Today’s Post

Over the past several weeks we have been looking into Teilhard’s assessment of the future of human evolution . We have also seen how conventional wisdom, well harvested from the weedy fields of daily news, suggests that things are going downhill.

As we have seen over the course of this blog, Teilhard, in spite of writing in a time at which our future was anything but rosy, managed a world view which was quite opposite from that prevalent at the time. Having looking into how his audaciously optimistic (and counter-intuitive) conclusions have been formed, we can now look into how they are being played out today in human evolution..

Last week we boiled down Teilhard’s observations and projections of the noosphere, into several characteristics that he believed to constitute the ‘structure of the noosphere’.

This week we will begin a survey of this noosphere as it appears today to see how contemporary objective data can be brought to bear on his insights. As we will see over the next few weeks, by looking at quantifiable data from reliable sources his case for optimism is stronger today than at any time in the whole of human history

Human Evolution Metrics

With all that said, how do we go about quantifying human evolution? One very relevant approach can be found in “Progress”, a book by Johan Norberg, which seeks to show:

“..the amazing accomplishments that resulted from the slow, steady, spontaneous development of millions of people who were given the freedom to improve their own lives, and in doing so improved the world.”

   In doing so he alludes to the existence of an ‘energy of evolution’:

“It is a kind of progress that no leader or institution or government can impose from the top down.”

   Norberg doesn’t reference Teilhard or cite religious beliefs. Instead he refers to findings from public surveys, Government data, International media and global institutions.

His approach is to parse the ‘metrics of human evolution’ into nine categories. They are:

Food                                                      Sanitation

Life Expectancy                                   Poverty

Violence                                              The Environment

Literacy                                                Freedom

Equality

For each of these categories he provides, as the noted international news magazine The Economist notes, “a tornado of evidence” for the “slow, steady, spontaneous development” of the human species. He compares these statistics across the planet, from Western societies, to near- and mid- Eastern Asia, to China and India, and to super-and sub-Saharan Africa. And, to the extent possible, he extends trends from antiquity to the current day.

Norberg is well aware that his findings, all showing improvements in the areas of human life listed above, are profoundly contrary to conventional wisdom, and he acknowledges the human tendency toward pessimism. He quotes Franklin Pierce Adams on one source of this skepticism:

“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”

   His prodigious statistics clearly, and to considerable depth, offer a look quite different from the nostalgic, sepia-tinged memories the ‘good old days’.

As Jeanette Walworth wrote:

“My grandpa notes the world’s worn cogs
And says we are going to the dogs!
…

The cave man in his queer skin togs
Said things were going to the dogs.
But this is what I wish to state
The dogs have had an awful wait.”

Our Approach

Over the next few weeks, we will address some of Norberg’s categories, summarize his key statistics, and show how Teilhard’s insights on and projections for human evolution are borne out by Norberg’s data.

This look at objective and verifiable historical data will serve to put Teilhard’s highly optimistic vision of the future to the test. Does the data show that we humans are continuing to evolve? If so, in what ways, how fast, and is the trend positive or negative?

This week we will take a simple example, one not listed by Norberg but simple enough to illustrate the process that we will use: that of ‘fuel’

A Brief History of Fuel

Few issues are closer to our everyday lives than that of fuel. Every person on the planet uses fuel every day for such things as heating or cooling their homes, cooking their meals, transporting themselves and communicating.   As the issue of fuel is so ubiquitous, its history provides a great metric for putting our evolution in an objective perspective.

The discovery of fire a few hundred thousand years ago was a monumental moment in human history. The availability of cooked, rather than raw, food led to improved health, and the ability to heat habitats led to an increase in habitable area. It is obvious that both led to general improvements in human life.

Following the many thousands of years in which wood was the only fuel, coal began to take its place, increasing in use as the Bronze age led to the Iron age, and continuing a key role to this day.

Today other types of fuel, principally gas but including nuclear, wind and solar extraction, provide fuel for the many applications of the modern era.

While fuel offers an example of how human evolution can be seen to continue, how can it be seen to support Teilhard’s many assertions?

