Man Evolution

7/28/2019 Man Evolution

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refering page

Index

The evolution laws

Biology of development

The adjustments of the Universe

Teilhardian conception

The Future of Man

Conclusion

The man forms a part of a whole and this whole is in evolution Here is the fact which emerges fromnow on in our consciousness. But a great question arises with more and more acuity: does the river of

theevolution in which we are immersed goes somewhere or does it get lost in the nothingness ? Thisquestion commands our attitude in front of life i.e. it is essential to direct our choices and to define ourethics.

Jung said very well " We are not of today nor of yesterday, we are of an immense age ". Our presentbeing also depends on all that preceded us. Raising as Jung proposes the " historical periscope " out ofthe flood of the evolution, let us see what we see.

The evolution laws

THE PLACE OF MAN IN EVOLUTION

AND ITS FUTURE

Jacques Sverin Abbatucci

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7/25/2007http://perso.orange.fr/jacques.abbatucci/manevolution.htm


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The world participate in the cosmogenesis. To the concept of a static world, left like a scenery plantedto be used for the history of man, succeeded that of a world in evolution, within a vast universalmoveme

Evolution of the matter

The big-bang model makes sense to what occurred since the beginning of time. This model is generallyadmitted by the qualified scientific circles. There was a beginning. The equivalent of the whole massof the universe appeared in a point, approximately fifteen billion years ago as an extreme concentrationof energy appearing in the form of light and other radiations. As Provenzano stressed : "There isnothing, absolutely nothing, in the universe except energy, in one form or another". In the space timelately appeared, energy distributed in a homogeneous way. Then a sort of grumbling occurredinvolving its condensation in fundamental particles, which will combine to form the neutrons and theprotons then the atoms and the molecules. Thereafter the natural laws induced the formation of theelements, stars, planets, galaxies and all that is offered to our perception. The whole thing is expandingaccording to the first observations of Lematre in the twenties, which have always been checked indexsince then, in particular by the measurement of the fossil radiation arriving to us.

The irruption of time creates the history. Since all thus began, all will have necessarily an end. Thisone, according to the astrophysicists, will occur either in a continuation of the expansion of theuniverse and the dissipation of the whole energy in a total cooling, or in a collapse and a finalimplosion.

Evolution of life

A gradually increasing complexity thus characterizes the history of the universe in its physical aspects.It has been going on with the crossing of a new threshold : the emergence of life. Indeed, under thephysicochemical conditions specific to the first ages of our earth, the chemical reactions intensified,syntheses took place, new links were created between the molecules leading to large-sized chains ofwhich some were going to acquire some properties of life : they are breakable but in their expansion,they " will learn how " to replicate themselves and to multiply, to develop new properties, newfunctions in the synergy of the components, to build complexes of complexes, to acquire finally thecharacters of living beings, initially made index in unicellular entities.

This phenomenon occurred rather early in the history of our earth. The first fossils of cells should be asold as three billion years. From there, always under the impulse of the same energy directed " towardsthe fullest growth " - which one can discuss the meaning but not the reality &endash; the building ofthe various forms of the life went going on.

The primary cell had no nucleus. Later on it differentiated into nucleate cell, it "learned " the sexual

reproduction and it joined others of its similar to form multicellular beings. Thereafter the complexliving bodies differentiated in various branches in two complementary fields, the plants and theanimals which adapt themselves to their environments. One of the branches, formed by the mammals,leads finally to the man whose brain, formed of myriads of inter-connected cells, is the apex of this "pyramid of complexity ".

The man within the evolution

Psychic interiority as a result of the hyper complexity is probably present to differing degree in all the




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living. But with mankind it becomes as a new evolutionary force. By the crossing of a new step, that ofthe reflection, the man reaches the conscience. He knows that he knows. He acquires the sense of timeand of the history, the aptitude of planning and of choosing, the freedom to act, the notion of Good andEvil. In fact, the intelligence is an extraordinary force which intervenes from now on in the evolution.The face of the earth will be changed. After the discovery of fire, founding path, then from thebreeding and agriculture, his various inventions will give gradually to the man the control of the planet

and will ensure its supremacy. The same instinct of growth pushes him to constitute with his similarincreasingly complex and interdependent social assemblies, covering little by little the whole globe.

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Biology of development

In the biological evolution, various mechanisms are at work. Being added to the vertical transmissionof the characters of the species following the laws of heredity discovered by Mendel, in whichsexuality ensures genetic enrichment, mutations in coding reveal new characters. The whole process ofdifferentiation of the species is directed, according to Darwin, by the natural selection which promotes

the best adapted to the environment.

