Chapter Six
Synthesis Tilary
Man is the only being among the two million or more species living on Earth now who is aware of the main concern, destiny. Man needs faith, hope, and a goal to live for that gives dignity to his existence. He finds himself in this world without his choice, and would like at least to avoid excessive suffering and enjoy the joy that may be within his reach. He desires to experience and live beauty, to avoid ugliness, and above all, he longs for love and belonging to others; He wants to gain and maintain his self-respect, and to gain the respect and appreciation of others if possible. He is willing to give up his pleasures and accept hardship and pain in order to gain this respect and self-respect.
All of this is necessary, but is it enough to give life meaning? It is enough for some ordinary people. But others, perhaps unreasonably, ask for more. If humanity has no meaning, my personal life cannot have meaning. Then I must discover hope for humanity in its historical development. My life's purpose can only be part of humanity's greater goal. Moreover, it is beyond the comprehension of the mind that humanity has a meaning if the universe does not have a meaning. Man is intertwined in humanity, humanity in life on planet Earth, and Earth in the universe. The universe of which humanity is a part must have meaning. Toynbee (1956) expressed this in the following elegant expression:
“The human spirit that resides in each of us cannot stop searching for an explanation for the universe in which we find ourselves. It insists that our cosmic vision give importance to the universe without making it self-centered. Reconciling these two imperatives may be impossible in logic. But the human spirit does not accept giving up the search for an explanation of the mystery even in the jaws of logic; and it seems that the New Testament inspired by the higher religions allows reconciliation in its suggestion that the meaning of life, existence and reality is love.”
The rituals of fertility and the initial joy of life were sufficient to give an appearance of the purpose of life of primitive people. Human evolution has left that stage of happy spiritual childhood far into the past. Modern man must rise above the biological standard of survival and reproduction. Nothing without a religious structure is sufficient to meet this human need. This synthesis will not be merely a revival of one of the existing religions, and it does not need to be a new religion. It could be based on one of the world's major religions, or all of them combined. My upbringing and education make me bias towards Christianity as a framework for this structure. But I understand those who prefer a framework based on another religion. The important thing is that the result be a real composition. The synthesis must include science, but it cannot be pure science, and in this sense it cannot be “scientific.” Installation must include art and aesthetics, but it cannot be merely aesthetic. A doctrine that is in stark contradiction with confirmed scientific findings cannot be correct, but a doctrine that is consistent with it can nonetheless be wrong. Science reveals what exists, and man longs to discover what should exist. The composition must be characterized by aesthetic satisfaction, but it must also have the quality of rational persuasion.
Tillich (1953) explained the role of science in religious formation with admirable clarity:
Of course, theology cannot be based on scientific theories. But theology must attribute its understanding of man to understand cosmic nature, because man is part of nature and statements about nature include all statements about him. Even if theologians could avoid questions about man's relationship with nature and the universe, people in every time and place would still ask these questions -
Often with an existential urgency and out of epistemological honesty. The lack of these answers can become a stumbling block for a person's entire religious life.
A person’s understanding of himself is not enough to satisfy his hunger for the meaning of life. Rather, it is necessary to understand all of nature, living and non-living, with its interconnected relationships. Man, who may be the spiritual vanguard of nature and the tip of its spear, is nevertheless only a small part of it. He is a completely new arrival to the world if we look at him on a cosmic time scale. The beginnings of man appeared - according to the maximum estimates - about two million years ago, while life on Earth appeared about two billion years ago. The universe is estimated to be five to ten million years old. If we consider man in some way to be a supernatural being, then he certainly did not emerge from the womb within which he was formed until recently.
Life is very much older than man, and the universe is much older than life. This indicates a necessary condition that any composition must meet in order to be acceptable. This composition must depict man, life, and the universe not in a state of stability but in a state of change, parts of one connected process, one world, not three separate, static worlds. The basic premise of synthesis requires viewing the universe and everything in it as an emerging product of the evolutionary process. The composition must be an evolutionary one.
Accepting this principle is not easy for some people. People usually yearn for stability and are suspicious of change. Even though people see change happening in everything around them, they still like to believe that there is something basic, a general design for things
It remains constant forever, it does not change. Stability suggests security, while change can bring with it risks, stress, and loss of security.
Scientists alone are not only accustomed to change but welcome it, or so it is assumed. Science is cumulative knowledge. Aristotle did not know many things that are familiar to all students now. We of course hope that later scholars will know more than we do, and will understand things better than we do. But scientists are human, and some of them cannot help a hidden feeling of resentment when some of their ideas are proven invalid.
Religions, on the contrary, usually cherish their immutability and unchangeability. It is said that Religions are the great anchor, the symbol of stability. However, Toynbee (1956) writes: “The permanent and universal thing must always and everywhere be translated into the language of temporary and local things in order to be accessible to certain people in a certain circumstance and in a certain place.” The development of religion, then, does not contradict its possession of eternal and comprehensive truths. But the appearance of contradiction arises from the inability to distinguish between what is eternal and comprehensive and what is merely temporary additions that have accumulated historically (see p. 51). There is a parallel situation in the world of art and aesthetics. We admire the drawings of Neolithic man in the caves in which he lived. The beauty that at least some individuals appreciated at the dawn of civilizational development is the same beauty that we appreciate today. This does not prevent the development of artistic and aesthetic sense. The colorful drawings in the Altamira and Lasso caves do not distinguish us from the paintings of Michelangelo and Picasso, nor vice versa. Malraux (1960) confirms that
“All forms of art that embody an aspect of the unfathomable have all in common the suggestion of the existence of another world, not necessarily infernal or divine, nor merely a world beyond the grave, but a world beyond the real, which exists here and now, similar to all, in varying degrees. “The real is only an appearance, and there is something else that exists, which is not just an appearance and does not always bear the name of God.”
