Evolution of Existence

Before Life emerged some four billion years ago, the highest order of laws that ruled our planet was that of Physics and Chemistry. When complex self-organized systems that were composed of organic matter appeared on the stage, Biology took over. Physics and Chemistry are still around, but they don’t matter that much anymore because in many instances living things override physical rules: heavier than air birds fly, and Coho salmon swims upstream.

It might seem that the reign of Biology has occupied too thick a layer of time in the history of the planet, but spending even a few hours in the Berlin Zoo, Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium or the Kew Botanic Gardens could leave anyone stunned by the grandeur of what Nature has invented in the living world. At present biodiversity amounts to around twenty million biological species, with almost half of them still undiscovered. This, of course, is only the selection of the surviving organic solutions that have successfully passed all of the brutal “do or die” tests of evolution. The statistical assessment for that is less than one percent. It might be sad for scientific minds not to find the missing answers to the question: All those two billion plants, animals, birds and fish who didn’t make it in the course of evolution, what could they have looked like? But on the other hand, those with management approach have enough ground to conclude: making two billion prototypes of new living creatures within four billion years points to a fairly high productivity in the workshop of Biology.

Most importantly, every subsequent attempt of evolution to create a new survivable biological species aspired for complexity of higher order than what has been accomplished previously. Life on Earth started with the first organic molecules, followed by single-celled organisms, then multi-cellular, through to the exponentially increasing dynamics of the last five hundred million years when most of the complex representatives in both the plants and animal kingdoms emerged. Disruption in the evolutionary process took place some two hundred million years ago when the brain architecture (of mammals) was anatomically upgraded with the Neocortex. The feature of Neocortex to invent new types of behavior enabled numerous trial and error cycles to be tested within one individual life, thus cutting short by thousands of years the period needed for evolutionary advance that otherwise is performed through many generations of genetic mutation. Later on — two million years ago, in one order of mammals — the Primates, including Humans, the Neocortex was further extended with by the Frontal lobe. Some researches conclude that “The frontal cortex is the only region capable of integrating motivational, mnemonic, emotional, somatosensory, and external sensory information into unified and goal-directed action.” For some time the Frontal lobe additional layers in the Human brain were considered to be the space where all the difference between human and non-human behavior was generated. Recent neuroimaging studies however established similar proportions of the Frontal lobe for all members of the taxonomic family Hominidae (the great apes) where we, humans, enjoy the company of seven more species, among them chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos. So far, the only anatomical trace that is distinctive to only Homo sapiens species appears to be a recently discovered small curve on the human neocortex named “The depth asymmetry of superior temporal sulcus”.

Now we know about the depth asymmetry of superior temporal sulcus. Advancing research technologies in the future, however, will certainly bring much new anatomical and neurophysiological discoveries about what makes us, humans, so different from the rest of our fellow biological creatures.

Yes, we — Homo sapiens, are a success story. We have done it: look at our smartphones, spaceships, Ferraris, Maglev trains, submarines, tall buildings piercing the sky as high as one thousand meters, and you will realize that there is no need for more evidence to confirm that we, Homo sapiens, are an exceptional biological species. Simply because no other biological species for the last four billion years has never changed our planet in the scale and structural depth we have, and has never created anything even close to resembling the scenery of the Anthropocene. And also, because no other biological creature has the potential to challenge our interests on this planet. Within the whole world with its myriads of living beings, we are by far the best.

But does that mean that we are perfect?

In Nature there never was a perfect design that could lead to making perfect creatures. We are just the most advanced survivors of evolution. And if we imagine that an inter-galactic Sunday market for evolutionary goods takes place somewhere in the outer space, we can only hope, that our Mother Nature will be proud of having something like Homo sapiens on her Planet Earth stand.

We are not perfect. As Albert Szent-Gyorgyi put it: “Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend.”

In the whole process of evolution, Homo sapiens never had a viable strategy of individual survival. With our biological characteristics we cannot outrace a hungry cheetah or kill a mammoth in one-on-one fight to feed our family. The Anthropocene success story is that of humans riding on a group survival strategy. That functionally includes synergy and positive cooperation, and here we have at least three essential issues to analyze. One is the origin of war. Wars in the meaning organized lethal attack on species of same kin are known only with Homo sapiens, and chimpanzees. Both are equipped with the latest model of Neocortex. The ethically disturbing reality is that no other living creatures on Earth massively destroy own kin. We have done in millions, at times. The second issue is an unpopular branch of human intelligence — the Machiavellian Intelligence, which is associated with developing individual capabilities counterproductive to the group potential for advance and success. The third issue is the Intentional Deception within the same species. Again, observed only among the bestowed with advanced Neocortex — the Primates. In other words, we are at this point discussing the categories of aggression, war, egoistic interests and disinformation and other that seem to be profoundly innate to the human nature. At the same time these same issues are negatively consequential to the integrity of our civilization and erode its potential for sustainable prosperity. The combined effect of the above issues might be enough to explain many of the most critical problems in our world: the threat of nuclear apocalypse, violence and insecurity for human life, the prevailing existence of political systems that do not represent the immediate and the strategic interests of citizens, the flawed functioning of money that failed to represent civilizational values, the income inequality, the notorious misinterpretation of truth in the news-media, and many others.

For all the mortal sins listed above, however, we should not accuse the Neocortex. If we “stand here in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal”, what we really need is to get out of “the simple cave life” and to attune our brain to the new civilizational realities of our globalized and intensely interconnected contemporary world. We are just using the “terrific forces at our disposal” for wrong purposes.

After four billion years in labor, Biology has created Homo sapiens. Being the triumph of evolution makes us, Homo sapiens, the masterpiece of Biology. If that was the civilizational mission of Biology in the history of the world, it has been accomplished with brilliance. Now that strong and intelligent Homo sapiens has conquered the planet, the biological layer of time will fade away, and Biology will continue to exist in our reality only as a parallel presence.

But the end of Biology is not the end of the story: we now have on the planet the great basic components — some seven and a half billion strong and intelligent Homo sapiens individuals who, divided into groups and tribes, currently fight each other or collide with each other in a Brownian motion mode. Instead of uniting into synergy to create wonders.

What we don’t have is a vision for the Grand System.

After Biology a new civilizational layer of time will take over: one dominated by complex processes of Humankind self-organizing itself with the mission to shape a strategy for the future of existence.