This concept is generally accepted. It explains the selection and the development of particularlyefficient characters in "the struggle for life", in a given phyletic branch. But there are macro-mutationsfrom one species to another, evolutionary discontinuities. They cannot be explained only by the naturalselection. The chance, in the form of random mutations, fails to explain a progress continued all alongthe time in an increasing neguentropy i.e. by building increasingly improbable complexes integratingmore and more informations. Perhaps in the mechanisms of the evolution, it is necessary to also makeplace to the inventive spirit i.e. the interior force which animates each alive being on which insistedLamarck and which Bergson called vital dash. At all events, the origin of the spirit of inventionremains a mystery. It seems that the life wants all to test. The role of education in the transmission of

the acquired culture and accomplished progress should not be under estimated. At the level of man, thecultural evolution is an additive factor of most signification. Great civilizations which followed oneanother transmitted each one a part of their progress -intellectual, moral, artistic - to the followinggenerations, even if a significant waste was the result of the collapse of each one in the course of time." We are of an immense age "....

A programation ?

The problem of the organization of the living matter deserves to be raised. All the biosphere issubjected to a normative constraint which appears to follow the same laws. In fact the matter is only arepresentation of energy. Both are equivalent and transformable one in the other. The quantummechanics require to consider the atomic elements as grains of energy as well as waves, whichlocalizations in space and trajectories are defined only by probabilistic laws. How can we imagine theconstruction made of energy and of information which constitutes our body, our private part of theuniverse?

The body organization cannot be the fact of the physical elements which, as they are gatheredconstitute our tissues and organs. Indeed, these elements are unstable and in perpetual renewal duringthe lifespan of the whole organism. The cells themselves are renewed unceasingly, except for thecerebral and some seminal cells. But the whole of the tissues constituting our body maintainsharmoniously during the life, respecting all the cycles carried out from embryo to old age, from birth to




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death.

Our body is, in fact, the result of an organizational structure which, on an atomic scale, rests onmolecular interactions, between elements separated by very large distances on their scale. Theseinteractions are primarily electromagnetic.

This organizational structure rules on genes and on genetic regulation. One can strongly doubt, indeed,that this informative structure is generated by the material elements which it groindexs. What is calledthe genoma cannot be the fruit of the purely hazardous union of initially independent elementsunaware of each other. Let us note that the initial adjustments necessary to make life occurs are of anextremeprecision. For Trinh Xuan Thuan they are about 1/1060 i.e. that the probability they arereached by chance is practically nil.

If this message, registered in our genes but still more coordinating the expression of the entire genoma,different in each type of cell, is a predetermined reality, what is its nature, its physical substrate andunder what control ? Does it rest on preexisting forces anticipating their association ? One can only bestruck of admiration in front of the complexity and the precision of the embryonic developmentdirected by a definite zone of the blastula which rules all the various tissues and organs. In the sameway, aren't they marvellous the subtle mechanisms regulating the harmonious growth of the individualand the maintenance of a precise homeostasis ensuring the stability of the internal milieu in a changingenvironment ?

Currently the physicists who study the chaos laws, which has the aspect of chance without being itreally, refer to a "strange attractor" which in the final analysis directs a multiplicity appearing to escapefrom the general determinism. For Anne Dambricourt-Malass, vanguard paleontologist, it is such anattractor that she describes as harmonic which drive during the evolution, the contraction of the skullbase and the rotation of it, responsible for the differentiation of homo sapiens and his adoption of theindexright station, independently for the essential of an environmental change.

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The adjustments of the Universe

We are thus an assembly of information and, for this reason, Edgar Morin could speak about a"computing" state of the matter. The number is present everywhere behind the reality of the world.One could say that mathematics was the language of the universe. All the natural laws which the mandiscovers can be expressed in mathematical formulas.

We know the omnipresent world of the fractals that nature adopts to solve an infinity of problems,specially in biology (i.e. structures of the vegetal arborisations, of the lungs, of the intestinal mucosa,

etc).A recent work (Laurent Notale and coll. 1999) would suggest that all the tree of the evolution isgoverned by an equation of the fractal type.

A "necessity ", stronger than the "chance" would thus rule on the differentiation of the species.Moreover, some authors as Xavier Sallantin, have recently insisted on the arithmetic meta-rulessubjacent to reality. It has been evoked an innate software-system common to all the alive beings, avirtual world doubling "reality".

And the thought?




