Chapter 1: The Humanist Movement and Humankind

Chapter one

Dostoyevsky declares through Ivan Karamazov: “What is strange, what is amazing, is not that God really exists, but rather the source of astonishment is the entry of such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, into the head of a ferocious, ferocious animal like man; how sacred it is, how emotive it is, how wise it is, and what great dignity it bestows upon man.” But the reality is even more wonderful than what Dostoyevsky knew.  The human species, Homo sapiens, arose from ancestors who were not human, and who were not rational in the way that humans can be. Man has risen to his present state from a state that is more brutal, although not necessarily more corrupt, but dumb and irrational. Darwin was not successful when he called one of his two great books the “descent” of man instead of the “ascension” of man. The idea of ​​the necessity of God and other ideas with which man was honored were foreign to our distant ancestors. They arose, grew, and took possession of creative human thought during the long, arduous ascension of the human race from the state of animality to humanity.

Non-human beings possess “the wisdom of the body”;  But man has in addition to the wisdom of humanity. Body wisdom is the ability of an organism to respond to environmental changes in a way that maximizes its chances of survival and reproduction.  For example, there is a certain concentration of salts in the blood that is necessary for life; If its amount exceeds, the excess is eliminated in the urine; If salt intake decreases, its amount in urine decreases. Such “wise” body interactions are limited to the environments that the species has encountered repeatedly during its evolutionary history, and this latent “wisdom” arose by natural selection.

As for the place of human wisdom in the scheme of things, it calls for special attention. Humanism, according to Tillich (63 19)[1] “assumes that the goal of culture is to realize the potential inherent in man as the bearer of the spirit,” and “wisdom can be distinguished from the knowledge of nature by its ability to reveal itself after the subject and object have dissolved.”  Human wisdom is the fruit of self-awareness: Man can transcend himself and see it as a subject among other subjects. He has reached the level of man in the existential sense, and has gained experience and an overwhelming sense of freedom, with the ability to plan and plan actions, and to implement or suspend his plans if he wants. Through freedom, man has acquired the knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge is a heavy burden, a trust from which other beings have been absolved. Freedom leads humans to ask what Brenton (1953)[2] referred to as the great questions that no other animal can ask.

Does my life and other people's lives have meaning? Does the universe into which I was unvoluntarily thrown have any meaning?   There are no final answers to these major questions, and perhaps there will never be answers, if we were looking for accurate and certain objective convictions.   However, we are obligated to search for an answer, because man’s ability to search for the meaning of his existence and the meaning of the universe is the greatest glorification of the humanity of the human race. The urge to search for answers to such “metaphysical” questions is part of the psychological equipment of the human species. Brenton (1953) [3] was right when he wrote, “that metaphysics is a human motive or desire, and calling on people to abandon metaphysics is foolish, like calling them to abandon relationships.” Sexuality completely. There are certainly some people who can abandon metaphysics, and there are those who can abandon sex as well, but these are the exception. Just as those who suppress the sexual drive divert it into other useless paths, so do those who suppress metaphysics.

The German word weltanschauung (cosmic doctrine or vision) and the Russian mirovozzrenie (cosmic vision) have no exact English equivalent.  The usual translation, world view, does not do justice to the exact meaning.  The worldview, like the view from the top of a mountain, may be beautiful, it may be sublime, but we can live without it. But there is a greater urgency around the weltanschauung and it does not seem that we can do without some form of mirovozzrenie.  The Latin word credo has become used in English in a manner similar to “cosmic vision.” This meaning is closer to the “concern” which Tillich considers the essence of religion in its broadest and most comprehensive sense, as this phrase indicates: “Religion is the aspect that represents the depth of the totality of the human soul.”  What does the metaphor of depth mean? It means that the religious aspect refers to what is final, unlimited and complete in man's spiritual life. Religion, in the broadest and most fundamental sense of the word, is the primary concern, and destiny is manifested in all the creative functions of the human spirit (Tillich 1959)[4]

It is man's interest in fate that Ivan Karamazov found so strange and so wonderful. Human nature pushes him to ask those big questions, to which every human being tries to provide answers at some point, at least with what convinces him personally. One possible answer may be that these questions cannot be answered, and that only the most arrogant and foolish people claim to reach final and conclusive answers to them. But every generation must try to reach answers that are compatible with its distinctive experience; In every generation, people who have lived different experiences try, not in vain as one might hope, to understand the aspects of the world they have experienced from their own positions.

