If the transmission of cultural values as necessary for human evolution, how can it be understood?
This Week
Last week we saw how Teilhard’s three ‘levels’ of universal evolution (monads, dyads and psychisms) play out in human evolution, but that both he and Richard Dawkins suggest that the phenomenon of ‘culture’, a product of human interaction, plays a large part.
This week we will take a closer look at this fourth of Teilhard’s ‘levels’ as we address his concept of the ‘noosphere’.
The Agency of Human Cultural Transmission
Karen Armstrong addresses one of the new insights of the Axial Age in the recognition of the third level of human evolution (psychisms) that we addressed last week.
“When they (group rituals) were perfectly executed, something magical occurred within the participants that gave them intimations of divine harmony”.
Thus, we are introduced to Teilhard’s fourth level of human evolution. The first two levels apply as equally to the vitality of subatomic matter as it does to that of the human person. The appearance of the third level, Teilhard’s ‘psychism’, captured in the US motto of “E pluribus unum” can be faintly seen in the ‘higher’ mammals. But the fourth level, which can be seen as encompassing the ‘monistic’, ‘dualistic’ and ‘psychism’ phenomena, is unique to human evolution. At this level the result of the activities of the first three levels, the products of their respective unifications, are accumulated into what Teilhard refers to as the ‘noosphere’. While traces of these three phenomena can be found in our immediate pre-human ancestors, they take a significant leap in the human not only in the degree of complexity of the products, but more importantly in the retention of them as well.
Our ancestors relied on their evolutionary instincts, with stirrings of group ‘culture’ in the latter hominids, as guides to life. With the human ability to accumulate objective cultural insights, as exemplified by written materials and formal education, the results of the progress made by monads, dyads and psychisms can be increasingly available to their offspring as fuel for further development.
Articulating the ‘Noosphere’
This ‘noosphere’ is unique to the human species but is much more than a simple bank of ideas, as valuable as this can be seen to be. As Teilhard points out, human evolution not only contributes to the noosphere, it draws on it as a catalyst for further evolution. Thus, as the vectors of human evolution can be seen at work in monads, dyads and psychisms, the recursive nature of the convergent spiral can be seen in the interaction between the human person and the noosphere.
The very nature of the noosphere leads to new methods of articulation, such as book printing and formal education. These inventions themselves are further elaborated and intensified by expanded communication, which provides an increase in both the volume and the accessibility of the information. The amount of information not only increases but at the same time becomes more intimately and ultimately inextricably woven into the texture of human culture.
A parallel can be drawn with the increase of ‘information’ in the universe. As Paul Davies sees it, universal evolution occurs because each grain of matter possesses some small quanta of ‘information’ by which it is ushered into a connection with other grains. He notes that the resultant entity not only possesses the aggregated ‘information’ provided by its predecessors, there emerges a facet of new information by which the next interconnection can result in an even more complex product. This application of Teilhard’s convergent spiral can be seen in the evolution of complex molecules, such as DNA, which instructs RNA in the molecular production of proteins, necessary for cellular function. Effectively, as Teilhard sees it, matter is endowed with the potentiality to ‘make itself.’
Thus, the noosphere can be understood as a latter manifestation of such subcellular activity. It can be envisioned as the collection of all the ‘information’ that it has been possible for humans to assemble to date. It is no longer necessary for each product of evolution to contain the increased information by which it has evolved. With the noosphere, each product now can benefit from the accumulation from other products as well.
Such information as can be seen in this manifestation does not consist of just factual data, but the insights, and therefore the meaning of the data which permits its valuable function as catalyst to future human evolutionary steps. This information is not only accumulated but assimilated as humans become more adept with navigating their evolution. In doing so, it is recursive as it is fed back into us as fuel for our continuing journey.
Next Week
This week we introduced the fourth level of Teilhard’s human steps of evolution, the ‘noosphere’, and explored its recursive contribution to human evolution.
Next week we will take a closer look at how the noosphere is active in human evolution.