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In a vision of the world in widened prospect, the role of psyche seems a significant factor interveningwith the man in the process of the evolution. But what is the thought ? Some authors considers it as thesimple result of neuronal interactions (Changeux). But that does not explain its real nature. One mustadmit that thinking can't be located in any cerebral cell separately (Chauvin). It is not a kind of cellularsecretion. For Roger Penrose, famous physicist, it acts as a "strange phenomenon which depends onthe matter but which, on the opposite, can act on it". In a recent work, he gives his conviction that a

new physics must be born to make us possible to approach certain phenomena, like the conscience,which are an integral part of the universe but that our current physics is unable to apprehend .

Teilhard, as for him, considers that "the stuff of the Universe" is dual-sided. There is a part ofinteriority in each matter grain. It is the complexity, centered on a project, which leads to theconscience by the summation and the arrangement of the elementary grains. The Californian physicist,Provenzano, member of the team which conceived and carried out the mission to Mars, specialist inthe artificial intelligence, is a vigorous supporter of the teilhardian law of consciousness-complexity.He thinks that psyche is an elaborate form of energy which he names " conscious energy ".

Place of man

The man fits in the evolutionary axis which is not only that of the alive world but of the entireuniverse, from the big-bang to us. There is no reason to think that this evolution will not continue. Wecan only question us on the prospects which open on the future.

The two options

The interpretation that we have of the place of the human phenomenon is decisive.

Is the man a simple epiphenomenon in a global process having no meaning, as a result of chanceonly ? This is the option of the materialists. Some, such as Gould, exclusive darwinian evolutionist,

think that the man cannot be regarded as a successful species; he is a mammal among the others,particularly unimportant, since its species is, by its mass for example, much lower than other speciessuch as the bacteria. Jacques Monod could conclude in his time that, "fruit of chance and necessity, weare alone in an empty and cold cosmos ". A vision diametrically opposite and spiritualist locates theman at the node of the evolution. All contributed to give him its place, to make it possible hisintelligence to open up , and this occurred as a single event on the surface of the globe.

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Teilhardian conception

Of course Teilhard belongs to the second category. As a scientist acknowledged by his peers and as apriest of an indomitable fidelity he brought to the debate his remarkable spirit of synthesis. Hisambition, to which it devoted his life, was to establish a unified vision, able to gather scientists andreligious, task which was worth the sarcastic remarks of the ones, the aggressive mistrust of the othersand the adhesion of a great number, believers and unbelievers. His thesis forms an impressive corpusby its coherence, its rigor and its premonitions. It integrates perfectly the phenomenologic data and theconcepts of current science. It is expressed essentially in his main work, " The Phenomenon of Man",published in 1955, which is difficult to summarize in a few words. A personal interpretation gives anoutline on figure 1:




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The universe is in continuous creation, in cosmogenesis, following a process of increasingcomplexity. One observes a "multitude in way of organization ".

The substance -the stuff - of the universe is made of matter (of energy) and spirit ("the within ofthe things"). It is dual-sided.

The complexity, centered around a project, creates conscience (law of complexity-conscience). The cosmogenesis is a noogenesis (creation of spirit, of conscience). The summit of that

evolution on earth is the man, the most complex being presently existing by its brain.

Through union, which is not an anonymous fusion, but which gathers the individual differencesand uses them, is created a thinking layer, the noosphere, thanks to the increasingly tightnetworks which connect the men's spirit, doubling the biosphere,.

The hominization thus continues in " the societal man ". The success of this new evolutionarystage cannot be acquired by only intellectual convergence but requires the application of a forceof cohesion which is the Love ("attraction of the being by the being"). This force can fully actonly thanks to the attraction of a higher center of convergence, The multiple is raising, atractedand included in the already One . For the Christian, this focus is the Christ Omega, the OmegaPoint. "Already coextensive to the space, already coextensive to the duration, Christ is alsocoextensive to the scale of the values stretched from the summit of the spirit to the deepness ofthe matter"

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The Future of Man

As one see, the intelligence intervenes strongly in the evolution process with the irruption of thefreedom and the human responsibility which basically transformed the data. It is a force added to theevolutionary dynamism directed towards the growth. For Jean-Claude Lonide, "the man substitutesthe conscience to the blind power of the instinct". One could say that for this reason, the man has leftthe age of prehistory. Raoul Giret considers that "the biological evolution is relayed by the cultural




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evolution of the human societies and, within this framework, the man is the actor who becomesresponsible for the future of the evolution". Jean Vague goes even further. For him "the conscience isthe last chance of the evolution".

