endowed with a brain capacity which has been significantly increased over his predecessors.

The first of Teilhard’s ‘vectors’, ‘connectivity’ comes into play as the multiplicity of brain activities is brought into a collaborative enterprise to permit an integrated response to the stimuli of an increasingly multifaceted and complex reality.  As Teilhard sees it

“the history of the living world can be summarised as the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is always something more to be seen”.

The second vector is that which emerges from such successful integration: the increased clarity by which this complex reality can be understood.  This increased clarity can result in the evolutionary value of a more successful interaction with it.

His third vector can be seen in the increased integration and improved comprehension provided by the first two: a human ‘complexification’ step by which the first two results (unity and clarity) are further enriched.

Thus, at the ‘monad’ level of human evolution, the underlying potential for personal evolution is thus activated.  Karen Armstrong sees this insight emerging in human history during the ‘Axial Age’.

“By disciplined introspection, the sages of the Axial Age were awakening to the vast reaches of selfhood that lay beneath the surface of their minds.  They were becoming fully “self- conscious”.

   The second level can be seen in the ‘dyad’, the case of close relationships between ‘monads’.  No matter what skill we develop in understanding ourselves, further enrichment is always possible from a closer relationship with another person.  Our culture abounds with lore which contrasts the danger of isolated, subjective thought with the richness that a close relationship can bring.

Confucius seems to be the first to recognize this with his assertion that

“To enlarge ourselves we must enlarge others, and to enlarge others we must enlarge ourselves.”

   Karen Anderson expands this evolutive insight in her book, “The Axial Age”

“You need other people to elicit your full humanity; self-cultivation was a reciprocal process.”

   Teilhard, succinctly describes this as

“closer union from fuller being, and fuller being from closer union”.

   He goes a little further when he addresses the ‘personization’ resulting from such unions:

“True union differentiates”.

   The third level can be seen in what Teilhard refers to as the ‘psychism’, where a group of individuals is united by a common cause, and thus has two outcomes clearly related to human evolution.  The first outcome is the easiest to envision, and which can be seen in the product sought by the group endeavor, such as a design, a vaccine or the underlying meaning that lies beneath the diverse data found in a large database.  For such a product to emerge, the talents of each member of such a small group are required.

These talents, applied in collaboration, result in a second outcome: each individual is enriched as the strength of the collaboration is increased.  This is another example of how Teilhard’s concept of the dyadic phenomenon of  ‘fuller being/closer union’ is active when raised to the level of a group.
The emergence of a new level of consciousness from ‘psychsms’ of course can be found in nearly all religious and philosophical thinking.  The motto of the United States recognizes this.

“E Pluribus Unum” (From many, one)

   The roots of the evolution of the human species can be seen in these three levels.  The blossoming of this energy can be seen as Dawkins’ intuition of ‘cultural transmission’ is present in Teilhard’s fourth level.

Next Week

This week we saw how Teilhard, through his ‘lens of evolution’, guides us through three of the four ‘levels’ of human evolution, leading up to that seen by Richard Dawkins as the level of ‘cultural transmission’

Next week we will address the fourth of Teilhard’s level, into what he refers to as the ‘noosphere’.