Evolutionary Cosmology
Description
Robert Kleinman:
"After Darwin, many efforts were made to place evolution in a larger context than that of natural selection with its Spencerian overtones. This led to the revival of evolutionary cosmology, which is an attempt to account for the universe as a whole in terms of the idea of evolution. “Evolution” means an unrolling or unfolding in an orderly process of development through successive stages to a more integrated whole. As used in science, it connotes little more than a mechanical change from simple to complex forms. But the term also describes developmental theories of life and consciousness, suggesting an inner potential moving toward some further result or goal. Consequently, it already carries a teleological sense that makes its application to the process of natural selection questionable. There is an ambiguity in the meaning of evolution that contributes to widespread misunderstanding of its import. Besides a purely Darwinian picture of complex speciation rising out of primordial slime, it can also suggest the cumulative descent of divinity in a succession of advancing organic forms.
Philosophically, evolution implies an energetic universe developing in time. Many cosmologies could account for this, but the scientific situation is more restricted. Biologists are primarily interested in the mechanisms responsible for the appearance of new species of living things on earth. Darwin’s idea of natural selection is one kind of mechanism, but it is far from a cosmological theory."
(https://antimatters2.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/1-1-kleinman.pdf)
Typology
Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution
Robert Kleinman:
The French philosopher Bergson offered a theory of creative evolution based on the idea of a cosmic life force, or vital impulse (élan vital), which is driving the universe forward in an ever-growing complexity of forms.6 It reveals itself dynamically in living things, spurring the evolution of instinct and intelligence in them. Contrary to Darwinism, he sees evolution as a creative process continually producing new forms in a spontaneous and unpredictable way. Life improvises as it goes, its action being comparable to a rocket bursting into numerous sparks whose spent cinders fall back as dead matter. In this way, matter is a product of the life force, counteracting its upward thrust with a downward inertial tendency. For Bergson, the universe is a continuous, nonrepetitive movement of life without any static background or ultimate purpose. Life is identified with pure duration and can only be known through intuitive feeling. Intuition is opposed to intellect, which cuts reality into pieces and is unable to grasp the world as a continuous whole. Only intuition, a kind of intellectual sympathy, can enter into the inexpressible heart of things and identify with the pure flow of duration.
Bergson rejects teleology as well as mechanism, because he interprets the former in a finalistic sense: the end determines the direction of evolution. Since both teleology and mechanism are deterministic for him, determination by the future (finalism) is just as restrictive as determination by the past (mechanism). If mechanism and teleology are both deterministic, then no scope would remain for freedom and novelty in the world. Bergson dismisses them both in favor of his idea of creative evolution. In his view, evolution is a continuous march toward novel creations which are not determined by either the past or the future. But, again, finalism is only one way of interpreting teleology. An end or purpose need not be something imposed on the universe from outside. Even an internal purpose does not imply absolute necessity; on the contrary, it can suggest that some orderly nonmechanical process of development is at work in the world. Change without any ordering principle is nothing more than an indiscriminate display of energy that leads nowhere. Thus, Bergson’s attempt to introduce pure freedom and spontaneity into the evolutionary process fails to offer a reasonable alternative to Darwinian mechanistic ideas. But his theory stresses that evolution is a cumulative process inherent in time itself. He sees reality as the steady advance of the élan vital involving perpetual novelty rather than mechanical repetition. While his universe lacks a universal purpose to guide it, ample room remains for the attainment of lesser goals in Life’s blind, unquenchable thirst for fulfillment.
More information: Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution. Tr. Arthur Mitchell (New York, 1911).
(https://antimatters2.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/1-1-kleinman.pdf)
Emergent Evolutionism
Robert Kleinman:
"Another attempt to develop a non-mechanistic theory of evolution was the emergent evolutionism of the English philosopher Samuel Alexander. He presented his ideas in a massive book entitled Space, Time and Deity. Alexander called the ultimate reality “SpaceTime,” arguing that space and time are interdependent and cannot exist as separate entities. This original cosmic stuff is prior to matter, being identified with pure motion. Matter is composed of motions made up of the point-instants of Space-Time. Matter, Life, and Mind are universal qualities that emerge successively from Space-Time, influenced by a creative urge (Nisus) that carries the universe upward through various emergent levels. Evolution is expected to continue beyond Mind to a higher level called “Deity.”
This is a relative term, however, since it always refers to the next level that is still to emerge. Just what quality Deity will possess is unpredictable before it appears. Each emergent quality in evolution is the result of the complexities attained at the previous level, but cannot be reduced to it. There is therefore a discontinuity among the levels that renders new qualities genuinely novel; this is the meaning of “emergent evolution,” which stands in sharp contrast to Darwinian mechanism.