Confirming the truth of time and history is the essence of the evolutionary principle. If development does not occur, then time does not count, and history is “a story told by an idiot, full of noise and fury, that does not indicate anything.”
However, those who would like to believe that the world and human nature are fixed by nature rely on intellectual tricks such as the myths of eternal return and cyclical theories of history. The most subtle of these tricks is Plato’s theory of ideals, which has lived for more than two thousand years. The things that we see according to that theory are nothing but the perfect, perfect, eternal and unchanging shadows of the ideals; the shadows shift here and there, but the ideals remain eternally static in purity.
We said earlier that Christianity is essentially evolutionary. It confirms that the meaning of history lies in the progression from creation to salvation to the kingdom. As Fransquier (1960) convincingly demonstrates in his profound book, early Christian writers and thinkers did not always adhere to those ideas that we now describe as fundamentalist. However, those who took over after them were influenced by their subjects’ longing for security and stability. Thus, an agreement was reached based on the assumption that creation was completed within a few days, about five thousand years ago. Nothing is happening now. He has given us a warm and comfortable earth around which the sun, moon, and stars flow for man’s joy and comfort, and He has created animals and plants in it for his food, and sometimes to afflict him. As for the changes that occur, most of them are cyclical, symbolized by the phases of the moon, the succession of seasons, and the death of plants and their return to growth. The Kingdom of Heaven comes suddenly and unexpectedly. It is not the culmination of man's historical toil to meet his Lord, but rather it is a spontaneous mercy from God, just as salvation was before.
Religious conservatism goes hand in hand with political conservatism. Innovation is a cause for doubt: what was right for our fathers is also right for us. Ancient customs, laws, and constitutions are appropriate because they are ancient; It is safe and experience has proven its validity. Each generation follows in the footsteps of the one before it; He may collect more money or populate more land, but he leaves the social fabric and established behavioral systems as they are. Some people commit sins repeatedly, and everyone does it from time to time, but appropriate rituals and rituals expiate those sins and bring them forgiveness. There are rituals that bless birth, marriage, and death. And so life goes on forever.
But the flood of scientific discoveries undermined the foundations of all these conservative trends. The first painful blow was proving that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way around. Then came the proof that the age of the world is measured not in thousands of years, but in thousands of millions. It was possible for these facts to be reconciled and coexist with the static system of the world and its unchanging essence. But the realization that creation is an ongoing process and not an event belonging to the distant past was catastrophic. Change and development are neither an illusion nor an unfortunate exception to the rule of stability; On the contrary, they are the mood of nature that flows through her being. Hostility to Darwin's theory did not arise simply because he demonstrated man's kinship with lower animals and his descent from them. This hostility had another, deeper source. If nature and all living organisms change and improve during evolution, it is inconceivable that any traditional system is sacred and does not accept change. Teilhard de Chardin described the intellectual ferment brought about by evolutionary doctrine in an article he wrote in 1920 and was not published until forty years later as follows:
(It is a funny dramatic scene, for the human race to be divided into two opposing camps, one of which looks to the horizon declaring with all its new faith: We are moving, and the other stubbornly decides, without budging from its position: Nothing is changing. We are not moving at all.)
Many thinkers have discussed the moral, ideological, and philosophical connotations of evolution. Suffice it to mention: from Britain, Spencer, T. Huxley, and Waddington; From the United States, John Dewey and Simpson; From Germany, Heckel, Hartmann and Wrensch; From France, Bergson. But the inspired forecaster Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit paleontologist, had to attribute evolution to human destiny, and to plan a schematic structure according to which evolution would be “a light that illuminates all truths.”
Response to Teilhard's works has ranged from enthusiastic praise to harsh criticism. Scientists are suspicious of clerics who meddle in science, just as clerics are suspicious of scholars who involve themselves in matters of religion. But Teilhard was both a scientist and a cleric. Some of his zealous followers equate his contribution with that of Darwin in terms of importance, but this is difficult, because the Teilharian synthesis does not have the strength of scientific proof. However, his greatness can be recognized even by those who disagree with him. Teilhard's writings, in fact, belong to a class of their own; To understand the content of these writings, it is necessary to realize the truth of their uniqueness.
Teilhard was a Christian mystic who happened to be a scientist at the same time, and he also had a talent for poetic imagery. Teilhard was aware that he was writing his “fundamental views” and “convictions that are not subject to rigorous scientific proof.” Despite this, he wrote in his magnum opus, The Phenomenon of Man, written in 1938 and 1940, published in French in 1955 and translated into English in 1959, that what he wrote was a “simple, purely scientific treatment.” (Unless otherwise stated, all of Teilhard’s following quotes are from this book.) This claim made Teilhard easy prey for critics who pointed out that his book deviates from the style usually followed in scientific treatises. However, it is difficult to describe Teilhard’s views. Teilhard described it as “a mystical Christianity formally derived from evolutionary principles” (Simpson 1965). The idea that Christianity could be derived from evolutionary principles or from any other scientific discoveries undoubtedly struck Teilhard as something completely different, namely to create a coherent general view that included both his Christian faith and his scientific knowledge.
It would be closer to the truth then to say that Teilhard viewed science in the light of his spiritual insight. Perhaps the best description of Teilhard's achievement comes from the words of Toynbee (1965). These words had nothing to do with Teilhard's ideas, which were unknown to Toynbee at the time:
The truth perceived by the conscience finds a natural expression in poetry, and the truth perceived by the mind finds a natural expression in science... The comprehensive vision of the conscience at the poetic level is a prophecy, and at the scientific level of the mind it is metaphysics.
