The Rise of the Sorcerers: Chapter One - DOUBTS ABOUT EVOLUTION
I have tea with Sir Julian.
The religion of grandparents.
A conflict passed to profit and write-off.
Cuvier's anger.
The triumphs of cross-dressing.
Bergson invents "the vital impulse."
A well-fed myth.
The pairing of the idea of evolution with the idea of progress.
An "ism" to be watched.
The Biology.
Where the authors have another delusion, but moderate.
The elusive first man.
The hypothesis of a stable form.
An unaccepted doctrine:
humanism.
zz
The religion of grandparents.
A conflict passed to profit and write-off.
Cuvier's anger.
The triumphs of cross-dressing.
Bergson invents "the vital impulse."
A well-fed myth.
The pairing of the idea of evolution with the idea of progress.
An "ism" to be watched.
The Biology.
Where the authors have another delusion, but moderate.
The elusive first man.
The hypothesis of a stable form.
An unaccepted doctrine:
humanism.
zz
In the lobby of the "Atheneum Club", frequented by elderly people Knights who are the honour and Prez of the Anglo-Saxon intellect, two large portraits can be seen: that of Darwin, and that of his friend Thomas Henry Huxley:
- painter
- naturalist
- philosopher of the evolutionism
One beautiful afternoon in June 1963, I found myself having tea in the Club's library, with the grandson of one of the two founders of the evolutionary religion.
Because, in fact, it is a religion.
The Horrible Truth About Religion – Library of Rickandria
The grandson was not wrong in saying so.
Because, in fact, it is a religion.
The Horrible Truth About Religion – Library of Rickandria
The grandson was not wrong in saying so.
I said to Julian Huxley:
Sir Julian, in 1928 you published a work entitled Religion without Religion.
Revelation.
His idea made its way.
In 1958, thirty years later Since its publication, this book has been widely circulated in the popular.
And at the Chicago Congress, in the wake of the centennial of the Darwin's work, you made a statement that had enormous resonance.
Revelation.
His idea made its way.
In 1958, thirty years later Since its publication, this book has been widely circulated in the popular.
And at the Chicago Congress, in the wake of the centennial of the Darwin's work, you made a statement that had enormous resonance.
"The evolutionary view," he said, "allows us to distinguish the broad outlines of the new religion which, most assuredly, it will emerge to respond to the needs of the next era."
Can we really be sure?
"Yes," replied Sir Julian.
The world is waiting for her.
Humanity discerns, more or less clearly, that there is such a thing as a religion through the point of manifesting.
Or rather (if I exclude God or a divine purpose), an exalted feeling of relationship with the whole.
The sciences are now sufficiently developed to make their convergence can produce a new picture of the Universe.
Therefore, the process of evolution, in the person of man, begins to take self-awareness.
A quasi-religious awareness of the evolutionary process, isn't it?
"Oh, many of my friends object to the term religion.
But anyway...
You know that even the systems that are said materialism, such as Marxism, have typically Religious...
Decidedly, I thought, as I dipped a muffin in the tea, just as the French are moderate anarchists, so the English are reasonable mystics.
Here is an agnostic Teilhard.
It is clear that, at this moment and on this side of the English Channel, the wind of religiosity blows from the brows of the old and honorable scientists.
Perhaps they are discovering, in this time of restlessness, with his solid and discreet pride, that his grandparents Darwinists effectively proposed to the world a new way of religion.
Here is an agnostic Teilhard.
It is clear that, at this moment and on this side of the English Channel, the wind of religiosity blows from the brows of the old and honorable scientists.
Perhaps they are discovering, in this time of restlessness, with his solid and discreet pride, that his grandparents Darwinists effectively proposed to the world a new way of religion.
I thought of Haldane, another descendant of a noble lineage of English intellectuals.
He, too, cherished ideas of religion without revelation. I had written:
"It is necessary to foresee the possibility of the birth of a new religion, the creed is in accord with modern thought, or, more so, Exactly, with the thinking of the preceding generation.
Today We can find traces of this creed in the phrases of eminent spiritualists, in the economic dogma of the party and in the writings of those who believe in evolution creator."
