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VI. Earth Life Emergence:With evidence now in place for an organically conducive macrocosmos (Part III) and an overall evolutionary gestation (Part V), this extensive chapter goes on to document how its independent complex creative system (Part IV) is manifestly evident for each micro stage and entity. Life’s skeletal frame from geo to Gaia is noted first, which then serves an emerging cognition, sentience and self-recognition, all of which reproduces a personal ontogeny. Human beings and humankind altogether are then also found to exemplify both individually and collectively the universal complementary code. In their entirety, these findings make a case for a genesis universe of much diversity and innovation which yet springs from, embodies and is made knowable by a constant, transparent unity. And by this discovery, a learning planet recovers in a temporal creation the essence of traditional wisdom.
Many references which introduce and describe common principles and phenomena are cited in Parts III: Organic Universe, IV: A Cosmic Code and V: A Quickening Evolution. This natural genesis found by a worldwide science develops from a singular, independent creative system distinguished by agent and relation, individual and group, masculine and feminine-like complements. Their dynamic activity gives rise to an emergent, self-organized evolutionary nest of complexity and sentience. In this manner, the universal source becomes manifestly exemplified at each stage of a living nature. From non-random genomes to sand dune biotas, human commerce, global climate, and the interstellar raiment, the same pattern and process repeats over and over. Modularity, symbiosis, autopoiesis, complementarity, synchronicity, self-similarity, scale-free, power-law networks occur in every instance. View the 62 Bibliographic Entries B. The Nested Gestation of Life A tour of the sequential, multilevel scale of animate entities from their geological substrate to a self-regulating bioplanet. The import conveyed here is that each phase such as Microbial Colonies or Dynamic Ecosystems, as a paradigm shift in each domain, is becoming found and understood to express in form and process the independent self-organizing principles. The study of all forms of earthscapes from land to sky is revealing an invariant, irregular dimensionality and similarity across many features from rivers, coastlines, and continents to the cascade dynamics of fractal weather patterns. View the 38 Bibliographic Entries Around 1960 when I began my readings, an opaque discontinuity stood between the presence of evolving earth life and the extant physical cosmos. In the years since and especially the last decade the gap has been mostly bridged. Researchers have reconstructed many of the primordial components and steps such as rudimentary genetic molecules and protocell vesicles. But a significant advance has been to identify the universal self-organizing dynamics at work in the guise of autocatalytic networks, hypercycles and autopoiesis. By these lights the occasion of emergent life, mind and selves can now be rooted in an increasingly amniotic universe. Physics and biology are once again reunited in a developmental genesis. View the 65 Bibliographic Entries Individual bacteria, such as the amoeba or paramecium we met in school, were long thought to act as isolated, competive entities. But as lately advised by the nonlinear theories, microbes are now understood to exist and prosper within social assemblies engaged in constant chemical dialogue. Such microbial communities are often seen as an exemplary model of a complex adaptive system. This image of a self-organizing bacterial community is from the website (http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/gallery.html) of the prime researcher in this regard Eshel Ben Jacob, Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems at Tel Aviv University, Israel. View the 41 Bibliographic Entries A good example of the independent principles in effect, both in their discrete components, formative dynamics and modular division of labor, is the occurrence of nucleated eukaryotic cells. Rather than due to gradual Darwinian trial and error, this level of life evolved by the symbiotic merger of diverse, modular, mutually beneficial prokaryotic bacteria into bounded, whole entities. Over time various microbes provided mobility, digestion, oxygen tolerance and so on which altogether formed a viable cellular unit. The pioneer researcher and advocate since the 1970's of this now accepted understanding is Lynn Margulis, professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. View the 51 Bibliographic Entries Impelled by self-organization and selection, unitary cells continuted to complexify, associate and combine into larger multicellular communities. In so doing, diverse, modular organs were formed which altogether evolved into unitary variegated, mobile, oxygen-breathing, land-living creatures with nervous systems, brains and proactive behavior. View the 36 Bibliographic Entries As multicellular animals evolved in somatic and cerebral intricacy, they increasingly gathered into social assemblies. A major adjustment in evolutionary theory over the past few years has been the realization that Darwinian competitive survival of the fittest is mediated by and secondary to an inherent proclivity for cooperation. This effect is variously