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Always a Surprise A philosophic conundrum that puzzled
the ancients is the problem of continuity and change. It is a problem which we sophisticated moderns, having lost our
sense of metaphysics, never think about. It goes like this: This object I am considering
(and the object may be myself), I see as it is at
this moment, and I define it (or myself) as it is right now. But soon enough, it changes, and with time may become
fundamentally, radically different. Is it still the same object? Common sense
tells me it is. Then what is the thread of continuity which
holds it together through time? Historically, a number of explanations
have been offered, including one from the Greek
atomists, which postulated miniscule invisible, indestructible a-toms (from
Greek roots meaning not able to be cut) and which ultimately found a home in
the atomic theory of modern chemistry. The one that tended to prevail,
however, particularly in the East, was the cyclical view of change. Things
seem to change, but with time they come back to
where they started. The sun rises, it sets, and then it rises again. The new
moon goes through its phases until it again becomes a new moon. Springs ripens into summer, then fall, then winter, and
again it is spring. Birth is followed by death, and
then there is rebirth. The Judeo-Christian tradition
introduced something new. With the notion that God was somehow intervening in
human affairs, the idea of progress was introduced,
so that real change and growth could be recognized. Still, for the most part,
even in the West, the predominant view was of an essentially static universe
governed by cyclic processes. The realization of the dynamic nature
of the universe and of the evolution of the cosmos, the earth, life, and even
culture was a profound paradigm shift, one we are still living through and
have not yet fully internalized. We are beginning to understand that the idea
of progress has been expanded to encompass all
aspects of our existence. With the thought of Teilhard
and his followers, we are able to see the universe story as a sacred and
divine drama being played out all around us and in
which we are active participants. We become one with all that is, one with
the universe, one with the imminent God. Now that the cutting edge of evolution
has shifted from the biological and genetic to the cultural, we realize that
the course of evolution is in our own hands. It is comforting to trust that
the higher consciousness which we will need will
develop as the process moves on. And, of course, we
can expect that this higher consciousness will lead to a kind of utopia in
which cooperation and nurturing will replace competition and aggression. It
will be a heaven on earth, not without problems, of course, but with problems we will be able to solve. Here the skeptics arise and demand to
know what this utopia, so idealistic and vague, will actually look like. The
truth is that whatever we can imagine will undoubtedly fall short of the
reality, because we always imagine the future in terms of our experience of
the past, and the evolutionary process always is more creative than that.
Nature always thinks “outside the box.” The solution is always a surprise. It
is only in retrospect that we think how logical it is, how we should have
foreseen it. But we did not. Here is a biological example. Imagine what it would be like to be a fish in the ocean prior to the time when land-dwelling animals had appeared. Perhaps there would arise a fish-Darwin or a fish-Teilhard who announces that the ocean will soon become overcrowded, and there is all that land available with plenty of plant food and some insects besides. The fish should make an effort to evolve forms which will allow them to settle on land. Of course, the suggestion seems impossible. Fish need oxygen, and the gills, which are so efficient in extracting oxygen from the water, would not work in the atmosphere. Besides, the fins, so valuable for locomotion in water, would not work either in air or underground in the soil. Even further, fish eggs are laid in quantity by the females and the males come along later to fertilize them, so they need water to keep them moist. In air they would dry out and die. The whole thing seems a utopian scheme which would never work. What the fish could not imagine in prospect, in retrospect we take for granted. Reproduction by laying many eggs in water and leaving them to hatch can be replaced by several alternatives. Amphibians will learn to live on land, but return to water to lay fish-like eggs. Reptiles will encase their eggs in a shell so that they do not dry out, and some of them will learn to hatch the eggs internally and give birth to well-developed young. Mammals will learn to use the salt-water environment of the womb to substitute for the sea. Marsupials will give birth to partially developed young who crawl into the mother’s pouch to nurse and complete their development. Other mammals will do away with the pouch and give birth to more or less fully developed young. Who could have foreseen not just one but these many ingenious solutions? Locomotion likewise will be solved by adaptation. Fins will be lost entirely by certain reptiles, who will learn to move by crawling motions of the whole body. In most other animals, the fins will be adapted into limbs for walking, crawling, or digging. The adaptation to land-based respiration is perhaps a more interesting tale. The earliest fish, cartilaginous fish such as sharks, were able to move about in the water by actively swimming, but they were not able to float. Except when resting on the bottom, they were required to expend energy continuously. Their successors, the bony fish, evolved a swim-bladder, an internal pouch which could be filled with gas and which allowed flotation. In a solution preparing for moving onto land, the swim bladder, originally evolved for an entirely different purpose, would produce the lung-fishes, a primitive form capable of breathing on land. Adaptations in amphibians, then reptiles, and finally birds and mammals would result in the lungs which seem so natural to us. It is all very logical, but only when we look back from our present vantage point. To an observer at that time, it would have seemed an unimaginable dream. In the same way, the utopian society to come will certainly be a surprise. It will express the inherent creativity and originality of the evolutionary process, and so it will be unlike anything seen before. Can we trust nature to be clever enough to come up with creative solutions to the impossible crises of today? We can. And further, we can be part of the solution. What a surprise! Dom Roberti |