Those who "believe"...
He watched Sir Julian, who was quietly stirring his tea with his spoon.
The man had not ceased to accumulate honors and risks.
It was a monument erected on the narrow border between idealistic generalization and academic prudence, among the mysticism of his brother Aldous and the determinism of his grandfather.
Then my thoughts drifted to his turbulent colleague Haldane. that he had also chosen a noble and uncomfortable attitude.
It had been communist party and ended a brilliant and unhappy career studying in India the physiology of yogis in ecstasy.
The False Teachings of Modern Yoga – Library of Rickandria
Those devilish and great Englishmen...
It had been communist party and ended a brilliant and unhappy career studying in India the physiology of yogis in ecstasy.
The False Teachings of Modern Yoga – Library of Rickandria
Those devilish and great Englishmen...
A chain of old gentlemen followed.
I seemed to be seeing the A good master of psychosynthesis, Professor Assagioli, in his small office in Rome.
"There is currently a very important and significant, he said, and it is the expectation of a great religious renewal..."
All of these talks took place before the capitals of Europe to see the emergence of a youth that was both revolutionary and revolutionary. anti-progressive, greedy for sacred things, mystical and savage, with its Upside-down sacred music and its mimic-like rebellions Liturgical.
Maybe I'm a bit of a medium.
Or perhaps, simply, by to be younger than my great Englishmen, I was more sensitive than them into the future.
This religious renewal will take place, he thought I-; This is for sure.
But won't dogma be shattered to pieces?
Evolutionist, which served as a bridge to two or three generations to Crossing God's eclipse periods?
Maybe I'm a bit of a medium.
Or perhaps, simply, by to be younger than my great Englishmen, I was more sensitive than them into the future.
This religious renewal will take place, he thought I-; This is for sure.
But won't dogma be shattered to pieces?
Evolutionist, which served as a bridge to two or three generations to Crossing God's eclipse periods?
Haldane and Huxley they were receding, caught in travelling backwards, in their poignant attitude of good-natured daddies bent over the future:
"Are the who believe in creative evolution?"
Well, this had to be observed up close, with doubts about the how and why.
I As a good son, I had clung to this dogma.
A dogma that Maybe it was going to melt, dissolve, like my bun in the cup of tea.
Our grandparents had decreed the death of god.
But the Trinidad withstood the blow.
Only the words changed.
The Father became Evolution; the Son, in Progress; the Spirit Holy, in History.
Kill the father once and for all.
That is to say, question the Evolution.
Then, the notion of Progress will fail at its foundation; it will lose its absolute value; It will be stripped of its nature almost religious.
And, consequently, history will cease to be necessarily ascending.
Here it is, devoid of messianism, reduced to pure chronic.
Perhaps this is the true landscape, which He remained hidden behind taboos.
A cold landscape?
No doubt any.
A landscape for free adults, out of the lukewarmness of the matrix.
Of course, the rights of the proponents of evolution.
Over the past century, they have held a tough fight.
"God created all living things, each according to his own species," says Genesis.
Traditional Technology Agrees with the Platonic view:
Nature is the embodiment of the ideals, and the idea of the horse existed before the horse, designed from all eternity in the spiritual heavens.
Agrees with the fixity of common sense and language. Less than a hundred years ago Years ago, an Anglican bishop exclaimed:
"No!
No evolution!
God did indeed create the world in six days, including the fossils!"
The "monkey trial" in Dayton, United States, where Teachers were persecuted for teaching cross-dressing.
It only dates from 1926.
At present, the Church has accepted the fundamental data of Anthropology, not without guarding against the Teilhardian tendencies towards a "religion of evolution," quite a close, after all, to Huxley's.
It only dates from 1926.
At present, the Church has accepted the fundamental data of Anthropology, not without guarding against the Teilhardian tendencies towards a "religion of evolution," quite a close, after all, to Huxley's.
After an analysis of the anatomical evolution of man in the course of geological ages, we read the following in a dictionary of Christian Trend:
"Discoveries of human fossils dating back to the last few years geological ages, i.e., Tertiary and Flood, provide proof that the human body participated in the evolution of the living world as a whole.