known as quorum sensing or reciprocal altruism, and is founded on a salutary complementarity of individual and community. As a result, these metabolic and cognitive groupings, with rudimentary properties of an organism, are perceived as a new level of selection. A tacit, albeit precarious, balance of conflict and accord, often based on gender roles, is now seen to distinguish animal societies, especially within the primate phylum. View the 88 Bibliographic Entries Intricate natural environments such as rainforests, prairies and coral reefs are now understood not to seek an equilibrium or balance as previously held but to exemplify critically balanced complex adaptive systems and networks in constant flux over many similar scales from microbes to resident organisms to whole bioregions. View the 95 Bibliographic Entries Evolutionary and complex system perspectives are also increasingly employed by primate studies, archaeology and anthropology to explain how simians became hominids and social humans. This emergence is believed to occur through a co-evolution of increasing brain size, dexterous tool making and social interaction facilitated by language. Once again the sequence we have seen for many fields is repeated for these endeavors. An initial phase of engaging Darwinian tenets in the 1980's and 1990's is presently being expanded by complexity theories. View the 66 Bibliographic Entries Earth’s biosphere is now known to have regulated itself for a billion years in a homeostatic fashion so as to sustain favorable atmospheric and geochemical conditions for its continued survival. Since the 1970's, the British scientist James Lovelock, along with biochemist Lynn Margulis and many others, have provided theoretical and experimental support for life as a planetary phenomenon. Lovelock's neighbor, the author William Golding, suggested the name of the earth goddess Gaia. The concept has received intense scrutiny over the past decades and is now generally accepted and indeed applied in global ecological research programs. This section also contains some references for earth systems science and its evolutionary history. View the 43 Bibliographic Entries The nested, skeletal stages of somatic complexity from life's origin to biosphere and noosphere just surveyed can next be seen in our worldwide humankind compass to facilitate the Metazoan amphibian, reptilian, avian and mammalian evolution of larger brains, enhanced cognition, proactive behavior, incipient consciousness and in its human phase a relative corpus of remembered knowledge. 1. The Evolution of Brain Anatomy and Cognizance While a general increase in bodily complexity and dexterity from trilobites to humans is admitted, what is really happening (and there is something going on) is an essentially linear emergence of cerebral capacities. By their properties of bilateral symmetry, many semi-specialized modules, and a later neocortex, brains evolve by consistently expanding the size of these components. This steady course of “encephalization,” both by mosaic and concerted modes, can then trace a central evolutionary axis and vector. View the 47 Bibliographic Entries 2. Animal Intelligence and Awareness As these anatomical, physiological, and dynamical neural faculties evolve they achieve an increased degree of cognitive capacity and retained memory relevant to an organism’s ecological niche. A significant advance in this regard is the admission and quantification in the last decade of an evolutionary ascent in relative intelligence, sentience and self-cognizance running throughout the animal kingdom from invertebrates to primates. The late Donald Griffin of Harvard University was a pioneer advocate of cognitive abilities and representational consciousness throughout the animal kingdom. View the 53 Bibliographic Entries 3. A Ramifying Bicameral Brain Another notable aspect of the vectorial evolutionary rise of encephalization and sentience is the appearance of an asymmetrical brain into left and right hemispheres. Each bicameral half has characteristic abilities which generally involve a finer detail or coarser spatial focus. Until recently these features were believed to be only evident in humans. But new research, much of which this volume summarizes, has identified common and similar bilateral qualities throughout the animal kingdom from primates to chickens and even to insects. By this cerebral complementarity, the universal creative system is equally manifest in the emergence of cognitive faculties. View the 21 Bibliographic Entries D. Emergent Genetic Information: DNA/AND
In Part III, An Informational Source reported how matter and energy is understood to be suffused by an informative, program-like quality. Part IV, A Universal Genetic Code, documented an independent creative system while Part V, A Quickening Evolution, sketched humankind’s integral view of the oriented rise of earth life, mind and self-cognizance. This Part VI is proceeding to show how these principles are in similar manifestation everywhere. To continue to fill in this scenario, a genetic-like code network is now noticed to not only reside at a molecular level, but at each evolutionary tier from elements to societies. A rule-based, communicative program with a novel format at each stage is conveyed by the next table, which generally follows the work of John Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary and other researchers noted next.
