The Countdown to Extinction: The Time Machine and Herbert Spencer’s Developmental Hypothesis (original) (raw)

The Ascending Evolution of Life on the Earth - Chapter X. [Revised Translation ed. by E. d'Araille]

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS, Vol.II, 2002

This incredible chapter from the second volume of Eduard von Hartmann's masterpiece manages to condense a description of the evolution of all life on earth into just over thirty pages. Written at the height of early Evolutionism, this depiction of the progress of life through mechanisms of evolution is simply stunning in its compression of detail and vision in such a small space of text. Throughout his setting forth of the evolution of life von Hartmann presents his concept of the Unconscious as the creative, driving force behind all life, his own transformation and development of Arthur Schopenhauer's idea of the 'Will in Nature'. A rewarding chapter for all who have an interest in the literature and philosophy on evolution of organic life, of which it treats directly. This extract is provided here courtesy of Living Time™ Books.

Out of the Metazoic? Animals as a transitional form in planetary evolution

In this paper I situate the topic of animals in the Anthropocene within a larger set of questions. Firstly, I locate it against a longer timescale than might ordinarily be the case. Earth scientists debate whether the scale and significance of current changes in Earth processes should really be ranked only at the level of a change of epoch within the Cenozoic era, as the denotation ‘Anthropocene’ would imply, or whether we might be witnessing an event in Earth history that might constitute the advent of a new era, or even – like the Cambrian explosion which saw the emergence of nearly all existing animal phyla – that of a new, fifth aeon of the Earth. If that is indeed the case, then the question of the fate of the animal might need properly to be investigated against a much larger temporal canvas, within which the units that rise and fall might not just be those of ecosystems and species but kingdoms, biomes, or even the very ‘compartments’ of the Earth, of which life is one. My analysis is thus one that situates the animal within the context of the process of planetary evolution. My approach to the evolution of planets is one that sees it as a progressive unfolding of singularities, a cascade of symmetry-breaking bifurcations in which planets become progressively more anatomical or geometrical through processes of migrating and folding, generating new ‘compartments’ or spheres, new intensities and gradients, and new ‘forms’ or ‘modes of existence’. Seeing the animal as a planetary phenomenon is thus not in itself to make a point about spatial or temporal scale; rather, to paraphrase Dobzhansky, it is to suggest that adequately comprehending the nature of animal being is only possible in the light of planetary evolution. Secondly, against that background of deep geological time and planetary evolution, and drawing on theories of macroevolution, the philosophy of biology and biosemiotics, I explore the specific mode of being of the metazoan – of multicellular animal life, as opposed for example to bacteria, archaea, plants and fungi. It is not enough simply to describe the metazoa as ‘complex’. As Myra Hird (2009) points out, well before the Cambrian explosion bacteria had already developed, for example, ‘all major forms of metabolism, multicellularity, nanotechnology, metallurgy, sensory and locomotive apparatuses (such as the wheel), reproductive strategies and community organisation, alcohol, gas and mineral conversion’. The metazoa are mainly distinguished not by morphological or functional complexity but by the emergence of a specific spatio-temporal topology within the Earth. I analyse this topological relation under three headings – the moving, eating body in space; the mortal, individual member of a species; and the sensory, phenomenological world organised into space and time. Fourthly, I use this investigation of the animal to speculate about what might come after the fourth aeon of the Earth: the Phanerozoic, the aeon of visible life – or, as we might choose to call it, the Metazoic. Peter Haff (2013), for example, has suggested that the Earth’s evolution is characterised by a sequence of ‘geological paradigms’ – nested dynamical systems that shape the emergence of the global environment, each of which supervenes on and captures energy flux from earlier paradigms. Thus just as the biosphere supervened on the hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere, Haff posits the existence of a ‘technosphere’, supervening on but relatively autonomous from the biosphere. In a comparable but distinct analysis, I explore how our understanding of previous aeon-level transitions in Earth evolution, and of the distinctive characteristic of metazoic being, might help us speculate what it might mean to move ‘out of the Metazoic’ – into an aeon where multicellular organic life is no longer the signature entity on the Earth.

Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints, by D. Schulze-Makuch and L. N. Irwin

Astrobiology, 2004

The discussion of life on other worlds is inevitably qualified by the phrase, "life as we know it." This customary and appropriate caution among scientists serves to (1) admit that all our speculations and extrapolations are based on a known sample size of only one, and (2) imply that the one form of life we know may be peculiar to the physical conditions under which it exists. While these constraints do place boundaries on the scientific latitude we should allow ourselves in speculating about unknown forms of life, the sample with which we are familiar does constitute a specific and robust example that has persisted through numerous crises in variable, changing, and often extreme environments. Assuming that the laws of physics and chemistry are universally operative, then life elsewhere might be expected to follow the same evolutionary and ecological principles that have characterized its history on Earth. Thus, rather than thinking of "life as we know it" in terms of constraints, this chapter explores the insights to be gained by regarding the one life we know as a harbinger and example of the life we can reasonably expect to exist on other worlds. 4.1 A Brief History of Life on Earth The Earth is presumed to have formed about 4.56 billion years ago by accretion, the gradual accumulation of submeter-sized objects (Levison et al. 2015). Like all concentrations of matter in the Universe, it formed through gravitational collapse and consequent rotation (Cassen and Woolum 1999). Recurrent bombardment continued for at least 0.5 billion years, during which the Earth's interior differentiated, the first islands formed (Burnham and Berry 2017), and the atmosphere stabilized in composition, with N 2 and CO 2 as major constituents. Based on dating of the earliest fossils, the first life on Earth appeared rather quickly (Schopf 1999; Dodd et al. 2017). While evidence for the ultimate ancestry of life on Earth is controversial at this time (Brasier et al. 2002; Mojzsis et al. 1996; Westall et al. 2001), few experts doubt that life was present by 3.5 billion years ago,

Life Beyond Earth and the Evolutionary Synthesis

For many astronomers, the progressive development of life has been seen as a natural occurrence given proper environmental conditions on a planet: even though such beings would not be identical to humans, there would be significant parallels. A striking contrast is seen in writings of nonphysical scientists, who have held more widely differing views. But within this diversity, reasons for differences become more apparent when we see how views about extraterrestrials can be related to the differential emphasis placed on modern evolutionary theory by scientists of various disciplines. One clue to understanding the differences between the biologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists who speculated on extraterrestrials is suggested by noting who wrote on the subject. Given the relatively small number of commentators on the topic, it seems more than coincidental that four of the major contributors to the evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s are among them. Upon closer examination it is evident that the exobiological arguments of Theodosius Dobzhansky and George Gaylord Simpson and, less directly, of H. J. Muller and Ernst Mayr are all related to their earlier work in formulating synthetic evolution. By examining the variety of views held by nonphysical scientists, we can see that there were significant disagreements between them about evolution into the 1960s. By the mid-1980s, many believed that “higher” life, particularly intelligent life, probably occurs quite infrequently in the universe; nevertheless, some held out the possibility that convergence of intelligence could occur across worlds. Regardless of the final conclusions these scientists reached about the likely prevalence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the use of evolutionary arguments to support their positions became increasingly common.

From Suns to Life: A Chronological Approach to the History of Life on Earth 6. Environmental Context

Earth Moon and Planets, 2006

This concluding chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part is a summary of the main facts and events which constitute the present body of knowledge of the chronology of life in the solar system, in the form of ''highlights'' in astronomy, geology, chemistry and biology. The second part raises the interrogation ''Is life universal?'', and tries to provide answers based on these facts and events. These answers turn out to differ widely among the various disciplines, depending on how far they feel able to extrapolate their current knowledge.

Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life

Life is an inordinately complex unsolved puzzle. Despite significant theoretical progress, experimental anomalies, paradoxes, and enigmas have revealed paradigmatic limitations. Thus, the advancement of scientific understanding requires new models that resolve fundamental problems. Here, I present a theoretical framework that economically fits evidence accumulated from examinations of life. This theory is based upon a straightforward and non-mathematical core model and proposes unique yet empirically consistent explanations for major phenomena including, but not limited to, quantum gravity, phase transitions of water, why living systems are predominantly CHNOPS (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), homochirality of sugars and amino acids, homeoviscous adaptation, triplet code, and DNA mutations. The theoretical framework unifies the macrocosmic and microcosmic realms, validates predicted laws of nature, and solves the puzzle of the origin and evolution of cellular life in the universe. Life 2012, 2 2