The human body, in its in its present form, it is the last prolongation of this evolutionary process.
The current knowledge of science allows us to situate a little before the transition period from the tertiary to the Flood, that is, about a million years ago, this is a decisive moment when, as it differs from a very different animal body, similar to his own, the human body made its appearance in its current form.
It was at this moment that, after a long evolution of the animal and vegetable world, the being of flesh and spirit, called He was born of God's creative act and was able to begin the journey of God, their own becoming."
The modern Church, then, accepts that the body of man is product of evolution.
As for the soul, it maintains its position.
Jewish Soul VS. Gentile Soul – Library of Rickandria
At a certain point, in the chain of transformations, a animal that resembles us in a great way.
As for the soul, it maintains its position.
Jewish Soul VS. Gentile Soul – Library of Rickandria
At a certain point, in the chain of transformations, a animal that resembles us in a great way.
Then, God intervenes:
I will do it in my own image; Let us give the decisive breath and a "becoming" to that privileged creature.
Contract with God – Library of Rickandria
As we can see, the conflict between "fixism" and transformism is not, nor is it much less, resolved.
Everyone agrees on what is concerned the iguanodon, the flying fish or the chimpanzee.
But the Christian it recovers the spirit of Genesis in the last stage of creation.
However, this conflict, which is so fundamental, is currently taking place in silence.
The friendship between Christian and atheist progressivism is well It is worth ignoring this confusion about evolution.
Chiton, comrades, and let us march together and arm in arm in the direction of History.
It is true that the history of the idea of evolution is a history of evolution. confusions, as Emmanuel Berl showed very well in a remarkable and Short Essay:
The Evolution of Evolution.
This idea of evolution made Cuvier nauseous, but he contributed much to his future by founding Paleontology.
Cuvier I thought I could reconstruct any animal from an ossicle.
This was to bet on a natural architecture of the species, by a kind of "golden ratio" of the diplodocus or the giraffe, because of some architectural ideals that transformism made doughy, intermingled in an evolutionary porridge.
Sacred Geometry – Library of Rickandria
The multiplication of species, the disappearance of certain forms of life, the appearance of other forms, are they the fruit of the of some great architect?
Cuvier I thought I could reconstruct any animal from an ossicle.
This was to bet on a natural architecture of the species, by a kind of "golden ratio" of the diplodocus or the giraffe, because of some architectural ideals that transformism made doughy, intermingled in an evolutionary porridge.
Sacred Geometry – Library of Rickandria
The multiplication of species, the disappearance of certain forms of life, the appearance of other forms, are they the fruit of the of some great architect?
Transformism, on the other hand, saw a Solid chain of cause and effect.
The species are they beget according to ingenious natural needs.
The species are they beget according to ingenious natural needs.
Finalism Lamarck's work, and also that of Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, presuppose a determining action of the environment.
Living things are transformed because the environment and living conditions force them to Do.
Adaptation is the determining cause.
She paws to the great reptiles and warms their blood when the waters.
The Reptilian Origins of the Jews – Library of Rickandria
A branch of its offspring becomes a bird: under the influence of the increasingly oxygenated environment, the membranous fringes they turn into feathers.
She paws to the great reptiles and warms their blood when the waters.
The Reptilian Origins of the Jews – Library of Rickandria
A branch of its offspring becomes a bird: under the influence of the increasingly oxygenated environment, the membranous fringes they turn into feathers.
Zoology, Botany and the Nascent Biology had great doubts about this.
For example, I don't know He had just understood why flax and hemp could adopt very different ways in an identical medium.
You couldn't understand how species that, observation showed, resisted to produce hybrids, they would have been able to copulate between in such a strange way, at a time when there were no zoologists.
In spite of everything, the cross-dressing was quite satisfactory for intelligence.
Just as man invents utensils, function creates the organ.
For example, I don't know He had just understood why flax and hemp could adopt very different ways in an identical medium.