From Teilhard’s Perspective

The first is that of Human Invention. The history of fuel offers an articulation of the steps of human evolution: first ‘discovery’, then ‘extraction’, then ‘application’ and finally ‘dissemination’. Some early humans discovered that certain stones would burn, and over time developed methods of extraction and dissemination that made it possible to use coal as an improved method of heat (more BTU per volume). This required improved methods of extraction and dissemination, such as mining coal vs gathering wood.

The second is that of the Human Psychism. Each of these steps required an increase in complexity not only of the technology but more importantly an increasing development of what Teilhard refers to as ‘human psychisms’. By this he is referring to the aspects of human society which are the core of the Inner Pull addressed last week. By psychism Teilhard refers to the human groups which effect the

“increase in mental interiority and hence of inventive power”

required to find and employ

“new ways of arranging its elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space.”

   This does not only pertain to the management of fuel, but to the exponential rise in the uses of fuel: from cooking and heating, to such things as the smelting of ores and the powering of engines. Each such step required yet another ‘new way’ of thinking, an increase in the organization and the depth of knowledge of the ‘psychism’ and the need to draw on external resources (such as education) for their success.

The third example can be seen in the proliferation of the resulting “new ways” over the face of planet. While coal, for example, was ‘discovered’ in China approximately in 4000 BC, it wasn’t until the advent of expanding empires before, for example, the discoveries of the Romans could spread far and wide, hence the third example of Globalization.

The fourth of Teilhard’s insights is his observation that compression of the noosphere not only results in globalization, but also in the increase in the speed of the spread of invention.   Hundreds of thousands of years of wood burning, followed by a few thousand years of coal dependency followed by a few hundred years of transition to other sources of fuel. Not only can evolution be seen to rise, but to converge, and the increasing convergence can be seen to stimulate its increasing speed.

The fifth Teilhard insight is the Timeliness of Invention, the recognition that humans invent as necessary to insure their continuing evolution. Had humans not discovered the advantages of coal, the dependency upon wood would have left our planet by now denuded and bereft of oxygen. We would be extinct. Had not new sources of fuel come available in the Eighteenth century, the exclusive use of coal would have doomed us to asphyxiation, choking on the effluvia of civilization. (A poignant example can be seen in the ‘Great Smog’ of London which killed over twelve thousand people in 1952.)

The sixth Teilhard insight is the recognition of the failure of forecasts that do not take into account the six above phenomena. Such an example is Thomas Malthus, whose dire predictions from the early 1800’s are still read today. Malthus depended on historical data for his end-of-times predictions (increase in population outstripping production of resources) but failed to recognize the basic human capability of invention, by which production would rise exponentially and unwanted side effects mitigated. Malthus provides an example of the failure of any forecast which uses past history to predict the future without taking human invention into account.

The seventh insight is that of Change of State. As Teilhard notes, the journey of evolution from the big bang is not a linear one. At key points, not only does the “stuff of the universe” change, but it changes radically. The transition from energy to matter, from simple to complex atoms, from molecules to cells and from neurons to conscious entities, are profound. Further, the energies through which they continue to the next step are profoundly different as well. In our simple example of ‘fuel’, this can be seen to be happening literally before our eyes. The result of each step from wood to coal to gas and onto future sources could not have been be predicted from evidence of the past. The changes are highly nonlinear.

The eighth and last Teilhard insight is that of Risk. Human evolution is not guaranteed to continue. Continued innovation and invention, deepening insight into the structure of the noosphere provided by new human ‘psychisms’ and improvements in globalization which tighten communications all require closer cooperation. None of these will happen unless humans continue to have faith in their future.

The Next Post

This week we began a two-pronged look at how evolution can be seen to continue through the human species: The first of which is to look objectively at what we know about our history so far, and the second to see how in this view such data bears out Teilhard’s insights into human evolution. This week we looked at a rather simple example, ‘fuel’ to illustrate this approach.

Next week we will begin a much more detailed look at the data from Norberg’s book, “Progress” to see how it, too, supports Teilhard’s optimistic worldview.