Teilhard was a metaphysical prophet, in the specific sense in which Toynbee used these words.
Some people believe that science and poetry do not mix better than oil and water. They should spare themselves the trouble of reading Teilhard's writings. Teilhard addressed those who were reluctant to experience ideological schizophrenia. Those looking for an aesthetically satisfactory and intellectually compelling alternative to that fragmented intellectual life in discrete containers will find help and inspiration from Teilhard. My purpose here is not to present the full range of Teilhard's ideas but rather to survey his synthesis from the point of view of modern biology, perhaps making some modifications. Even if my comments often seem critical, I can only say to some of Teilhard’s admirers who may not like that criticism that nothing could harm Teilhard’s structure more than freezing it in a fixed law. Most of Teilhard's biological ideas were formed in the 1920s, and much new has happened in biology since that date. Even if his biology is outdated, this is even more true of Darwin. We must not forget that the usefulness of any structure is always temporary, because at least some of its components are subject to change. Because science, art, and philosophy, we hope, will be different from what they are now. Each generation will have to undertake the task of revising and renewing the composition.
“Men's minds are reluctant to realize that development has a precise direction and a distinct axis.” This is the basic assumption of the telluric structure. Human, biological and cosmic development is not simply a rush, a flutter, and a rapid, intense rotation with no direction. But he is progressive, at least in his general direction. The evolution of life is a continuation and extension of the evolution of non-living matter, and the evolution of man is a continuation and extension of biological evolution. The "Great Synthesis" that Teilhard preached was the continuation of human evolution. Individual human life is an essential part of the development of the universe, and human destiny, meaning, and individual dignity are merely atoms of the meaning of all existence.
Some writers limit the use of the word “evolution” to biological evolution alone. This usage seems arbitrary. The universe has had a historical development, as has life, and so has humanity. This growth was gradual, reaching the development of life from inorganic matter, and life ascended to man from ancestors who were not human. Although inorganic evolution is attributed to factors different from the causes of organic evolution, and human evolution in turn has its own causes, life is the beginning of an era in the universe, and man is the beginning of an era of life. As we explained in the third chapter, the emergence of life and the emergence of man can be considered evolutionary transgressions that opened horizons for the possibility of developments of a new kind. When we consider them from the perspective of time, these transgressions represent an interruption in evolutionary continuity, but they were paved for in previous developments. Even if the word "progress" has any meaning, these transgressions indicate that development as a whole was progressive.
Teilhard's assertion that the process of evolution has a definite direction must be carefully examined. Evolutionary changes that occur at any time are conditioned by previous changes, and they in turn become a condition for subsequent evolutionary changes. This is completely clear in biological evolution, as the evolutionary past of any type of living organism is inscribed in its genes. Evolution is not a collection of separate events with no connection between them; Rather, it is a system of interconnected events. It was not possible for life to arise unless cosmic evolution created at least one planet capable of sustaining life. It would not have been possible for a being like a human being with the ability to think symbolically, consciousness, and self-awareness to appear unless biological evolution created creatures with highly organized brains. Since particular evolutionary events can only arise on the basis of a series of previous events, we can describe the history of the universe as having a “direction.” We have the right to call the axis of the evolutionary process distinct from that evolutionary line that created man.
“Trend” can be understood in another way as well. The process of evolution can be directed, led, or driven by a natural or unseen factor. In that case, development follows only one path, and its result and the result of all the stages it must pass are bound to occur in a preordained time sequence. There are some minority schools among biologists that believe in such preordained guidance. For example, finalists assume that all evolution occurred for a clear goal, which was the creation of man, and that some unseen force or forces led the evolutionary changes for that goal. Another school asserts that evolution, at least biologically, is orthogenesis. The change that takes place here is a succession of events determined by factors within the organism, determined by the structure of its genes, and it progresses towards a specific goal, such as a human being. Evolutionary growth therefore follows a prescribed path, and its final outcome is also destined.
Orthogenesis differs from finalism in that it does not assume unseen forces that necessarily guide development. The preferred “explanation” here, and it is only an attractive analogy, is that evolutionary development ( Phylogeny ) is estimated in the same way that individual development ( Ontogeny ) is estimated. The fertilized egg does not contain a miniature human (Homunalus), however, an embryo emerges from this egg and undergoes many complex transformations and growth, eventually becoming a normal adult human. Did the bodies of our very distant ancestors, or even protozoan life, contain all the beginnings necessary for evolutionary development? If evolution follows the correct path of formation, then it becomes the verbal explanation for the word "evolution", which is the unraveling of pre-existing beginnings, like the growth of a flower from a bud. What is common between finality and orthodoxy is that the evolutionary history of the living world was predetermined, at the beginning of life, and perhaps at the beginnings of matter. If this is true, then evolution is a dull process that never results in anything new, because everything it does was predetermined to happen. It completely loses freedom and the ability to create.
Teilhard declared his “considered opinion” that proper education was “necessary and indispensable.” But the meaning that Teilhard attributed to this expression was not an ordinary meaning. He put two definitions of correct formation on the same page (108) of the English edition of his book The Phenomenon of Man. One of these two definitions is that it is “a law of controlled complexity, the mature stage of the process that leads first to the small molecule, then the large, and finally to the first cells.” The second definition is “the clear ability of living matter to form a system whose elements are experimentally successive according to the criteria of increasing central complexity.” It seems that what this statement indicates is the indisputable fact that development, if we consider its past events in their entirety, was truly progressive and, in this sense, had a direction.