You couldn't understand how species that, observation showed, resisted to produce hybrids, they would have been able to copulate between in such a strange way, at a time when there were no zoologists.
In spite of everything, the cross-dressing was quite satisfactory for intelligence.
Just as man invents utensils, function creates the organ.
The snail is provided with horns, in the same way that the blind man is supplied with a cane; and the giraffe stretches its neck to reach the dates.
But Fabre He wondered how bees had lived before they learned how to Make the honey.
But Fabre He wondered how bees had lived before they learned how to Make the honey.
"Lamarck,"
wrote Cuvier, to whom the latter He is unfortunately one of those wise men who does not have been able to resist mixing fantastic concepts with the true discoveries with which they enriched our knowledge.
"The theory of evolution is a great and beautiful building that, unfortunately, rests on foundations imaginary."
However, the theory would eventually prevail.
In fact, it was not possible to denying that there was a changing history of the living being.
But did this story support some kind of determinism?
You couldn't to be sure that Lamarckian transformism was the Accurate explanation.
But it was certain that we had to look in the sense of a chain of causes and effects.
In fact, it was not possible to denying that there was a changing history of the living being.
But did this story support some kind of determinism?
You couldn't to be sure that Lamarckian transformism was the Accurate explanation.
But it was certain that we had to look in the sense of a chain of causes and effects.
If we doubt that the effect follows the cause, and that the causes produce Necessarily, science ceases to be methodical and loses its objective.
As Emmanuel Berl observes:
"Cross-dressing had a A very firm triumph for the wise: it extended the field of application of determinism (...) This evolution seemed to them to be like a Declaration of the Rights of Determinism on Zoology and Botany (...) Animal species are so many effects, and these effects come from causes which science will be able to discover through over the centuries, even if he does not find the first cause, which it is not part of their field of study.
This is absolutely indispensable; Nothing else is needed."
Lamarckian transformism fails, but Darwin reconciles this notion with the general idea of evolution... proposing a Mechanistic explanation of the transformation of species.
Herself they accumulate insensible mutations, and Nature chooses, in selection function.
But with what prodigious game of chance, Nature managed to create such a perfect organ like the eye of higher vertebrates?
Darwin confessed that he did not He could think of this without being seized with a fever.
Herself they accumulate insensible mutations, and Nature chooses, in selection function.
But with what prodigious game of chance, Nature managed to create such a perfect organ like the eye of higher vertebrates?
Darwin confessed that he did not He could think of this without being seized with a fever.
Otherwise, he was an intellectual devoid of fanaticism, prodigiously open and adventurer, who did, just to see, what he called "idiotic experiments," such as blowing the trumpet to vines.
And Wallace, as outspoken as he was, was a pioneer of Parapsychology.
But neither insensible mutations, nor De Vries's abrupt mutations, will be able to justify the principle of natural selection. in short, planned evolution.
And Wallace, as outspoken as he was, was a pioneer of Parapsychology.
But neither insensible mutations, nor De Vries's abrupt mutations, will be able to justify the principle of natural selection. in short, planned evolution.
Strange story of the reptile, when a microscopic wing tip started to come out!
And so, on strange still, if a real little wing came out of a single blow!
What prodigious coincidences of coincidences which, at the same time, through insensible mutations, they led to an organ as Perfectly crafted as the eye of the tiger!
And how formidable production of sickly monsters, with abrupt mutations!
And so, on strange still, if a real little wing came out of a single blow!
What prodigious coincidences of coincidences which, at the same time, through insensible mutations, they led to an organ as Perfectly crafted as the eye of the tiger!
And how formidable production of sickly monsters, with abrupt mutations!
How can natural selection act under these conditions?
"We are firmly determined not to question evolution,"
Berl writes Bergson and all the science of his time recognize that they do not have the less idea of the mechanisms by which it is produced this evolution.
The most stupendous theatrical coup is the conclusion of Bergson:
Since we cannot explain the evolution of phenomena, it is necessary and sufficient to explain phenomena by evolution.
To attribute to it a creative power, a "vital impulse" that pushes evolutionary beings, even if we do not find traces of that.
