John G. Messerly's Blog, page 153

Julian Huxley, Evolution, and Meaning

Sir Julian Huxley (1887–1975) was an English evolutionary biologist,  humanist and internationalist. He was a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis which united Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics—one of the great scientific achievements of all time. Huxley hailed from one of the most famous intellectual families in English history. His brother was the celebrated writer Aldous Huxley; his half-brother a fellow biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley; his father was the writer and editor Leonard Huxley; his paternal grandfather was the acclaimed writer and intellectual Thomas Henry Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin; his maternal grandfather was the academic Tom Arnold; and his great-uncle the famous poet Matthew Arnold.

In his 1939 essay, “The Creed of a Scientific Humanist,” Huxley argues that much of our unhappiness derives from our asking unanswerable or ill-conceived questions, something philosophy, religion, and science often discover after much wasted effort. For example, asking what form of magic kills people is the wrong kind of question because nothing magical kills people. Similarly, asking who rules the universe is the wrong kind of question—all the scientific evidence points to it ruling itself, and besides, even if there were godlike rulers we could not know them. Gods have been created by humans from various elements of their experience; they are probably anthropomorphic idealizations without any basis in reality. As for the question of an immortal afterlife, it is irresolvable, and we waste time considering it. Real salvation is to be found in the possible harmony between ourselves and the external world. Huxley is not deterred by those who say repudiating god and immortality leaves life meaningless, pointing to Buddhists, agnostics, and Stoics as exemplars of individuals who have led noble and devoted lives without such beliefs.

According to Huxley science provides the best means of realizing meaning in the modern world. It explains forces that were once dark and mysterious; provides insights into our psychology; improves both us and our world; and reveals the vast immensity, history and future of the cosmos. From the scientific perspective we have reason to hope that the future will be better than the past, that we can expedite cultural evolution by our knowledge. Most importantly, “In man evolution could become conscious.”[i] While we have taken the first brief steps toward such consciousness, we should continue onward, as all of human history represents but the infancy of human potential. The most faith we should have is in life, and its potentially unlimited progress. Evolutionary biology thus has gives us a new view of human destiny. We are the protagonists of the evolutionary epic, agents of a process who can impose their principles to guide evolution. This is the purpose of our lives.

Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately.[ii]

Almost twenty years later in his 1957 book New Bottles for New Wine, Huxley presented a more complete account of cosmic evolution, akin to Teilhard’s, but without the religious overtones. He began with the now familiar idea that the universe becomes conscious of itself in human beings, given their awareness of the past history and possible future of that universe. Evolution is the history of the realization of new possibilities—the flight of birds; the social interaction of insects; the emergence of mind, intelligence, insight, and language; as well as self-conscious awareness of purpose. It is our duty to realize as many of these potentialities as possible or, as Huxley dramatically and insightfully puts it:

It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution—appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can’t refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.[iii]

The process of evolution began with inorganic/cosmic evolution, followed successively by organic/biological evolution, and now psychosocial/cultural evolution. As we have seen cosmic evolution proceeded excruciatingly slow, but pockets of increasingly complex matter gradually coalesce. Living matter arose which imperfectly copied itself, and from this material natural selection initiates a faster process of change, eventually producing the staggering complexity of animals. (A rabbit or a dog is an amazingly complex organization of matter.) In our species mind arose, possessing the power of language and conceptual thought, with the capability of transmitting behaviors, ideas, and values from one mind to another. We now spearhead the evolutionary process. We are its trustees.

Huxley saw his vision of evolution replacing traditional religious views of human destiny. While historically the function of religion has been to cope with human ignorance and fear, and to maintain social and spiritual stability, new belief systems must utilize our knowledge to guide and advance our development. Huxley suggests his new belief system is a type of religion.