The evidence of progress and direction in biological evolution is quite clear if we look at the living world in its entirety. Indeed, evolution was regressive in some groups, such as parasites (cases of loss of organs, especially decomposition of the nervous system); He also seemed inclined in other combinations to generate limitless variations of just one style. However, the final outcome of evolution is that living organisms on Earth are not limited to the beginnings of viruses and amoebas. Many creatures have appeared with physical structures that are comparable in complexity only to the finest works of art. Evolution also produced organisms whose nervous systems were wonderfully advanced, enabling them to transmit information to these organisms about the state of their environments. Such creatures can dominate their environments instead of being subject to them.
Now it is the totality of evolution that occupies Teilhard's mind entirely. The only particular evolutionary line that interests Teilhard is the human line, because he believes that the focal point of evolution has been in the human, so to speak. Rather, he imagines the entire living world as one single organism: “If we take the living matter spread throughout the universe as a whole since the very beginnings of evolution, we find that it draws the outlines of one huge organism.” This is a very insightful and beautiful metaphor that expresses the unity of life. The development of this symbolic entity that includes and transcends all beings is another issue separate from the development, or developments, of millions of species that live on our planet Earth or have lived on it. Moreover, paleogenesis is a hypothesis intended to explain the causes of evolution, not to evaluate a brief description of the evolutionary history of the living world.
This places me, willingly or unwillingly, in the anomalous position in which I argue that Teilhard was not, in spite of himself, a supporter of the principle of orthogenesis. Teilhard had little to say about the causes of evolution. Although the latter part of Teilhard's life coincides with the emergence of the modern synthetic biological theory of evolution, he had only a shaky idea of it. However, his general concept of the nature of evolution is much more consistent with the principles of biological theory than with orthogenesis. Let it be clear that we are not dealing with a biological technical issue, but rather with a crucial issue for the entire telluric structure.
If evolution follows a preordained path (orthogenesis), or is driven and directed by divine intervention for a specific purpose (ultimacy), then its meaning becomes a confusing and even frustrating mystery. If the universe was designed to advance toward a state of absolute beauty and goodness, its design was deeply flawed. Why do we really need billions of years to achieve that goal? In this case, it is most appropriate for the universe to be created completely and completely. Why the many false beginnings, the extinction, the disasters, the misery, the anguish and finally that great calamity - death. A God of love and mercy could not have planned all of this. All doctrines that consider evolution to be predestined or directed collide head-on with the unavoidable fact of the existence of evil.
Philosophers have been wrestling with the dilemma of death for more than two thousand years. Teilhard knew all of this, and he knew that the only hope of finding a solution lay in replacing management with choice as an essential factor in creation. Freedom at the human level requires the ability to do good or evil. If we only do good, or act in only one way, then we are not free and we do not have a choice. We are slaves of necessity. Therefore, to understand the development of the universe, we must consider it in some sense a struggle for the gradual emergence of freedom. The final result of evolution is not preordained because, according to Teilhard, “there is a danger that the elements of the universe should refuse to serve it - because they think; or, more accurately, that the world itself should refuse to realize itself by reflection.” Here Teilhard's ideas come close to others such as Hartshon (1962), a philosopher aware of evolutionary issues.
Teilhard describes the method of evolution as a groping, which is more of a poetic and impressionistic depiction than an accurate scientific diagnosis, but it is nonetheless entirely appropriate and spot on. In Chapter Three, we have already outlined the main principles of modern biological theory. We must expand here on some of its aspects related to prior appreciation and creativity in biological evolution. Is evolution merely the seemingly unnecessary struggle to unravel what has always been there, preordained and constituted, and gradually unveil it, over time? Or could it be a succession of attempts and errors, some of which are the result of creativity? Could evolution be the realization of a very small part of a series of infinite possibilities? Can it not be understood in some sense as a response of creation to a Creator with a wide range of freedom? Are pain, suffering, conflict, and evil connected to this gradual expansion of freedom?
There are three stages, or levels, of evolution: 1- Finding raw genetic material through genetic mutation, 2- Forming genetic patterns adapted to survive and reproduce in specific environments through Mendelian mixing in sexual generation and natural selection. 3- Establishing barriers between species through reproductive isolation. Mutations are changes in genes and chromosomes. The prominent characteristic of mutations is that adaptive illusion is one of its most prominent features. What is meant here is that the mutation arises regardless of its benefit or harm to the organism. Most mutations are actually harmful, many cause genetic impairments and diseases, and some are fatal. How then can mutation provide the raw materials for evolution? The answer is that a few mutations are not harmful, but rather beneficial, especially when the environment in which the biological species lives changes. As a result of this change in the environment, some old genes lose their adaptive suitability and are replaced by mutant genes.
The deleterious nature of most mutations provides dramatic evidence of the lack of direction in the evolutionary process. Evolution is not progressive at the level of mutation. It is the absolute opposite of being right. Mutation alone causes chaos, not evolution. But natural selection restores the balance because harmful genes decrease in frequency while beneficial genes persist and reproduce. As we mentioned previously, some writers have used to liken natural selection to a sieve that leaves some grains in and others leak out. But this analogy is weak. Natural selection interacts with genetic patterns, not with individual genes. ; The one who survives or dies, leaves offspring or does not, is the living organism, not the individual gene. A gene that is beneficial in one set of genes may be harmful in others. The changes that natural selection tends to encourage at one time depend on the changes that preceded them. The closest analogy to natural selection in this case is not a sieve, but rather a control mechanism in an automatic system. Thus the genetic staff of a biological species receives and accumulates information about the challenges of the environment in which the species lives. Evolutionary changes are merely creative responses to environmental challenges, and not changes imposed by the environment, as the Lamarckians mistakenly believed.