If we don't understand how evolution could have shaped the eye of the Man, all the more reason to say: evolution has formed this eye.
There are no decisive mechanisms, since the evolution of the it determines on its own.
"It will be enough for Father Teilhard to follow this royal road; the He found the entire layout."
"By a strange movement back, evolution, which was once said to be the child of determinism and intended to proceed from it and to be its necessary consequence, becomes against him, he denies it, he disowns it with a disdain that very soon does not even he won't even try to dissemble.
It does not claim that the effects have Causes; he doesn't want to say it.
The essential thing is that it corroborates and confirms progress, a progress of Nature towards Intelligence, of History towards Justice, from Humanity to the Superhuman."
Transformism, which, like it or not, is at the base of the idea of evolution, it is abandoned as a coherent mechanism, as a chain of coincidences.
There is a final cause, which produces effects throughout the history of living beings.
It's an inverted determinism, and the inexplicable phenomena of evolution are explained by the mere fact that they are hangovers from the future.
There is a final cause, which produces effects throughout the history of living beings.
It's an inverted determinism, and the inexplicable phenomena of evolution are explained by the mere fact that they are hangovers from the future.
And, if genetics delivers a mortal blow to transformism, it is not for the sake of it.
This destroys the idea of upward evolution.
Because this idea has the level of scientific explanation to the level of myth necessary for a civilization.
Weisman's theory of chromosomes and Mendel's laws destroyed the mutation theses that had come into play support of cross-dressing.
By stating that the characters transmitted they are invariable. and that there can be no transmission of the characters acquired, since heredity acts, not from organism to organism, but from germ to stable germ, genetics says nothing in the matter absolute in favor of evolutionism.
When Lyssenko and the Mitchurinians of the Stalinist era speak out in favor of the evolution and against genetics, they do so with full awareness of the contradiction in which they incur.
But they need "scientific" support for the necessary myth.
But they need "scientific" support for the necessary myth.
In the name of scientific truth, they send geneticists to prison; for, for them, Science is not only the truth, but the truth plus hope; Hope to be the cause, to be able to modify and improve the nature of man for a change of environment that gives transformism the possibility of exercise its virtues.
True, it was useless cruelty to send the wise to death.
But those materialists had not Enough confidence in the myth.
It wouldn't even have been necessary silence.
The myth of upward evolution lives very well, and He grows fat with contradictions, which serve as a serum.
True, it was useless cruelty to send the wise to death.
But those materialists had not Enough confidence in the myth.
It wouldn't even have been necessary silence.
The myth of upward evolution lives very well, and He grows fat with contradictions, which serve as a serum.
The drag queens of the early nineteenth century considered more than it is sufficient to have substituted this hypothesis implied a certain determinism.
They didn't speak out on any sense of evolution.
The causes engendered effects, the action of the environment, and natural selection caused the species were modified, life forms were unfolding, obeying relentless needs, from the amoeba to the man.
They were very careful not to pronounce on a question which, moreover, would have seemed to them devoid of spirit Scientist:
Does evolution make sense?
Cross-dressing was not pessimistic or optimistic.
He refused to give an intention and an intention. to a natural phenomenon.
In this, he agreed quite well with the zeitgeist, which maintained a fairly between hope and despair, with a slight preference for bitter lucidity.
Jules Verne was a contemporary of philosophers prophesying the Apocalypse, and Baudelaire exclaiming:
"The world is ending!"
On the other hand, the physics of The period has black color. Generalized entropy condemns the Universe to extinction. Nietzsche finds, in the determinism that presides over the evolution of species, something with which to feed their tragic vision. He is gloomily stunned by the implacable harshness of natural selection, and seeing man appear on an immense Cemetery of buried species. The biologists, who "did not see God in his test tubes," they would shrug their shoulders under their frock coat black, if any meaning were assigned to the phenomena Natural.