Emergence of a new quality in the universe is not the direct outcome of preceding conditions but an entirely unanticipated event that seems to render evolution inexplicable. For Alexander, the process is said to begin with Space-Time, the basic stuff of reality, though devoid of life and consciousness. How then shall we understand the emergence of higher principles like Life and Mind from it? Alexander’s conception of Nisus as an evolutionary urge inherent in Space-Time is also suspect. Their relationship is not clear, since an insentient reality like Space-Time could not have creative urges. Alexander thus does not account for the mysterious Nisus that is supposedly responsible for evolution.
The failure to offer an explanation for the discontinuous jumps between successive levels seems to admit an irrational element into his philosophy of evolution. Nevertheless, he raised an important issue with the conception of an evolutionary progression that does not end with the emergence of Mind in the universe."
(https://antimatters2.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/1-1-kleinman.pdf)
Teilhard de Chardin's Evolutionary Theism
Robert Kleinman:
"Our last example of a non-mechanistic theory is the type of evolutionary theism found in the writings of Teilhard de Chardin. He was not a professional philosopher like Bergson and Alexander, but a paleontologist and Catholic priest. This dual vocation led him to a lifelong endeavor to reconcile the claims of biology and Christianity in an all-embracing evolutionary synthesis. He accepted evolution as a fundamental fact, while differing from Darwinism by claiming that everything in the universe has dual aspects, the inner psychic and the external material. Accordingly, there is an evolution of consciousness going on simultaneously with physical evolution. The entire universe, from elementary particles to man, is governed by a “law of complexification” that carries it in the direction of greater complexity and increasing consciousness. Like Bergson, he saw a special nonmechanical agency at work in evolution, which he called “radial energy.” It is an internal psychic force that intensifies with the development of more complex forms. Radial energy causes things to become more integrated, both “within” and “without,” being responsible for the major transitions from matter to life and mind. When a physical system becomes more highly organized, its psychic interior will be more fully developed. Man is the most recent form to appear in the evolutionary progression of nature. His capacity for self-conscious thought and the formation of cultures has added a new layer to the earth’s ambiance — the “noosphere,” or layer of reflective thought. The noosphere is a unique environment that sets man apart from other creatures, characterizing the “phenomenon of man.” Through the noosphere, all human societies are projected to unite in a single world culture.
Teilhard believed that evolution converges toward a point called “Omega” where it reaches its final goal. The “Omega Point” is a mystical concept, but it is not wholly unworldly, since the physical and the psychic aspects of the universe are inseparable. Omega is the focal point of their convergence, corresponding to God in so far as it determines the direction of cosmic evolution. The process is orthogenetic, though not in a finalistic sense, because Teilhard makes some allowance for chance events. The culmination will be reached when all individuals unite in a single community through love. He invests his vision with religious significance by identifying it as the “Divine Milieu,” during which the spirit of the “Cosmic Christ” becomes fully manifested in the universe. In this way, he hoped to unite his personal religious convictions with science. Teilhard’s interpretation of evolution — a view he hoped to ground in science — fails to connect with mainstream scientific practice, which knows nothing of a psychic interior of physical matter. Ideas like “radial energy” and the “Omega Point” seem to be more fiction than science. They may have been intended to support his belief that the scientific view of evolution was not in conflict with Catholic theology. On the religious side, however, there was some uneasiness about Teilhard’s emphasis upon God as the end (Omega) of cosmic history rather than its initiator (Alpha). His ideas also conflicted with theological dogmas regarding the fall of man and original sin. As a consequence, they were not widely accepted in orthodox Catholic circles. Teilhard’s vision of an evolving universe remains purely speculative without having much support from either science or theology. But his optimistic faith in the future progress of humanity is praiseworthy and still has many avid adherents.
The work of Jean Gebser, particularly in The Ever-Present Origin, goes even farther than Teilhard in stressing the emergence of a new type of consciousness on earth.9\ According to Gebser, humanity advances culturally through successive stages, or “mutations,” toward an arational and aperspectival integral consciousness. This is not conceived as a linear progression in which later stages replace earlier ones. Instead, the successive stages are cumulative, representing comprehensive integrations of all that preceded them. The various mutations through which humanity passes are regarded as partial manifestations of a single “ever-present origin.”
Gebser was concerned with a detailed examination of the different structures of consciousness rather than with cosmology per se. He supported his thesis by a wealth of etymological, literary, and artistic evidence. Although his book displays remarkable originality and penetrative insight, it is only tangential to our present concern with cosmology. To recapitulate: the heart of cosmology is a distinctive mode of awareness identified by Sri Aurobindo as cosmic consciousness, which permeates all four faces of the universe."
(https://antimatters2.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/1-1-kleinman.pdf)
More information
* Book: Robert M. Kleinman. The Four Faces of the Universe: An Integrated View of the Cosmos. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press, 2006 excerpts