The religion indicated by our new view of our position in the cosmos must be once centered on the idea of fulfillment. Man’s most sacred duty, and at the same time his most glorious opportunity, is to promote the maximum fulfillment of the evolutionary process on this earth; and this includes the fullest realization of his own inherent possibilities.[iv]

Huxley’s evolutionary humanism prescribes both our present fulfillment and the progressive realization of our potentialities. This leads to his exaltation of the scientific spirit. We find fulfillment in our duty to understand, accumulate, and organized knowledge. “Thus scientific research in all fields is essential, and its encouragement is one of the most important tasks of civilization.”[v]Moreover science has discovered that truth is provisional, with science progressing toward that truth. The provisional nature of science invokes humility, yet at the same time takes pride in the extraction of knowledge from the ignorance that long engulfed us—science is progressive although incomplete. Most importantly, evolutionary humanism gave meaning to Huxley’s life.

[Evolutionary humanism] has enabled me to see this strange universe into which we are born as a proper object both of awe and wondering love and of intellectual curiosity. More, it has made me realize that both my wonder and curiosity can be of significance and value in that universe. It has enabled me to relate my experiences of the world’s delights and satisfactions, and those of its horrors and its miseries to the idea of fulfillment, positive or negative. In the concept of increased realization of possibilities, it provides a common measuring rod for all kinds of directional processes, from the development of personal ethics to large-scale evolution, and gives solid ground for maintaining an affirmative attitude and faith, as against that insidious enemy … the spirit of negation and despair. It affirms the positive significance of effort and creative activity and enjoyment. In some ways most important of all, it has brought back intellectual speculation and spiritual aspiration out of the abstract and isolated spheres they once seemed to me to inhabit, to a meaningful place in concrete reality; and so has restored my sense of unity with nature.[vi]

[i] Julian Huxley, “The Creed of a Scientific Humanist” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, 81.

[ii] Julian Huxley, Religion without Revelation, (London: Max Parrish, 1959), 236.

[iii] Julian Huxley, New Bottles for New Wine (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 13-14.

[iv] Huxley, Religion without Revelation, 293.

[v] Huxley, Religion without Revelation, 304.

[vi] Huxley, Religion without Revelation, 310-11.

Evolutionary Biology and the Meaning of Life

Sir Julian Huxley (1887–1975) was an English evolutionary biologist,  humanist and internationalist. He was a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis which united Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics—one of the great scientific achievements of all time. Huxley hailed from one of the most famous intellectual families in English history. His brother was the celebrated writer Aldous Huxley; his half-brother a fellow biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley; his father was the writer and editor Leonard Huxley; his paternal grandfather was the acclaimed writer and intellectual Thomas Henry Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin; his maternal grandfather was the academic Tom Arnold; and his great-uncle the famous poet Matthew Arnold.

In his 1939 essay, “The Creed of a Scientific Humanist,” Huxley argues that much of our unhappiness derives from our asking unanswerable or ill-conceived questions, something philosophy, religion, and science often discover after much wasted effort. For example, asking what form of magic kills people is the wrong kind of question because nothing magical kills people. Similarly, asking who rules the universe is the wrong kind of question—all the scientific evidence points to it ruling itself, and besides, even if there were godlike rulers we could not know them. Gods have been created by humans from various elements of their experience; they are probably anthropomorphic idealizations without any basis in reality. As for the question of an immortal afterlife, it is irresolvable, and we waste time considering it. Real salvation is to be found in the possible harmony between ourselves and the external world. Huxley is not deterred by those who say repudiating god and immortality leaves life meaningless, pointing to Buddhists, agnostics, and Stoics as exemplars of individuals who have led noble and devoted lives without such beliefs.

According to Huxley science provides the best means of realizing meaning in the modern world. It explains forces that were once dark and mysterious; provides insights into our psychology; improves both us and our world; and reveals the vast immensity, history and future of the cosmos. From the scientific perspective we have reason to hope that the future will be better than the past, that we can expedite cultural evolution by our knowledge. Most importantly, “In man evolution could become conscious.”[i] While we have taken the first brief steps toward such consciousness, we should continue onward, as all of human history represents but the infancy of human potential. The most faith we should have is in life, and its potentially unlimited progress. Evolutionary biology thus has gives us a new view of human destiny. We are the protagonists of the evolutionary epic, agents of a process who can impose their principles to guide evolution. This is the purpose of our lives.

Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately.[ii]

Almost twenty years later in his 1957 book New Bottles for New Wine, Huxley presented a more complete account of cosmic evolution, akin to Teilhard’s, but without the religious overtones. He began with the now familiar idea that the universe becomes conscious of itself in human beings, given their awareness of the past history and possible future of that universe. Evolution is the history of the realization of new possibilities—the flight of birds; the social interaction of insects; the emergence of mind, intelligence, insight, and language; as well as self-conscious awareness of purpose. It is our duty to realize as many of these potentialities as possible or, as Huxley dramatically and insightfully puts it:

It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution—appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can’t refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.[iii]

The process of evolution began with inorganic/cosmic evolution, followed successively by organic/biological evolution, and now psychosocial/cultural evolution. As we have seen cosmic evolution proceeded excruciatingly slow, but pockets of increasingly complex matter gradually coalesce. Living matter arose which imperfectly copied itself, and from this material natural selection initiates a faster process of change, eventually producing the staggering complexity of animals. (A rabbit or a dog is an amazingly complex organization of matter.) In our species mind arose, possessing the power of language and conceptual thought, with the capability of transmitting behaviors, ideas, and values from one mind to another. We now spearhead the evolutionary process. We are its trustees.

Huxley saw his vision of evolution replacing traditional religious views of human destiny. While historically the function of religion has been to cope with human ignorance and fear, and to maintain social and spiritual stability, new belief systems must utilize our knowledge to guide and advance our development. Huxley suggests his new belief system is a type of religion.

The religion indicated by our new view of our position in the cosmos must be once centered on the idea of fulfillment. Man’s most sacred duty, and at the same time his most glorious opportunity, is to promote the maximum fulfillment of the evolutionary process on this earth; and this includes the fullest realization of his own inherent possibilities.[iv]

Huxley’s evolutionary humanism prescribes both our present fulfillment and the progressive realization of our potentialities. This leads to his exaltation of the scientific spirit. We find fulfillment in our duty to understand, accumulate, and organized knowledge. “Thus scientific research in all fields is essential, and its encouragement is one of the most important tasks of civilization.”[v]Moreover science has discovered that truth is provisional, with science progressing toward that truth. The provisional nature of science invokes humility, yet at the same time takes pride in the extraction of knowledge from the ignorance that long engulfed us—science is progressive although incomplete. Most importantly, evolutionary humanism gave meaning to Huxley’s life.

[Evolutionary humanism] has enabled me to see this strange universe into which we are born as a proper object both of awe and wondering love and of intellectual curiosity. More, it has made me realize that both my wonder and curiosity can be of significance and value in that universe. It has enabled me to relate my experiences of the world’s delights and satisfactions, and those of its horrors and its miseries to the idea of fulfillment, positive or negative. In the concept of increased realization of possibilities, it provides a common measuring rod for all kinds of directional processes, from the development of personal ethics to large-scale evolution, and gives solid ground for maintaining an affirmative attitude and faith, as against that insidious enemy … the spirit of negation and despair. It affirms the positive significance of effort and creative activity and enjoyment. In some ways most important of all, it has brought back intellectual speculation and spiritual aspiration out of the abstract and isolated spheres they once seemed to me to inhabit, to a meaningful place in concrete reality; and so has restored my sense of unity with nature.[vi]

[i] Julian Huxley, “The Creed of a Scientific Humanist” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, 81.

[ii] Julian Huxley, Religion without Revelation, (London: Max Parrish, 1959), 236.

[iii] Julian Huxley, New Bottles for New Wine (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 13-14.

[iv] Huxley, Religion without Revelation, 293.

[v] Huxley, Religion without Revelation, 304.

[vi] Huxley, Religion without Revelation, 310-11.

Jacques Monod: A Cosmos Without Meaning

Jacques Monod (1910 – 1976) was a French biologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for his discoveries in molecular biology. His classic book Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (1971) is an antipode to Teilhard’s The Phenomena of Man, as well as other versions of progressivism.

According to Monod, our early ancestors did not feel themselves strangers in the world amongst plants that grew and died, and animals that ate, fought, protected their young and died. Instead they saw things like themselves whose purpose was to survive and produce progeny. They also saw rivers, mountains, oceans, lighting, rain, and stars in the sky, assuming no doubt that these objects had purposes too. If humans have purposes, nature must too—and with that single thought animism was born, nature and humans were connected.