My life has been dedicated to scientific research, especially evolutionary biology. Scientists are no more qualified, and I hope no less qualified, than non-scientists to think about and answer these questions. We find it extremely naive to believe that a coherent worldview can be derived from science alone, or that what we can learn about evolution gives us the ability to provide conclusive answers to these big questions. Some thinkers have dismissed such claims with open contempt. For example, Barzun[5] wrote that: “The scientific profession does not constitute an elite, neither intellectual nor anything else. It is likely that the “scientists,” including science teachers in senior secondary schools as well as directors of scientific research centers, are people of average ability.” But even Barzun, who cannot be accused of bias towards science, acknowledges that science “makes people agree on statements without urging them to believe in them, and they do.” This is in an exemplary way; they agree once they understand. Some of these “information produced by science can be described as, at least, related to the big questions, and we should not ignore them while searching for answers to them.

It was not long ago that almost everyone believed that the Earth was flat and that diseases were caused by evil spirits. Now the ideas that find general acceptance are completely different. The Earth is a sphere that rotates on its axis around itself and around the Sun, and diseases are caused by  various parasites and other biological causes.  These statements influenced people's attitudes. The universals in which a person believes are not irrelevant to his fateful interest.  For Newton and those who followed him, the world was a grandiose superficial invention that operated without error, according to precise, unchanging laws.  Newton also accepted the calculations of Bishop Ussher, who estimated that the world was created in 4004 BC. This has led to the belief that the universe is not very old;  He has not changed much since his beginning, and he is not expected to change much until the Day of Resurrection. Newton was a student of the Bible and cosmology, so man in Newton's world did not have sufficient power or time to change the course of predetermined events at the beginning of the universe.

Then the vast world discovered by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton himself became completely different from the comfortable world of the ancients and medieval thinkers.  Man and the Earth have been relegated from the center of the universe to an insignificant speck of dust lost in cosmic space.  Thus, the certainties of the comfortable medieval world were taken away from man. Pascal expressed an interesting expression about the loneliness that man began to feel in the eternal silence of those absolute voids, “long before the modern existentialists who made anxiety and alienation the basis of their philosophies. If man worked hard in that ancient world, he would be able to learn a lot about the way the world was built and how it worked, but he could not hope to change it, except with regard to small details. Man will either be blessed or cursed, and this choice is predetermined for the followers of the doctrine Calvinism, before man was born, does not provide room for humanity in Tillich's sense, as the individual has only limited realizable potential and hardly any opportunities for culture to bring about change at all.

It has been said that Darwin's discovery of biological evolution completed the process of human degradation begun by Copernicus and Galileo.  But I cannot imagine a more wrong and more unjust ruling than this.  The central point to which I devote this book is to prove that exactly the opposite is true.  Evolution is the source of hope for man.  Modern evolutionary theory has never truly restored the Earth to its place at the center of the universe.  But while the universe is not centered around the Earth, a human-centered universe is entirely possible.  Man, this mysterious product of cosmic evolution, is the champion of the universe, and may ultimately be its navigator. However, the universe is neither static nor complete,  and is subject to change.  Everything in the universe is immersed in the flow of evolution and the flow of change. Human society and culture arose, as did the living world, the Earth, the solar system, even the “indivisible” atoms, from previous states completely different from their current states. Moreover, these changes are not all history and past events. The world did not only develop in the past, but is in a state of development now. Perhaps the world, which is the home of beauty and joy in the vision of the Renaissance, was not in need of change, but For embrace; and the people of the world, free from sin, were simply worthy of true love” (Dunham 1964)[6]. But the desire for change was prevalent most of the time, as stated in the Bible:

(The created world eagerly awaits the appearance of the Sons of God. It has become a prey to frustration, not by its choice but by the will of the One who created it; but hope has always been present, because the world itself will be freed from the shackles of annihilation and enter into the freedom and glory of the Sons of God. We know that the world has continued to ache with all its limbs until our time, as if it were suffering from the pains of labor.)

As the world develops, it may over time become different from its current state.  Therefore, a person can direct this change towards what he sees as desirable and good. Thomas Jefferson expressed this with the optimism characteristic of his time when he said: “Although I do not believe, like some who are full of enthusiasm, that the human condition can reach a degree of perfection in which the pain and evil of the world will end, I do believe that it is capable of great improvement, especially in the areas of government and politics, and that the spread of knowledge among people is the instrument of that improvement.” Both Marx and Lenin echoed In their famous aphorism that we should not only explain the world but change it.  It is not true, in particular, that human nature does not change;  This nature is not fixed and fixed, but it is becoming, and the potential for human development is far from exhausted, biologically and culturally, as the human must develop as the bearer of spirit and destiny. We can say with Nietzsche: “Man is something that we can overcome.”

