Integral Spotlight: Evolution's Purpose | Steve McIntosh

Where is the universe going? What is the purpose of the evolutionary process? What is our role in this Kosmic unfolding? Watch as Steve McIntosh sheds some much-needed light on these provocative questions.

The universe, we are told, is winding down. Entropy rules the day: nothing escapes the remorseless grasp of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and with every passing moment our world, our solar system, indeed our entire galaxy slowly approaches its inevitable heat-death at the end of time.

But this is not the full story, for while the universe is winding down, it is also winding up—bringing forth new forms from old, adding new layers of complexity where there was once only an empty vacuum. It is what Alfred Whitehead called the "creative advance into novelty," referring to an inherent "tilt" of the Kosmos* toward increasing complexity, increasing significance, and increasing wholeness.

Entropy and evolution: these two arrows of time exert their pull upon everything that ever is, was, and will be—one pulling us up toward the eternal light, the other pulling us down toward the infinite black.

From atoms to molecules, to single-cell and multi-cellular organisms, to the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, and the human neocortex—the universe is abound with inexhaustible creativity, transcending and including what has come before, pushing ever-deeper and ever-wider towards its own limitless potential. There is a self-organizing, self-transcending drive woven into the fabric of existence, somehow causing stardust to gather itself up and write poetry.

So humanity is itself part of the same evolutionary process that birthed the sun, the moon, and the stars. This evolutionary process is so much more than a blind, random, and ultimately meaningless process of trial and error. Quite the contrary, evolution seems to be actually going somewhere—not in any preordained intelligently-designed kind of way, but in the sense of a natural evolutionary pressure that pushes the universe toward greater complexity, toward greater consciousness, toward greater goodness, truth, and beauty.

What's more, we seem to represent a significant role in this evolutionary unfolding. Humanity, itself the product of billions of years of evolution, has suddenly become aware of the evolutionary process. In other words, humanity is the means by which evolution becomes self-aware—at least in this corner of the universe. This recognition leads us a radically new way of seeing ourselves and the world around us, and offers us the opportunity to participate with these very real patterns rippling through our universe—patterns that connect everything to everything else—as together we carve a path for the future of evolution on this planet.

* Kosmos is a Pythagorean term that signifies the sum total of existence including physical, biological, mental, and spiritual dimensions, as contrasted with "cosmos" which typically signifies the physical universe only.

[Mart-Bro]

What a wonderful talk. Good true and beautiful

[neoman]

So we are both makers and finders of intrinsic values? How is making and finding complementary if not contradictory? And does the perfection of the universe mean the unification of contrasts, thinking with reality, and self and other and is this all parabolic with the metaphor of the phenomenal world becoming diaphanous so as to reveal the clarity and precision of the infinite? Why does the phenomenal world have to be so foggy in the first place?Why does our ability to recognize value start low?

[lucaspierce]

You all worship death and hate, but hate love. All the major transitions in evolution at all scales involved things coming together as a more complex system such as galaxies and solar systems. Abiogenesis, eukaryogenesis, the multiple origins of multi-cellularity in distinct higher taxa. Everything is co-entangled in space-time as energy, with the same shared history and still connected infinitely as gravity and electromagnetism attracts things together. But you only see the illusions of the great magician, and too narrow in your thinking to see the obvious, instead you allow yourselves to be willfully misdirected!. All yeah there in no one direction for improvement as it would not be improvable if it stayed on one defined path. It would already be the best, but life wants more, and creates more. Progress based on integral philosophy must be non-linear and free, but very as well intelligently and compassionately selective.

[lucaspierce]

Directionality in evolution is only particular for that species that co-created that pathway. What has more ecophylogenetic systematic weight? Competition, predation, parasitism, deception etc or mutualism, symbiosis, cooperation, eusociality, altruism, parental care, emotion. Hate cannot exist without love, but love can exist without hate, as all is love!. You only see what you believe, and so reap what you sow.

[Crimsonphilosophy]

hmmm interior development, wait doesn't every generation generally consider their values superior to those in the past, yet those people in the past didn't think that future people had better values....