Almost all higher beings and many lower beings reproduce sexually. Sex is an amazingly efficient way to generate infinite genetic combinations through which natural selection takes effect. This is because the following results from Mendel's laws: the probability of different genetic combinations in a population with n genes, each with n = 3. If n were equal to hundreds or thousands of genes, the number of possible genetic combinations would exceed all the individuals present on the surface of the Earth of any biological species. This Mendelian mechanism is actually more efficient than it needs to be. Therefore, the maximum majority of possible genotypes are never achieved.
The results of this amazing efficiency are worthy of consideration. First, each individual of any sexually reproducing species, such as humans, for example, has a unique genetic makeup, which has never occurred in the past and is not likely to be repeated in the future (the exception being identical twins whose genetic makeup is almost identical). Secondly, evolutionary changes are unique events, so it is extremely unlikely that human evolution, for example, will be repeated or revert to its pre-human ancestors. If life existed on a planet other than Earth, it is unlikely that the path of evolution on it would match the evolution that took place on Earth. Third, among the very large numbers of genetic combinations that are formed, some are consistent and others are not. How do we increase the frequency of the first and reduce the frequency of the second? Life has evolved organisms that have adapted to different environments and ways of life. In most cases, mixing the genes of these organisms is harmful. There are at least two million species of living organisms on Earth (some estimate it to be twice that number). Different species do not interbreed or exchange genes, or rarely do so. They are reproductively isolated from each other, or almost so. This reproductive isolation is achieved in many diverse ways. Species may breed in different seasons, or exist in different habitats. The sexual attraction between them may be weak or non-existent; Their hybrids may not be viable if they are born, or be weak, sterile, etc.
We can distinguish two patterns of evolutionary changes. First: There is focal change (anagenesis), in which evolutionary change leads to the preservation of the species’ adaptation to its environment and further adaptation, while the species remains one. The second type is fission change (cladogenesis), which leads to the splitting of one species into two or more species. This fission occurs very easily when individuals of the same species are found in areas with different environments. Here differentiation takes place first into geographical races that become more and more genetically different as they respond to their varying environments. When genetic divergence reaches a point where gene exchange no longer favors environmental adaptation, natural selection promotes the growth of reproductive isolation to the point that the ancestral species diverges into two or more new species. Concentration and bifurcation have occurred in the evolution of most animal and plant groups. In humans, the evolutionary focus prevailed. Indeed, the human species has been formed and continues to be composed of multiple races. Races differentiate and diverge, or fuse and disappear; Sometimes divergence prevails, and other times fusion prevails. The differentiation of races is, of course, complex. However, only one human species has existed since the middle of the Pleistocene Epoch, about two and a half million years ago. The erect human being, in its various species, has evolved into Homo sapiens. The human races do not show any tendency towards further divergence; In fact, they have been meeting and coming together for two million years, and the forces of convergence are still growing.
The process of development can also be depicted in the terms that Toynbee used to describe the emergence and subsequent development of civilizations in his magnificent work (The Study of History: Challenge and Response). The challenge comes from the environment, and the response comes from natural selection. In the absence of challenge, there is evolutionary stagnation, and then “living fossils,” that is, those species that do not show significant change over long geological times. But the challenge does not guarantee a response, nor does it determine exactly what the response will be. The species that fails to respond due to the lack of appropriate genetic material declines and becomes extinct. The response may be adaptively specialized to adapt to different, i.e., divergent, environments. Bifurcation enriches organic diversity and can be said to create a number of “reconnaissance” groups that explore the possibilities of different environments (touch them, to use Teilhard’s eloquent metaphor).
The evolution of life took a long time, at least two billion years, because it was not just the simple unraveling or revelation of something that had been there from the beginning. The history of life is similar to human history in that both involve creative creation. The two progress through touch, trial and error, and false beginnings are often lost in closed evolutionary alleys, and failure ends in extinction. But the two have their successes and feats, and the two have achieved comprehensive progress. There has been a general acceleration of development. Cosmic evolution took longer than biological evolution, and human evolution took less time. The concepts of creativity and freedom do not apply to the sub-human level of development. However, it is possible to argue about the gradual relaxation of absolute algebra as the development of life progresses. The elements of creativity in the development of higher beings are more evident than in lower levels (see Dobzhansky 1963).
Proponents of teleology and orthogenesis argue that since it is unreasonable for all evolution to be the result of “chance,” there must be a design for its path. But the truth is more complex and interesting than the binary of coincidence and prior design suggests. It is clear that the statement that the beginnings of life contain all the potential for evolution that has already been achieved is true, but it is itself as trite as it can be. If the beginnings of life did not contain its endings, evolution would not have been able to accomplish what it has been able to achieve. What is important is that life had infinite unfulfilled potential, a logical consequence of the fact that only a very small number of possible combinations of genes are ever realized. It is misleading to think that all living things, including humans, were already formed at the beginning of life and only needed some time to blossom like a flower in a bud. The actual issue lies in another dimension.
The child receives half of his father’s inheritance and half of his mother’s inheritance. As for the specific genes that are passed on from the father or mother to the specific child, that is determined by chance. Which mutations occur, when and where, is also determined by chance. However, evolution is not a matter of chance except insofar as a mosaic is an accidental assembly of stones (some modern painters randomly splatter the canvas with paint, but there is no biological equivalent of this trick). Coincidence in evolution is bridled by an anti-coincidence effect, which is natural selection that responds to environmental challenges. Let us remember that natural selection is not a sieve, but rather a sophisticated automatic control machine. The thing to consider is that “control” does not amount to absolute determinism. There are elements of creation and freedom that can be distinguished, especially in the evolution of higher beings.