In addition, a significant revolution is going on about the understanding of what genes are, where they are situated in dynamic systems and how their developmental influences is expressed. Most of the research since the DNA double helix was specified in 1953 has been to identify particulate molecular components and their relative location in chromosome strands. With the recent sequencing of the Human Genome, a new phase of equal importance began to explore how genes are contained in genomic, metabolic, and neural systems. This approach variously known as epigenetics studies the effects of environment, topology and other constraints on genes, to an extent that a genetic determinism is set aside. What appears once again is a complementarity of discrete ”genes” and the complex, malleable systems they compose. To convey this major turn of events, a new acronym is here proposed as DNA/AND. The works of Evelyn Fox Keller, Matt Ridley and Antoine Danchin, among others, are a good entry in this regard. A linguistic metaphor has also become of much utility in understanding the genetic code, which is verifying strong parallels with language. This topic is covered later on in A Cultural Code. View the 111 Bibliographic Entries
The history of life shows a clear trend in hierarchical organization, revealed by the successive emergence of organisms with ever greater numbers of levels of nestedness and greater development, or ‘individuation,’ of the highest level. View the 31 Bibliographic Entries F. New Parallels of Phylogeny and Ontogeny In the 19th century, both before and after Darwin's The Origin of Species, a recapitulation between an organism’s embryonic development and the evolutionary course of its species was widely accepted. This comparison was discarded as later anatomical research began to find contradictions. Today after a century of intensive, quantified study, a broad agreement between ontogenetic development and phylogenetic evolution is re-emerging in several areas. In addition to the gestation of an embryo, its occurrence is now recognized to hold for cognitive, behavioral and linguistic realms. As a result, the entirety of earth life’s somatic, cerebral and societal evolution may be seen to take on a similar appearance to the development, motor learning, mental achievement, and acquisition of language of a human individual. In the holistic vista of humankind, a grand accord may become apparent between personal and planetary gestation, a significant discovery not possible any sooner. View the 36 Bibliographic Entries
As we now reach ourselves in this evolutionary traverse, it is worthwhile to pause and review the website’s outline. Parts III, IV and V doucmented an amniotic cosmos, its genetic-like code, and life’s embryonic quickening on earth. This extensive Part VI goes on to report how each nested phase from geological strata to an emergent humankind reflects the universal complementary system in its discrete and relational modes and their spiral path of self-making. 1. Somatic and Behavioral Development The same complex dynamics that organize cosmos and evolution are seen to be in similar effect to guide a child’s advance in bodily maturation, perception, agility, behavior and stages of cognition. View the 40 Bibliographic Entries 2. Systems Neuroscience: Cerebral Form and Dynamic Function Research frontiers in neuroscience are finding the principles of self-organization to similarly apply both to a brain’s developmental maturation and to its constantly shifting hierarchy of thought processes. In this cognitive domain, complex system activities are variously known as parallel distributed processing, connectionism and neural networks. This section reviews both human cerebral anatomy and physiology and the influence of these self-organizing dynamics. It also includes how brains store, represent and remember experience. View the 71 Bibliographic Entries 3. A Complementary Brain and Thought Process Earlier on A Ramifying Bicameral Brain considered the evolutionary roots of reciprocal cerebral faculties. This section notes their distinct presence in human beings both in left and right hemispheres and in a new "dual-process theory" of cognitive activity. Discovered in the late 1960’s by Roger Sperry’s Nobel prize work, holistic or analytical modes of thought entered popular culture in the 1970’s such as an artistic right brain. These broad allotments fell somewhat out of favor in the 1980’s. What is new today is a sophisticated verification of a left side emphasis on finer, discrete objects, along with a right penchant for connecting these dots, and on their fluid, shared interaction. In support of a universal genesis, this finding locates the archetypal complements in our own mind, in our brain’s cerebral architecture and performance. The appearance of these qualities even on a planetary scale is noted in The Phenomenon of Humankind. View the 49 Bibliographic Entries As a result of the 17th century Cartesian divorce of mind from body, conscious awareness was for many years set aside as a spurious epiphenomenon. With recent advances in the philosophy of mind and scientific capabilities, consciousness has finally become a valid concern of quantified study. A knowing sentience is now perceived to emerge both through evolution, as noted earlier in Animal Intelligence and Awareness, and constantly in a human brain from quantum realms to intellect. Additional aspects and inputs in this regard were noted in Part III, Intelligence and Consciousness. As these references attest, it is observed to be most characterized and facilitated by an active informational content. The image is from a megaconference held at the University of Arizona. View the 47 Bibliographic Entries
As we continue to engage individual persons, the most significant aspect of ones life is, of course, their gender. Surely an area long replete with misunderstanding and injustice, what is new is an affirmation by humankind of a natural, cosmic basis for the feminine and masculine principles. As discussed earlier in A Universal Genetic Code and elsewhere, the independent creative system is composed of a dynamic interplay of relational connections and elemental agents. At the heart of this worldwide discovery is the recurrence of these equal and complementary qualities. What is revealed is a human universe once again knowable by its gender archetypes. Every other period and culture in history has conceived worldly existence in the imagery of a male/female reciprocity except our own. View the 63 Bibliographic Entries