However, modern science largely severed this connection, whereas Teilhard tried to revive it, placing him squarely in company of thinkers trying to restore the connection between human and nature’s purposes. Hegel’s grand system, Spencer’s evolutionism, and Marx and Engels’ dialectical materialism all insert meaning and purpose into purposeless evolution. The cost though is abandoning objectivity, for chance is the source of innovation in biology. In Monod’s famous words:

Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypothesis. It is today the sole hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition—or the hope—that on this score our position is likely ever to be revised.[i]

For Monod chance destroys both teleology and anthropocentrism. Errors in the replication of the genetic messages—genetic mutations—are essentially random. The process is explicitly non-teleological—they are not goal seeking processes initiated and controlled by rational entities. (Still, Monod does invoke the softer term teleonomy—goal-oriented structures and functions that derive from evolutionary history without guiding foresight.) As for anthropocentrism, we were not destined to be, we are accidents. “The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it any wonder if, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we feel strange and a little unreal?”[ii]We are neither the goal nor the center of creation.

So we seem lost; but we didn’t always feel this way. For eons of time humans survived in groups with the cohesive social structures necessary for survival, leading to the acceptance of tribal laws and the mythological explanations that gave them sovereignty. From such people

…we have probably inherited our need for an explanation, the profound disquiet which goads us to search out the meaning of existence. That same disquiet has created all the myths, all the religions, all the philosophies, and science itself. That this imperious need develops spontaneously, that it is inborn, inscribed somewhere in the genetic code, strikes me as beyond doubt.[iii]

Human social institutions have both a cultural and biological basis, with religious phenomena invariably at the base of social structures to assuage human anxiety with narratives, stories, and histories of past events. Given our innate need for explanation, the absence of one begets existential angst, alleviated only by assigning humans a proper place in a soothing story of a meaningful cosmos. But just a few hundred years ago science offered a new model of objective knowledge as the sole source of truth.

It wrote an end to the ancient covenant between man and nature, leaving nothing in place of the precious bond but an anxious quest in a frozen universe of solitude. With nothing to recommend it but a certain puritan arrogance, how could such an idea win acceptance? It did not; it still has not. It has however commanded recognition; but that is because, solely because, of its prodigious power of performance.[iv]

Science undermines the ancient stories as well as the values that were derived from them, leaving us with an ethic of knowledge. Unlike animistic ethics, which claim knowledge of innate, natural, or religious law, an ethics of knowledge is self-imposed. An ethic of knowledge created the modern world—through its technological applications—and it is the only thing that can save the world. Our knowledge has banished cosmic meaning, yet it might also be our redemption. He concludes: “The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.”[v]

[i] Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (New York: Vintage, 1972), 112.

[ii] Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, 145.

[iii] Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, 167.

[iv] Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, 169.

[v] Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, 180.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Universal Progressive Evolution

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955), a Jesuit priest trained as a paleontologist and geologist, was one of the most prominent thinkers who tried to reconcile evolutionary theory, religion, and the meaning of life. In his magnum opus, The Phenomenon of Man, he sets forth a sweeping account of cosmic unfolding.

While Teilhard’s philosophy is notoriously complex, the key notion is that cosmic evolution is directional or teleological. Evolution brings about an increasing complexity of consciousness, leading from an unconscious geosphere, to a semi-conscious biosphere, and eventually to conscious sphere of mind. The arrival of human beings on the cosmic scene is particularly important, signaling that evolution is becoming conscious of itself. As the process continues, the human ability to accumulate and transmit ideas increases along with the depth and complexity of those ideas. This will lead to the emergence of what Teilhard calls the “noosphere,” a thinking layer containing the collective consciousness of humanity which will envelope the earth. (Some contemporary commentators view the World Wide Web as a partial fulfillment of Teilhard’s prophecy.)

Not only does evolution explain how mind arose from matter, it is also the key to all metaphysical understanding, if such understanding is to be based on a firm foundation.

Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforth if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow. [i]

Teilhard recognized this evolutionary worldview, with its oceans of space and time, as a source of disquiet for minds previously comforted by childlike myths. Anxiety begins when we reflect, and reflection on the nature of the universe clearly discomforts.

Which of us has ever in his life really had the courage to look squarely at and try to ‘live’ [in] a universe formed of galaxies whose distance apart runs into hundreds of thousands of light years? Which of us, having tried, has not emerged from the ordeal shaken in one or other of his beliefs? And who, even when trying to shut his eyes as best he can to what the astronomers implacably put before us, has not had a confused sensation of gigantic shadow passing over the serenity of his joy? [ii]

Yet psychic troubles derives from this evolutionary worldview. “What disconcerts the modern world at its very roots is not being sure, and not seeing how it ever could be sure, that there is an outcome—a suitable outcome—to that evolution.”[iii]But alas the source of our discomfort is also the fount of our salvation. For if the future is open to our further development, then we have the chance to fulfill ourselves, “to progress until we arrive … at the utmost limits of ourselves.”[iv]

The increasing power and influence of the noosphere or world of mind will culminate in the Omega Point—a supreme consciousness or God. At that point all consciousness will converge, although Teilhard argues that individual consciousness will somehow still be preserved. While the Omega point is extraordinarily difficult to describe, it must be a union of love if it is to be a sublimely suitable outcome of evolution. Here Teilhard waxes poetic:

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. This is a fact of daily experience. At what moment do lovers come into the most complete possession of themselves if not when they say they are lost in each other? In truth, does not love every instant achieve all around us, in the couple or the team, the magic feat, the feat reputed to be contradictory, of personalizing by totalizing? And if that is what it can achieve daily on a small scale, why should it not repeat this one day on world-wide dimensions?[v]

In Teilhard’s vision, all reality evolves toward higher forms of being and consciousness, which includes more intense and satisfying forms of love. Thus spirit or mind, not matter or energy, ground the unity of the universe; they are the inner driving force propelling evolution forward. (This is Teilhard’s god.) Teilhard found meaning and purpose in this sweeping epic of cosmic evolution in which the endpoint of all evolution will be the highest good.

 

[i] Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre,  The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Collins, 1975), 219.

[ii] Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man. 227.

[iii] Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 229.

[iv] Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 231.

[v] Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 265.

Evolution and the Meaning of Life

IS THERE A CONNECTION BETWEEN EVOLUTION AND MEANING?

In previous blogs (“Death is Bad,” Feb. 16, 2014; “Can Science Give Us Immortality?”Feb. 18, 2014) we have given two reasons to believe that life is meaningful: 1) the practical effects of optimism; and 2) the possibility of technological immortality.

We now ask if the idea of evolution supports the claim that life is meaningful, or is becoming meaningful, or is becoming increasingly meaningful. Does evolution add to the case for meaning? Is there anything about evolution in general—as opposed to technological evolution specifically—which sheds light on meaning? Is there anything about evolution as a whole—cosmic, biological, and cultural—which implies that life is meaningful, or that meaning emerges, or that, given enough time, complete meaning will be attained, actualized, or approached as a limit? Does an a posteriori analysis of past evolution allow us to draw positive conclusions about the meaning of life? Perhaps there is a progressive directionality to evolution, perhaps the meaningful eschatology of the universe will gradually unfold as we evolve, and perhaps we can articulate a cosmic vision to describe this unfolding—or perhaps not.

SUMMARY OF SOME THINKERS ON THE SUBJECT

Cosmic evolution evokes the idea of evolutionary progress, as we saw earlier in thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, while progressivism imbues the work of most biologists, a trend the philosopher and historian of biology Michael Ruse thinks will continue.1 When we turn to culture, a compelling argument can be made for the reality of progressive evolution. (A case bolstered by the theory of memetics.) Will Durant argued for cultural progress, a conclusion that follows straightforwardly from elements of human history, while Jean Piaget made the case for cognitive progress, based on his studies of cognitive development in children and his analysis of the history of science.2 3 Robert Wright believes in a generally progressive evolution based on the structure of non-zero sum interactions, whereas Steven Pinker counters that complexity and cooperation are sub-goals of evolution, not its natural destiny.4 5 While the overall strength of the arguments for evolutionary progress is unclear, we cannot gainsay that such arguments have philosophical merit. Clearly there have been some progressive trends in evolution, which intimates that life as a whole may become increasingly meaningful.