Only physicochemical determinisms are found in game. And the psychologists themselves stand by their side: intelligence and virtues are products, like alcohol and alcohol. sugar. As for man, he is descended from the ape. The Verb Itself It excludes any idea of any ascent of the living being, of a positive direction of the "vital impulse". Genesis gave birth to us of the dust and told us that we would return to it. The dogma stated that we were clay animated by God. We are not this product of the It is not the Lord's will, but simply a primate that evolved by the play of blind causalities and was thrown into a Nature which has no purpose and which, moreover, is doomed to extinction by thermodynamics.
If, by an extraordinary circumstance, the discoveries of the Modern genetics would have been carried out before the advent of industrial civilization, the partisans of fixism would have Brought the best part. As Emmanuel Berl rightly says, These discoveries would have "excited the most influential philosophers." obsessed with the Eternal, more indifferent to Duration."
If, by an extraordinary circumstance, the discoveries of the Modern genetics would have been carried out before the advent of industrial civilization, the partisans of fixism would have Brought the best part. As Emmanuel Berl rightly says, These discoveries would have "excited the most influential philosophers." obsessed with the Eternal, more indifferent to Duration."
I do not know He would have spoken of a "vital impulse," nor, a fortiori, of "creative evolution".
Nature's principles of majestic immutability would have triumph, and our whole vision of the living being, of the history of the man and his societies, of our own civilization, would have modified.
But, in the meantime, the idea of evolution had been paired with the idea of progress. With industrial civilization and its first and spectacular achievements, the concept that the age of gold was behind us. The Steam Engine and Electricity They moved paradise from the back to the front. We were going to "triumph over Nature", to change things and, therefore, to Consequently, to change man. Cross-dressing was back recover the hair of the pasture; industry, which transformed the It would transform humanity. The "forward march" is "irreversible". "It is impossible to stop progress"; Humanity he can hope to discover a meaning to history.
Hegel elaborates the metaphysics of progress, and Marx his anthropology. The Faustian impulse that develops in the factory and in the The laboratory is linked to the mythical "vital impulse", and it is the latter This is a myth that will give the character of an absolute character to a very important fact of civilization. limited in time.
The medium determines the transformation, and the function creates the organ: This is the background of the Marchism that we shall find again in the "Scientific Socialism." And when Marx declares that Humanity makes its discoveries at the moment when they are needed, it is also Lamarck who speaks. The implacable laws of "economic evolution" has a lot to do with transformism, and the principle of of the class struggle is the first cousin of natural selection.
The idea of creative evolution, which is an invention of the mind to to give an account of a general history of the living being whose mechanism is not can be explained, it will serve to fully justify the sacrifices that in the name of progress demand the nascent industrial civilization. Is progress a relative notion? ¡No And no! Progress lies in the nature of evolution. Participates of the impulse that elevates the living being in the course of time. Is correlative to evolution.
"With the mating of evolution and progress, says Berl, evolution (i.e., the idea of creative evolution, which was much more mythical than scientific) political dignity, and progress (which was only a rather dubious constant, caught at a narrow juncture of the time) acquires scientific dignity."
But from the moment that progress acquires this dignity and sets himself up as king of the world, it behooves him to reject all the past, and plunge him into a night of prolonged, awkward, babbling Efforts. Progress is the magnificent heir of all evolution, the resplendent, definitive product of three thousand millions of years of life and efforts to achieve this entity Splendid. Progress lights up the world. Before, the world was at a Dark. In reality, man did not know the light of day. This is which is meant by the term "Age of Enlightenment".
It's the century that sees the idea of progress was born. With it, comes our time, time of the children of time. We arose at last, and took for our own sake. it holds the reins of evolution; We, who until then We had been bound to a slow evolution of matter, to a timid advance, suffocating and terrifying, subjected to the bite of chemical inclement weather, from harmful organisms that vegetated in the puddled waters of the Devonian.
From then on, we are confident that progress is justified by evolution and that history has, in fact, Consequently, a messianic character. But we must consider whether This certainty derives from the imperatives of our civilization industrial and technical, rather than a scientific reality Revealed. Emmanuel Berl is quite right when he speaks, respect
"of the pressure exerted (on the defenders of the creative evolution) by the civilization that surrounds them."
