What Evolves?
Recently I heard a recording of a talk given in London by my friend and colleague Carter Phipps. Carter is the author of the forth coming book Evolutionaries: The People, Passions, and Perspectives that are Forging a New Synthesis of Science & Spirit that will be published next spring. In his talk he made a simple yet profound point. He stated that in his study of evolutionary thinkers past and present what he has found is that the particular view on evolution that any thinker has is largely determined by whatever it is that they think is evolving.
I found this to be an intriguing thought. What is it that different evolutionary thinkers believe is evolving? It stuck me as a more profound question than it appeared at first . Carter Phipps mentioned that if, for instance, you believe that what is most fundamentally evolving is DNA then you are going to have one view of evolution. If you believe that it is most essentially ‘information’ that is evolving then you tend to have a different view. Etc.
As I thought about this I immediately thought of Charles Darwin himself. He was most concerned with the evolution of living species. His theory of natural selection was conceived based on what he was looking at, which is how one species transforms into something different over the course of generations.
What about the American Pragmatist philosophers? Each of the three founding Pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey, seem to have a different conception of – or at least a different focus on – what it is that is evolving.
Peirce had perhaps the widest view – everything is evolving; or perhaps better stated – it is reality itself that is evolving. His evolutionary theory starts with pure possibility before anything existed. From there everything evolved including time, space, the laws of physics, and only then light, matter, planets, life, consciousness etc.
William James in his philosophy had what Peirce felt was an overly human-centric orientation. What James was concerned with was the evolution of experience. And since James believed that reality was made up of pure experience then he, I suppose, would agree with Peirce that everything is evolving. Reality is experience; experience is evolving, so reality is evolving.
John Dewey was the most socially engaged of the three and he seemed to be interested in the evolution of ideas and culture. Big ideas like democracy and education occupied his attention. As the ideas that a society holds evolve and become assimilated, the society itself changes and evolves.
If I look at pragmatism as a whole I might say that it is a school of thought that sees activity as the fundamental thing that evolves. Activity is change. If nothing changes there is no activity. As the universe evolves novel possibilities for new types of activity/change come into being. At the same time some forms of activity that were possible become impossible – or at least much less possible. 1000 years ago it was not possible to send a human being to the moon. And, on the other hand, many forms of brutal behavior that were common some time ago no longer take place, or if they do in the rarest of occurrences.
As we think about evolution the question that Carter raised is an interesting one to consider – what is most fundamental thing that is evolving in this universe?
What I thought of reading your blog was the example of the mobile telephone. It is a great example of how everything evolves together. It evolved from a technological novelty, to a social novelty – I remember Andrew telling that in Italy all kids where on terraces calling each other; last week I saw the function of ‘Ping’ for kids in puberty, they never have to feel alone, they are in constant contact with each other; now it also has a revolutionary function, last thing I heard was that China had to give in to the people closing a factory, because there were not only thousands of people protesting, but the whole country knew because of Twitter. I would say it is a great example of the evolution of consciousness towards world-centric if not further.
I am still deeply inspired by Ken Wilber’s talk on Cosmic creativity where he explains that all is connected and that Spirit itself is evolving, “ Out of spirits fundamental creativity was the entire manifest world created. And this creativity goes all the way up to us.” Creativity is found on all levels, everything is evolving simultaneously. “The lowest phenomena on the great developmental chain of being are material particles and these material particles add very little newness in their moment to moment existence, still there is enough novelty in these early particles, so that they can come together and create new particles. This creativity is one of the most extraordinary characteristics of reality. The greater the degree of novelty, the greater the freedom this moment has; The fundamental creative drive, including things like self organization and Eros which has the extraordinary capacity to fundamentally govern this creative march into novelty.
Fascinating question! You’ve stopped me in my tracks. Thanks, Jeff.
Interesting idea by Carter. I started to think about this question in relation to the work of Teilhard de Chardin. What did he see essentially evolving? Was it consciousness? That would make the most sense, considering he teases out the evolution of the nervous system as a single thread, the spinal chord if you will, that could be traced through the whole of evolution up until modern day.
For myself, this is a good question to ask. Immediately my thought is, “what is evolving is the World Soul.” What is the World Soul, the Anima Mundi? The intelligence of this world and the many forms of life within it, the many roots and branches and emerging species constitute a kind of supra-organism, a supra-intelligence of a consciousness that is stretched out across time and space, somehow discovering and (or) manifesting its nature through evolution. This is a powerful meditation for me to consider, if not a bit esoteric. Though, I think this idea resonates with Emerson and others. It may also ring true, had someone told Plato of the tree of life and the evolutionary history of the Earth.