The best and the worst are possible. All the technical progress, generated by man and which replacesanatomical differentiationcharacterizing the adaptation of the living beings can be regarded as tools of

the evolution. They have their advantages and their disadvantages. Thus, the control of energy which isessential for progress and necessary to life in our societies, may involve harmful effects. Research inbiology gives place to interrogations of considerable extent. Man becomes able to intervene on themechanisms of life (assisted procreation, cloning, genetic engineering). He is really puting "the handon the evolution" as had announced Teilhard de Chardin in the twenties.

The pessimists worry and, to many respects, they seem to be right. Around us a great confusionappears giving a feeling of economic, demographic and political chaos. One can add to the picture themoral disorders and the religious obscurantisms. An author as significant as Edgar Morin speaks abouta new gospel, the only one remaining possible, the gospel of perdition.

And however, it is during the battle of Verdun, in the worst moments of the WW1, in the mud of the

trenches kneaded with the remains of his killed comrades, that Teilhard de Chardin had his great visionof hope "... as if any larger order had not raised from the ruins of a smaller order... the universal historyshows it to us : after each revolution, after each war, Humanity always appeared a little more coherent,a little more linked, in the better tied connections of its organization, in the strengthened waiting of itscommon release ".

And we are not grains of dust isolated in the cosmos. A complete symbiosis is ours with the otherelements of the universe. Joel de Rosnay even speaks about the "symbiotic man". We are completelyinterdependent of this great movement which involves us, that of the cosmogenesis. Teilhard saw itvery well : "The more faithful we are in the analytical invitations of the thought and contemporaryscience, the more we feel imprisoned in the network of the cosmic connections. By the criticism of

knowledge, the subject is identified always more and more with the most remote fields of a universewhich he would perceive as being partially the same body with him. By biology, living is put more andmore in series with the whole frame of the biosphere, by physics an homogeneity and a solidaritywithout limits is discovered in the layers of the matter ".

But where could we be carried out by this immense gestation ? From now on, Science itself raises thequestion of the meaning, although such a question is considered to be still prohibited - as not scientific- by many. And yet "Lacking of direction, the individual cannot build himself : he does not even exist" (Tocqueville). "Although the sense is not in the matter and the rationality, it is located at anotherlevel to which the man has access " (Raoul Giret). It is not prohibited to us to seek it in the hope of aconstruction which exceeds our individuals : "Our Greatness - Teilhard said - consists in serving likeintelligent atoms the task being under way in the Universe ".

What can support ouselves in this vision is the majestic magnitude of the cosmogenesis, accessible toour spirit, coherent and compatible with the structure of thought that science gave to us. Far from thenonsense of the vision of a world considered as a nonsense i.e. as an absurdity, we have a worldfulfilling the requirements of our reason.

There stays the admirable observation.

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Conclusion

A new world is appearing in pains and tearing. Wars, catastrophes and crimes are the witnesses of thismetamorphosis. With Teilhard, we can hope that "all the question in this crisis of birth, is thatpromptly emerges the soul which by its apparition will come to organize, relieve, vitalize, thisconfused cluster of matter. However this soul, if it exists, can only be the result of a "conspiracy" of

the individuals joining together to raise of a new stage the building of the life. The resources we havetoday, the powers which we unchained could not be absorbed by the narrow system of the individualor national frames which served up to now the architects of the human Earth. Our plan was to raise alarge house, vaster, but similar for the drawing with the good old residences....The age of the nationshas passed away. The question for us, if we do not want to perish, is to shake the old prejudices and tobuild the Earth ".

The spirits progress far from the anathemas pronounced formerly. One could read in a newspaper ofgreat diffusion : "Scientifics and philosophers launch a cry of alarm. They call for a new moral coderespectful of the complex links between science, culture and nature ". Is the Religion a help in thissearch ? The example of this great priest and authentic scientist who was Teilhard is encouraging,since he looked at the future " above and ahead" with the firm hope that "All that rises must converges". For an agnostic person such as Erika Erdmann, assistant of the Nobel Prize Sperry, "Teilhard is abeacon which can direct us out of the chaos which surrounds us, the chaos of our lost certainty. Itexceeds the faith in the science which lacks an ideal to be reached and it exceeds the religious faithwhich misses basic factual objective. It combines the best of both " And John-Paul II points out "Thefaith and the reason are as the two wings which make it possible for the human spirit to rise towardsthe contemplation of the truth ". This Truth that in the final analysis any man must seek ardently. Atthe end of this effort, humanity would arrive at the completion which the apostle Paul promised to theEphesians: "Thus you will be able to understand, with all the faithful ones, which is the width, thelength, the height, the depth... You will know the love of the Christ who exceeds all that one can know.Then you will be filled in until you return in the plenitude of God ".

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