A number of thinkers argue for the relevance of evolution to meaning. Daniel Dennett extends the heuristic reach of evolution, showing how it acts as a universal solvent that eats through philosophical problems, while Michael Shermer says that we create provisional meanings in our lives, even though our existence depends on a billion evolutionary happenstances.6 7 Steve Stewart-Williams argues that the universe does have purposes, since we have purposes and we are part of the universe, while John Stewart claims that the universe will be increasingly meaningful if we direct the process. 8 9 Still, other philosophers have argued that evolution is irrelevant to meaning; for example, Wittgenstein notoriously maintained that “Darwin’s theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other hypothesis in natural science.”10 Yet this claim was made in a philosophical milieu where the scope of philosophical inquiry was narrow, whereas today the impact of scientific theories on philosophy is enormous. Today most thinkers would say that the emergence of conscious purposes and meanings in cosmic evolution is relevant to concerns about meaning.

GRAND EVOLUTIONARY VISIONS

Turning to grand cosmic visions, the French paleontologist and Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin articulated a universal vision of the evolutionary process, with the universe moving toward a fully meaningful end point.11 The biologist Jacques Monod notably questioned Teilhard’s optimism, noting that biology reveals no meaning.12 Biologist Julian Huxley conveyed a vision—similar to Teilhard’s but without the religious connotations—in which we are encouraged to play the leading role in the cosmic drama by guiding evolution to realize its possibilities, thereby finding meaning for ourselves in the process.13 14 15 E. O. Wilson follows this line of thinking—the evolutionary epic is mythic and sweeping—and exhorts us to create a better future.16 Thus many thinkers believe that evolution is both progressive and relevant to meaning; in fact it is a key that unlocks the secret of meaning. For Teilhard, Huxley, and Wilson, life is meaningful because it evolves, and we live meaningful lives precisely because we play a central role in this evolving meaning.

We will explore each of these thinkers in greater detail in our forthcoming posts.

 1. Michael Ruse, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).

2. Will Durant, “Ten Steps Up From the Jungle,” The Rotarian, January 1941, 10.

3. For more see John G. Messerly, Piaget’s Conception of Evolution (Lanham Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

4. Robert Wright, Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Vintage, 2001), 331

5. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/th...

6. Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

7. http://www.godlikeproductions.com/for...

8. Steve Stewart-Williams, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 194.

9. John Stewart, “The Meaning of Life In A Developing Universe,” http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com/...., 14.

10. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuiness (London: Routledge & Paul Kegan, 1961), 25.

11. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre,  The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Collins, 1975), 219.

12. Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (New York: Vintage, 1972), 112.

13. Julian Huxley, “The Creed of a Scientific Humanist” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, 81.

14. Julian Huxley, Religion without Revelation, (London: Max Parrish, 1959), 236.

15. Julian Huxley, New Bottles for New Wine (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 13-16. Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) 169.

 

 

The Gap Between Theory and Practice

Reflecting on recent columns about love, the issue of the gap between theory and practice has resurfaced. It is one thing to write or theorize about love, but quite another to practice loving. One may theorize about being moderate, courageous, just or healthy, but that is different from practicing these virtues. Similarly, one may have theoretical knowledge as to why one shouldn’t smoke cigarettes or get more exercise, but putting this theory into practice is something else indeed.

The Greek word “praxis” refers to freely engaged in activity by which a theory, lesson or skill is practiced, embodied or realized. Aristotle held that there were 3 basic human activities: 1) theoretical, whose goal is knowing the truth; 2) productive, whose goal is making the beautiful; and 3) practical, whose goal is doing the good. Theoretical thinking pursues knowledge for its own sake; productive activity refers to humans as artisans, making clothes, homes, art, music, books and the like; practical activity concerns humans as moral and social beings trying to do the right thing and be just.