Over the last century, the field of psychology has sought to clarify and understand our human tangle of emotions, mental domains, behaviors, with increasing reference to their neuroanatomical, biochemical and genetic substrates. A prime concern, often equated with Sigmund Freud, was to identify and mitigate the psychic maladies that inflict night and day. In an initial analytic stage, the endeavor segmented into many subsets and factions, which along with its subject matter inhibited general theories. Around 1980, a mosaic formed of neuroscience, linguistics, cognition, artificial intelligence, and philosophy known as cognitive science. Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies attempted to shift the focus from illness to positive enhancement. View the 68 Bibliographic Entries
Throughout our lives, we are always participating in a biological and spiritual individuation process that has taken billions of years. Helene Shulman View the 39 Bibliographic Entries H. The Phenomenon of Humankind
The first four sections of this Part VI, Earth Life Emergence, have documented a nested evolution of organic entity, sentience, program and awareness from bacteria to biosphere. A parallel was next noted between this overall phylogeny and individual (human) ontogeny. In Integral Persons, we have seen much evidence for people as active exemplars of and participants in a self-organizing genesis. The universal dynamic system is equally at work in the evolutionary appearance and grammatical format of human language, along with its informational content. This latest mode of social communication is also realized to have a deep congurence with the molecular genetic code, a finding of much utility to researchers in both domains and another example of nature using the same procedure over and over. View the 91 Bibliographic Entries As the case with psychology as we just saw, the application of nonlinear science to the multi-faceted subject matter of sociology has also allowed an innate mathematical basis to be discerned. Rather than one random event after another with no deeper context, our surface mindset, humankind is now able to perceive how complex dynamic systems organize the shape and interaction of groups, assemblies, settlements and cities from a few members to a metropolis. As introduced in Organic Societies earlier, such communities are seen to evolve toward an animate and cognitive coherence. The next several sections after this will continue the theme onto a civilizational, religious and historic scale. View the 80 Bibliographic Entries Historians, architects and scholars have often advised that civilizations, especially in urban settings, seem in their material circulations and skeletal infrastructure to take on the likeness of a developing anatomy, metabolism and nervous system of an organism. As the intensifying human presence converges over and is compressed by spherical earth, a further evolutionary phase of nested emergence appears as a superorganic, planetary entity. Its composite mental component able to achieve such a perspective was reviewed earlier in Part II, Mindkind, and additional personal qualities will covered in later sections. View the 65 Bibliographic Entries 4. The Complementarity of Civilizations
“East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet” wrote Rudhyar Kipling. Many research studies in social psychology especially in the last decade report that western and eastern cultures do generally reflect polar autonomous individual or communal group attributes. For the purposes of this website, such quantified findings demonstrate how the universal archetypes seem manifest even on a global stage. But these reciprocal phases have rarely been understood and their opposition has caused much interpersonal and international strife and injustice. If civilizations that currently “clash” can be seen to reflect a naturally recurrent complementarity, an avenue to their beneficial reconciliation might result. (A unique role for Muslim culture to bridge West and East is suggested in Bicameral World Religions.) View the 70 Bibliographic Entries
The comparative study of religious traditions is another project of humankind. The great world faiths arose concurrently in a first “axial period,” circa 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. Theologian Ewert Cousins of Fordham University advises that a second axial phase of global dimension some two millennia later is now in occurrence. As we may collectively begin to decipher and read a natural testament, a worldwide complementarity can even be noticed between Eastern and Western modes of belief and doctrine. As many scholars note, spirituality seems to occur in two basic responses or dichotomies of God and the human, worship or activity, heaven or earth, cyclical or linear time. Surely this is a huge, vested subject and these brief thoughts and references are offered to broach ecumenical possibilities and open windows toward rapport. View the 20 Bibliographic Entries An historic reconvergence of the scientific and religious encounter is underway but the project seems occupied with trying to reconcile the old, materialist, Darwinian version with belief in and proof of a Divine creator. Signs of an ordained design by way of the “anthropic principle” are a prime endeavor. Glimpses of an innately self-organizing cosmos occur but the waxing realization of a genesis universe whereof earth and human have their own intrinsic value has not yet been factored in. This section is also to be posted on the Forum for Religion and Ecology website. View the 71 Bibliographic Entries 7. Macrohistory as Individuation
An ambition of historians and philosophers has been to discern the topologies, forces and trends that underlie and move the course of human affairs, that drive the ebb, migration, and eclipse of peoples, nations and cultures. Because these efforts often went awry if socially applied, not due to theory but its misuse, the very project of seeking such a ‘metanarrative’ is now rejected. The real difference proposed here is its novel perception by humankind. It would be a shame to abandon the ancient project just when a salutary discovery at last becomes possible. View the 47 Bibliographic Entries
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