How is that possible? Many environmental changes are responded to in more than one way. For example, all desert plants must respond to the challenge of drought. Different plants do this in different ways. Some reduce their leaves into spines, some secrete a waxy or resinous layer to protect the leaves from water loss, others shed their leaves when the humidity drops below a critical limit, and others germinate, flower, and mature their seeds in the very short period in which water is available. Animals above a certain size are required to have a respiratory system; It can be gills, bronchi, or lungs of different types. Some animals invented and developed flight in different ways. To adapt to life in cold climates, some animals have warm fur and a metabolism that enables the body to maintain a constant temperature, and some of them remain in a state of rest during the cold season, or migrate to warm countries. Some animals avoid their enemies by adopting shapes and colors that help them hide and make them difficult to identify, while others announce to their potential enemies their repulsive and dangerous characteristics, real or pretend, with decorative and eye-catching warning colors. All of these coping methods are sometimes successful, and none of them appear to have any potential advantage over the others.
The multiplicity of methods of adaptation to similar environments does not agree with the hypotheses of teleology and prior design because these hypotheses make us wait for a single optimal method of adaptation. Natural selection, by contrast, is more flexible. Nineteenth-century evolutionary scientists called natural selection "survival of the fittest." But we prefer to withdraw this superlative, because what is worthy of survival remains. Teilhard once said that evolution “permeates everything to try everything, and tries everything to discover everything.” This diagnosis must be corrected. Teilhard was not aware of the fact that we emphasized before, which is that a very small portion of possible genetic combinations are achieved. There is therefore an exaggeration in the expression “trying everything”, because evolution has not tried and discovered very little of “everything”.
The set of genetic combinations that make up the natural genetic endowment of the human species did not exist before, in the Eocene or Cretaceous periods, for example. Would it have been possible, if a biologist had been allowed to live in those ancient times, to predict the possibility of life evolving and reaching the human state? This question is not as difficult as it may seem, as this ancient biologist could not have predicted this if the knowledge available to him was similar to our current knowledge.
Let us note (in parentheses) that an almost equally imaginative question is posed by some simplistic writers and discussed with the utmost seriousness by government agencies with generous budgets: If life existed in many parts of the universe outside our small planet, could its evolution have led to human-like beings? I would submit that wild claims about the evolution of such organisms are premature and premature. Although man lives on a small planet that is not much different from billions of planets without life, he is often the only rational being in this universe.
As we mentioned earlier, Teilhard describes the evolutionary approach as “touching.” He also argues that “groping is directed coincidence.” This calls for careful examination. This expression “touch” is perhaps Teilhard's most brilliant and subtle metaphor. Natural selection deals with mutations and gene combinations in which “chance” plays an important role. It "directs" these coincidences into adaptive channels. One must beware of personalizing natural selection. It is not a spirit, nor is it some kind of highly ingenious being that directs evolution to certain ends. Groping in the dark is really the only course that natural selection can take. Groping can lead to discovering new outlets for life, but it can also lead to falling into an abyss. It may preserve and enhance life, or it may lead to extinction. Teilhard was a paleontologist, and the extinction of lifelines was quite familiar to him. But what is strange is that he paid very little attention to this phenomenon in his writings. The observation that natural selection is necessarily a hunter of opportunities and short-sighted in its detection would not have constituted a difficulty for him if he had realized it. Because natural selection loses a prior view of the future, it adapts the organism to the environments existing in the place and time in which it is effective. A particular species may be fully adapted and compatible with its current environment, but it may become extinct if it is unable to readapt if the environment changes. A high degree of adaptability and specialization does not always go hand in hand with flexibility and the ability to readapt.
“Directed coincidence” is a mystery if we take it literally. But Teilhard added another mystery to it when he wrote that in evolution, “the blind whimsy of large numbers meets in a strange way with the precise direction of an objective being observed, but these paradoxes give us an accurate and clear description of what has actually been achieved.” How is this possible? Biological evolution has been somewhat divergent, and the number of species on Earth has increased accordingly. But the species that exist now have descended from a few species that lived in the past. As we go further into the past, these numbers become fewer and fewer. This is because the majority of evolutionary lines have ended in extinction, and while only a small number of species remain, a smaller number of them achieve rare adaptations that qualify them for new ways of life in environments that were not exploited efficiently or were never exploited before. Therefore, organic diversity is gradually increasing due to divergence. Evolution has accomplished more than just preserving life on Earth and preventing its extermination Safe to adapt. Thus, the human species has achieved the peak of biological tranquility, and it is unlikely that man will become extinct due to any conflict with his natural or biological environment. Because he is able, or will soon be able, to properly control his environment, and the human species cannot become extinct except through suicidal madness, such as an atomic war, or through a cosmic catastrophe.
The diversity of living organisms on Earth is truly amazing, but it is somewhat confusing to the biologist. Why are there more than two million species of living things, some of which are truly bizarre? The answer may be that it was the “blind whim of large numbers” that made evolutionary progress possible. The main feature of progressive development, or one of its features anyway, is its open ends. Conquering new environments and acquiring new ways of life opens new horizons for further evolutionary changes.
Species of some fish were able to invade the Earth, exploit its food sources, and evolve into amphibians thanks to the “discovery” of breathing through the lung. Most amphibians still depend on water in their formative stages. This dependence was achieved by the "invention" of the egg, which is protected by the shell so that embryonic development can be completed inside it. The family of amphibians that found this “invention” during their contact evolved into reptiles. Most reptiles live in the driest deserts, and many of them never consume liquid water, but rather obtain all their water needs from the food on which they live. Perhaps the next major evolutionary acquisition was the acquisition of the functional mechanism to maintain a constant body temperature regardless of the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. This was achieved in two groups of reptiles, birds descended from one of them and mammals from the other. Birds have evolved flight and the ways of life this enables. As for mammals, they have developed a complex functional machine to form the fetus inside the mother’s body and to feed the infants with milk and parental care. These innovations were accompanied by an increase in the size of the brain and the development of mental faculties.