As we saw in a previous post (“Aristotle on the Good Life”) Aristotle thought that the idea of moral habits or virtues bridged he gap between, for instance, theoretical knowledge of love and loving action. If I know that I should be patient or loving with my spouse but have difficulty being patient or loving, Aristotle says I should practice patience or love until I they become habits. If I practice waiting patiently, as well as expressing the care, concern, and understanding characteristic of love, those actions will become second nature. 

While this is insightful, I have always thought there was a problem in his analysis. For in the same way there is a gap between knowledge and practice, there is also a gap between knowing I should have good habits and actually having those habits! Even if I know I need to practice patience or love that doesn’t guarantee I will practice them. The only answer here seems to invoke will. We just keep trying to be patient or loving and, after years of long and arduous toil, we might begin to transform ourselves.

So we end again with no easy answers but again with Spinoza:

 “If the way which, as I have shown, leads hither seem very difficult, it can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult, since it is so seldom discovered, for if salvation lay ready to hand and could be discovered without great labour, how could it be possible that it should be neglected almost by everybody ? But all noble things are as difficult as they are rare.”

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot Revisted

The astronomer Carl Sagan is one of my intellectual heroes, and one of the great secularists of the twentieth-century. In 1989, after both Voyager spacecraft had passed Neptune and Pluto, Sagan wanted a last picture of Earth from “a hundred thousand times” as far away as the famous shots of Earth taken by astronauts from the moon. Nothing has ever put the human condition in better perspective; it is worth seeing and hearing at least once a year for the rest of one’s life. Thank you Carl Sagan.

The text:

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Non-Human Animal Suffering

No I am not a member of PETA, nor have I ever owned a pet. But a friend recently asked me to comment on an NPR article, “Ape Dread, Dog Worry: Animals And Anxiety,” about non-human animal suffering during medical experimentation.1

I have encountered this topic while teaching applied ethics courses and have adopted the utilitarian position that if animals suffer, they are worthy of moral consideration. Yet even on utilitarian grounds non-human animal suffering is justified if such suffering increases the net utility–roughly if it brings about more good/happiness than bad/unhappiness. For utilitarians the ends justify the means.

Still there needs to be strong justifications for imposing suffering on non-human animals. Our enjoyment of eating their flesh would not qualify, nor do many medical experiments; and I am not sympathetic with arguments that the suffering of thousands of non-human animals are worth a single human animal life. This probably does not follow given that non-human animals differ from us in degree, not in kind.

The arguments in the article about the psychological suffering of non-human animals are convincing. Combined with the fact that we are deeply connected biologically with all life–we share about 98% of our genes with chimpanzees and about 90% with cats–the argument that non-human animals receive strong moral consideration is overwhelming. Since we share common ancestors with all of life, respect for all life is respect for part of ourselves.

As  a consequence of these considerations we should further extend our moral sphere to the biosphere and eventually to the entire cosmos. Yes, we are literally animated star stuff; thus to care for the stars is to care for ourselves too.

1. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/02... utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook

The Origin of Scientology

This brief performance by scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s great-grandson suggests that L. Ron was a disturbed charlatan. One can’t conclude that all religions start with psychopaths, but no doubt many did. However, if one is concerned with thinking deeply about the meaning of life, one should avoid cults. (You know the old saying: “when a few people believe something crazy, it’s called a cult; when many people believe something crazy, it’s called a religion.”) You can’t buy the answers to life’s big questions, as Spinoza noted 400 years ago:

“If the way which, as I have shown, leads hither seem very difficult, it can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult, since it is so seldom discovered, for if salvation lay ready to hand and could be discovered without great labour, how could it be possible that it should be neglected almost by everybody ? But all noble things are as difficult as they are rare.”

On Love

My previous post (“On Love and Pain,” Feb. 20,2014) suggested that imperfect love was the cause of, and answer to, the pain of relationships. But it occurs to me that I must define love in a more precise.

The Different Kinds of Love

The Greeks distinguished at least 6 different kinds of love:

1) Eros was the notion of sexual passion and desire but, unlike today,  it was considered irrational and dangerous. It could drive you mad, cause you to lose control and make you a slave to your desires. The Greeks advised caution before one gives into these desires.