Picasso is credited with saying that he detests nature. Tolstoy, as well as some less brilliant people, claimed that all the results of science did not interest them.   Fondness and loathing are emotions that cannot be extracted or introduced arbitrarily.  One of us may detest nature or despise science, but it is completely impossible for us to ignore them. Science in our modern world is not a distraction for some of those who devote themselves to it. Rather, it is on its way to becoming everyone's business.  Some people don't care much about distant galaxies,  foreign countries, very strange tribes,  or even those neighbors they don't have to deal with often or closely.  But a person's indifference to himself is not normal.   Some people may feign indifference, but they rarely feel it deep down, when they are alone with themselves.  This is perfectly understandable as a product of the biological evolution of the personality of our ancestors, as their indifference to themselves increases their chances of survival.   The adage “Know thyself” has been ingrained in us, which has always been a catalyst for human thought long before those words were coined.

It is quite clear that scientific knowledge alone is not enough for a person to “know himself” and perhaps this was the basis of Tolstoy’s mockery of science.  For him, knowledge was not related to destiny. Destiny was the only thing that mattered to him.  But Tolstoy went too far in his protest. In Tolstoy's time, and more urgently in our time, self-knowledge lacks something very relevant to the present situation if it chooses to ignore what it can know about itself from science.  All of this leads us to a simple and completely clear conclusion: Just as we cannot derive a cosmic vision from science, we cannot reach it without science.

Constructing a cosmic vision and examining it critically traditionally falls within the field of philosophy. It is quite understandable that professional philosophers are upset by amateurs who intrude on their field, and scientists-turned-philosophers rarely outperform other meddling amateurs. Although this possessive tendency is not without justification, the matter cannot be resolved so simply. What is the truth of  philosophy?   Among the many definitions, the definition of Bertrand Russell (1945)[7] attracts attention, “There is an unowned land between religion and science that is under attack from both sides, and this unowned land is philosophy. With less brilliance, philosophy is defined as the “science of the whole,” which critically examines the assumptions of all other sciences and contemplates them through their interrelationships. There are other definitions that see that philosophy works to build a coherent universal vision, and within the framework of any of these definitions, there is a role that plays Scientists, at least on the fringes of philosophy, are at the very least considered among the contractors who provide philosophers with the raw materials with which they attempt to formulate and solve their dilemmas. With some notable exceptions, the schools of natural philosophy, especially in the United States and Britain, have taken their supplies mainly from the natural sciences, especially the widely influential school of analytical philosophy, which is engaged in mathematics and linguistics. It seems that some signs of change have begun to emerge. Recently.

The relationship of philosophy to biology and anthropology is quite clear.  In his pride, man hopes to be a demigod. However, it will remain a biological species for a large extent.  His past and all his predecessors are biological.  In order for a person to know himself, he must know where he came from and what led him on this path.  In order to plan his future as an individual and as a species, he must - in particular - know his limits and capabilities.   Part of these issues is biological and scientific, and the other part is “religious.”   In short, they are philosophical questions in the sense indicated by Bertrand Russell, and since I specialize in biology and not in philosophy or anthropology, the task I set myself to undertake seems very ambitious.   I would like to examine some of the philosophical implications of some biological and anthropological findings and theories.  This little handbook is not intended to be an examination of biological philosophy or philosophical biology.  It consists of articles on some aspects of  science that have been influential in shaping my own worldview.   This statement is not to anticipate or appease potential critics of these articles. Rather, it is only to explain what may seem to be a random approach to topics included or neglected in the following pages. I submit with Birch[8] (1965) that:

“It is very possible for my scientific colleagues to say to me, ‘Hey cobbler, stick to your shoelaces,’ but we have been practicing science long enough.  And I am now doing work that is not considered popular in our generation. This is trying to cover an area that is so vast that the specialized knowledge of one person cannot cover it.  It may be a very bold attempt, but I do it out of urgency, despite the breadth of the subject.   I would not have written if I had not discovered for myself something that gives meaning to the world of specialized knowledge in which I live.”