The amount of evolutionary change in the mental faculties of mammals compared to fish is large and influential. But this change pales in comparison to the restructuring and reconstitution of the mental faculties that has taken place during the past million or two million years, which is a geologically short period, in the evolutionary line ending with one species, namely man. This change was so great that it qualified as an evolutionary leap. This transcendence can only be compared to that which is much older, namely the emergence of life from non-life. It also seems that there is a vast abyss separating the rational person from all other animals. In Teilhard’s words “It is taken for granted that the animal knows, but it does not know that it knows – that is quite certain.” Man is capable “not merely of knowing, but of knowing that he knows.” However, let us emphasize once again (see Chapter Three): every basic human mental faculty exists primarily in some animals. Therefore, the differences between humans and animals are only quantitative differences. This does not lead us to engage in contradiction. Quantitative differences can grow and increase to the point where they turn into qualitative differences. Our animal ancestors had the slight beginnings of faculties which, when greatly increased and combined, led to the creation of an entirely new being - man.
Before the appearance of life, the Earth's crust (land) was covered by a hydrosphere (oceans) and an atmosphere (aerosphere).
Life has added a new envelope, the biosphere, which is located essentially in the space between the atmosphere and the land and the water ocean, just as the biosphere emerged before it from the aquatic ocean completely. Man has spread throughout the Earth and has become its most new envelope, the “thinking envelope.”
Teilhard and Vernadsky independently proposed the name “cognitive envelope”. In at least two respects, the development of the cognitive sphere is considered a continuation of the development of the biosphere. First, the cognitive sphere emerged from the biosphere just as its last predecessor arose from the aquatic sphere. Secondly, the cognitive environment is linked to a feedback relationship with other environments. Human strength is constantly growing, both a biological factor and a geological factor as well. On the other hand, humans are affected by their environment. However, the growth of the thinking envelope, the formation of knowledge, is essentially a new process.
I have already mentioned Teilhard's idea that the totality of living matter on Earth constitutes a single cosmic organism. It is clear that the human race is a part, or if you like, a member of this organism. Teilhard expects that this cosmic being, in turn, will become a unity of a different kind - “an enormous organic assemblage of spirits.” Tillich (1963) argues that human history is fundamentally and distinctly different from general evolutionary “history.” The distinctive features of human history are: “to be linked to a goal, to be affected by freedom, to create new meaning, and to be important in a comprehensive, specific, and teleological sense.” I add here one caveat, which is that these relations characteristic of human history, as well as the basic human mental faculties, may initially exist at the biological level as well.
“The whim of blind huge numbers” played an important role in the entire evolutionary process, from the creation of the universe through the origin of life until the formation of knowledge. Cosmic evolution has created masses of galaxies, suns, and planets. Life, and ultimately consciousness and self-awareness, appeared in at least one of the countless celestial bodies. Large numbers are intertwined in human evolution as well. The human species, which is abundant in number, is constantly increasing. Are these crowds unnecessary additions? It may seem so, because intellectual and spiritual progress is primarily the work of Safavid minorities, and is actually attributed to a smaller minority of genius individuals. The fate of the vast majority of people is nothing but death and oblivion. Does this overwhelming majority of people play no role in the evolutionary advancement of humanity?
It is completely doubtful that the elite have the ability to live alone without the crowds. In any case, the role of the crowds is not limited to being a fertiliser for the land in which elite culture flourishes. A very small fraction of those who attempt to scale the heights of human achievement reach somewhere close to the pinnacle. Crowds of climbers are inevitable. If this is not the case, no individual may be able to reach the summit. The lives of the forgotten crowds are not in vain as long as they too make an effort to rise up.
The original and eccentric Russian thinker Fedorov (1832-1903; in Zinkovsky 1953) vigorously defended the idea that human beings are partners in a “common enterprise.” Teilhard, unaware of his predecessors, developed a similar idea in an evolutionary framework: “Man can expect no evolutionary future without the participation of all people.” Teilhard enters the realm of speculation here, even if he has no objection to admitting it. But Teilhard did not allow his predictive insights to fly off the solid ground of cumulative knowledge. Of course, Teilhard's prediction could not accept scientific proof, otherwise it would have become a scientific prediction. However, speculation can be consistent with or contradict scientific knowledge. This allows us to examine Teilhard's insights from the point of view of evolutionary biology, which was his own starting point.
The prevailing trend in the development of the cognitive envelope, the formation of knowledge, tends toward the “constellation” and the “large structure.” This involves the convergence and radical unification of the natural, cultural and ideological tributaries of the human race. Bifurcation has played a secondary, though not insignificant, role in human evolution over the past million or two million years. It created ethnic, national, class and cultural diversity. Human diversity has played a role similar to biodiversity in “trying everything to discover everything”. But the other side of the coin is not so pretty; The difference between human beings has often sparked hostility, cruelty, hatred, brutality, wars (hot and cold), genocide, and concentration camps. Social Darwinists, whose non-Darwinism is equal to their sociality, claim that conflict and its ugly consequences are nothing but the price that humanity pays for its progress. Some biologists still sing the praises of victory in “the glorification of ruin.”