2) Philia denoted friendship which was thought more virtuous than sexual or erotic love. It refers to the affection between family members, colleagues, and other comrades. However these persons are much closer to you than Facebook friends or Twitter followers.

3) Ludus defines a more playful love. This ranges from the playful affection of children all the way to the flirtation or the affection between casual lovers. Playing games, engaging in casual conversation, or flirting with friends are all forms of this playful love.

4) Pragma refers to the mature love of lifelong partners. After a lifetime of compromise, tolerance, and shared experiences a calm stability and security ensues. Commitment between partners is the key; they mutually support and respect each other.

5) Agape is a radical, selfless, non-exclusive love; it is altruism directed toward everyone (and perhaps to the environment too.) It is love extended without concern for reciprocity. Today we would call this charity; or what the Buddhists call loving kindness.

6) Philautia is self-love. The Greeks recognized two forms. In its negative form phiautia is the selfishness that wants pleasure, fame, and wealth beyond what one needs. Narcissus, who falls in love with his own reflection, exemplifies this kind of self-love. In its positive form phiautia refers to a proper pride or self-love. We can only love others if we love ourselves; and the warm feelings we extend to others emanate from good feelings we have for ourselves. If you are self-loathing, you will have little love to give.1 

These distinctions undermine the myth of romantic love so predominant in modern culture. People obsess about finding soulmates, that one special person who will fulfill all their needs–a perpetually erotic, friendly, playful, selfless, stable partner. In reality no single person fulfills all these needs. And the twentieth-century commodification of love renders the situation even worse. We buy love with engagement rings; market ourselves with clothes, body modifications, facebook profiles, and on internet dating sites; and we look for the best object we can find in the market given an assessment of our trade value.

This is not to suggest that everything is wrong with the modern world or that the internet isn’t a good place to find a mate–it may be the best place. Rather we suggest that to be satisfied in love, as in life, we must cultivate multiple interests, strategies, and relationships. We may get the most stability from our spouse, but find playful times with our grandchildren or our golfing partner; we may find friendship with our philosophical comrades or our drinking buddies; and we might find an outlet for altruism in our charitable contributions or in productive work.

As for our most intimate relationships, we would do best to lower our expectations–again no one satisfies all our needs. As I said in my previous post, this is not the idealized love of Hollywood movies, but it is real love. No you won’t have heart palpitations every time you see your beloved after 35 years, but you will feel the presence that accompanies a lifetime of shared love, a lifetime of struggling and fighting and working together. You will feel the continuity of knowing someone who knew you when you were young, middle age, and old, and they will feel the same. The serenity that follows is peaceful and priceless.

The Art of Loving 

All of this takes me back to a small book I read as a teenage–and the first book I ever gave to my wife–Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. It begins thus:

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one “falls into” if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe it is the latter.“2

Fromm thought that many misunderstand love for a variety of reasons. First, they see the problem of love as one of being loved rather than one of loving. They try to be richer, more popular, or more attractive instead of learning to love. Second, they think of love in terms of finding an object to love, rather than of a faculty to cultivate. They think it is easy to love, but hard to find someone to love, when in fact the opposite is true. (This relates to our earlier discussion about the commodification of love.) Finally, people don’t discriminate between “falling” in love and what Fromm calls “standing” in love. If two previously isolated people suddenly discover each other it is exhilarating. But such feelings don’t last. Real love involves standing in love; it is an art we learn after years of arduous toil, just as we would learn any other art or skill. Real love is not something we fall into, it is something we learn to do.

In the end, though loving is difficult to learn and practice, it is most worthwhile, and more important than money, fame or power. For the mystery of existence reveals itself, if it ever does, through our relationships with nature, productive work and, most of all, through our relationships with other people. Thus to experience the depths of life, we should cultivate the art of loving in its many varieties.

1. Rousseau made a similar distinction between amour-propre and amour de soi.  Amour de soi is a natural form of self-love; we naturally look after our own preservation and interests and there is nothing wrong with this. By contrast, amour-propre is a kind of self-love that may arise when we compare ourselves to others. In its corrupted form, it is a source of vice and misery, resulting in human beings basing their own self worth on their feeling of superiority over others.