Teilhard rejects Social Darwinism. The strongest motivation for progress in knowledge formation comes not from conflict and devastation, but from love. The substitution of love for conflict in biological evolution and cognitive formation has already begun. The evolutionary classics have described natural selection as a “struggle for survival.” And “struggle” does not always mean fighting. Our modern view of natural selection sees it as occurring in both cooperation and competition. Moreover, the further we go in biological evolution, the more important cooperation becomes compared to competition. It is generally more important in higher animals than in lower animals. Teilhard makes love an essential factor for all development. “The fragments of the world strive for each other, driven by the power of love, until the world achieves its existence. This is not just a metaphor, it is much more than poetry.” Indeed, it is metaphor, and it is poetry, and in these two qualities it conveys to us an important insight.
Let us say, in the manner of Teilhard only on the surface, that we see that there is competition for cooperation in progressive development. There is also an evolution in love; Love rises from sexual love to brotherly love to love of humanity to love of God. Love unites without eliminating diversity. On the human level, it is the means by which both the person and the species achieve self-transcendence. The Great Synthesis is “a powerful psychological-biological process that leads to unity in diversity, with love as its main instrument.” Teilhard wrote in 1920 (Teilhard 1964):
The human race as a whole, collective humanity, is the demand for decisive action whereby the total forces of earthly evolution will be released and flourish; An act in which the full awareness of every human being is enhanced and communicated with the awareness of every other human individual, not only the living but also the dead.
The information and communication revolution makes the “constellation” of the human species inevitable in Teilhard’s vision. The human species only lives on the surface of one small planet. Unless there are ways to migrate to populate other planets, humans will finally have to learn to live in harmony, or at least in peace, with their numerous and ever-increasing neighbours. The main point here is not only that population density has increased and will continue to increase, but, more importantly, that technological inventions facilitate movement and make the immediate transmission of information and ideas to all corners of the earth possible. Knowledge promotes both spiritual growth and unification - “to be more is primarily to know more.”
Teilhard's prediction of the future constellation of the world and the grand structure may seem like the daydreams of a dreamer who does not take into account the forces of evil and the many dark sides of human nature. Teilhard realized that his ideas could be misinterpreted as if they were reducing humanity to a state of vulgar monotony in order to mold it into a benign mould. But nothing could be more distant from Teilhard's thought than that. Teilhard addressed the great dilemma of reconciling consensus and great synthesis with uniqueness and what Brenton (1953) called biological pluralism. As Brenton wrote:
The Earth not only covers itself with countless thought grains, but surrounds itself with the shell of a single thinker to functionally become a giant thought grain of planetary standard. It is the gathering of individual contemplations gathered and mutually reinforcing into one act of unique collective contemplation.
Very far from everyone becoming similar or being integrated and assuming their merging, it is expected that when cognitive formation approaches the realization of the great synthesis, the depth of the individual human personality will grow and increase and its uniqueness will reach its maximum. The meaning of individual human life is achieved by its participation and inclusion in the movement of the evolutionary rise of cognitive formation. Individuals are not identical at the animal level, because they are not identical, neither in their genetic makeup nor in their development. Formation leads to affirming uniqueness, not to erasing and leveling it.
Is there any more indication of what supports the bright hope of the grand structure than Teilhard's glowing faith? Can we eliminate the polar opposite: decomposition, diaspora, and the arrogant superiority of the individual against the human race? The example of Dostoyevsky's Grand Detective and the Nietzschean Superman are the opposite of the method of great representation. Teilhard takes this into account without referring to Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky. Man's freedom also enables him to move away from the path of great synthesis. Man can also become dust of disjointed sparks of consciousness independent of each other. Some of those sparks, the strongest, the brightest, or perhaps just the luckiest, will eventually be able to “find in the end the path that consciousness has always sought to realize itself.” But Teilhard rejects this path, which in his opinion leads to a closed evolutionary alley. Spiritually mature humanity can extricate itself from such a closed alley because man is the only life form that does not have to accept the dictates of necessity and submit to the evolutionary forces operating within it because it can direct its own development. The isolated individual is a biological and human paradox at the same time. The lives of ascetics and those who stop worshiping will be in vain if they are unable to communicate their insights to other people, of course, provided that they have insights worth communicating.
The self-esteem that leads a person to break with humanity is harmful to the person and to humanity at the same time. True growth is fueled by love and is inhibited and stunted by selfishness and self-centeredness. Self-realization can only be achieved through love for others and spiritual union with them. “The true self grows in inverse proportion to selfishness.” Teilhard departs from the Buddhist ideal of the dissolution and dissolution of the human personality in union and then final merging with the divine self. Teilhard rejects this dissolution. Man must "seek to tame the necessary hope for a limitless future with his inevitable individual annihilation."
Teilhard predicts the completeness and eventual fulfillment of the totality of evolution. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”-----. This Christian religious symbol is undoubtedly the source of Teilhard's inspiration. He makes this quite clear in his book: The Great Disruption or the Genesis? (1964).
For the Christian who views the process of humanization as merely paving the way to the Kingdom of God, Christ is the one who above all else surrounds himself with the complete reality of the universe; But at the same time, it is the universe that is illuminated by the warmth and eternity of Christ.
It is clear that it is the Sufi inspiration, not the process of deduction from scientific data, that transmits Teilhard's eschatological visions to the offspring. However, it remains evolutionary and biologically consistent. The point he emphasizes time and time again is that man should be a positive participant in the process of development, not a passive spectator.
The perfection of the world, the doors of the future, and entry into the vastness of the Kingdom, do not open
For a privileged few or for a chosen people other than humanity. She throws her wrestler just for the joint crawl
For everyone together, in a direction that everyone can follow, in self-realization, in renewal
My soul to the earth.