It's this, He goes on to say,
"which, without a doubt, confers on the ideas of evolution and progress, a value that is out of proportion to the phenomena that have been effectively proven. It is she who guides the investigations in the appropriate direction, nullifying the Warnings against words that mean and imply much more than what they express; the one that incites to confuse a plausible theory but debatable, like all theories, with a set of facts Established. These facts can reveal past situations. successions, causalities; but they cannot, of course, reveal and, even less, the ultimate meaning of processes that do not have come to an end and the end of which is unpredictable.
"We do not know, nor can we know, the outcome of the battles that have taken place. Life engages against itself and against inanimate matter. The Biologists could not foresee the atomic bomb, nor do they know what new ones would be Viruses can, Mariana, decimate our species. Its evolutionism it implies, therefore, an act of faith; An Act of Faith That Is Not Even Supported into a revelation and that becomes even more difficult from the moment in which that we exclude the transmission of acquired characters. To the professing evolutionism, they believe they dominate and direct sociology, when in reality they are merely submitting to it. Well, it's the Sociology, and not biology, lends to evolution the prestige and the appeal it exerts on us. It's progress of man, and not of the animal and vegetable species, which It governs our work and our ideas. "And if we are inclined to think that everything is going from better to better In the world, it is because we see the power that man wields increase about him. Montaigne would scoff at this idea. But, no matter how you look at it Look, we'd all be a winner today if we considered evolution with greater distrust, and if we were to use this word more cautiously and more rigorously. Evolutionism Turned Against determinism, after having been confused with it; became devout, if not orthodox, after having been ardently freethinker. How do you know what causes you will serve tomorrow? Not even We can affirm that it ensures the well-being of its adherents: the poets We were taught, a long time ago, that you can torture with the hope, and historians, that the chiefs of the peoples can to make the present life more atrocious, in the name of the future better than the future. they promise them. The worst tyrannies become excusable, and even justify, when we take it for granted that the world, subjected to a Blissful fatality, he walks towards a paradisiacal state. yes, I did Let it pass, everything tends to good, evil ceases to exist; A huge Carnage would not stop the course of evolution; Some may even bragging that he would speed it up and that a little bleed of nine hundred million men, would make it easier for the access to the society to which they aspire socialism; In the same way, the Nazis boasted that, By eliminating the inferior races, they would make the A benevolent game of natural selection. Evolutionism is not more devoid of delirium than all the other "isms." It's even I need to keep a close eye on it, especially if you want to defend it."
To tell you the truth, I am not inclined--and neither is Bergier--to "Defend evolutionism." What if evolution were like one of the those dolls under whose skirts appear several other dolls fully formed? If there had been, for example, several appearances of man, and various attempts to dominate the Nature? Would there not then, in this positive belief, a optimism that would not be accompanied by faith in a "vital impulse" Nor of the rejection of all the past of Creation in one Muddy darkness?
There would have been several attempts, and the current one it would be the good one. Of course, this idea is also delusional. But the incessant retreat of the field of observation of human history, provides good points of insight. I support this delirium.
Modern biologists, warns André Bouthoui in his work Social Variations and Mutations, are inclined to believe that, during the During the last geological period, Nature ceased to create new animal species. Cuénot (Biological Evolution) calculates that, about half a billion years ago, after the appearance of the birds, the creative word of Nature seemed to be exhausted. No new structures emerged after primates and the man.
And yet, it seems that the average density of radiation did not change. that nothing has changed appreciably in our physical environment. Then What to think of evolution as a continuous process?
'The "Observations of modern biology," Bouthoul continues to warn make the appearance of mutations that give rise to species doubtful new."
Morgan subjected certain insects to the most unusual treatments. including lightning bombardment corresponding to the physical conditions of the most ancient geological epochs, without Obtain test results.
However, the human species modifies, in a very few centuries, its possibilities of action, their modes of existence. Here, so as not to Losing the thread of evolutionism (mistaken in our minds for the notion of progress), we acrobatically recover the idea of mutations, declaring that "the creation of machines and techniques constitute true biological mutations of the species and that, if upward evolution has not affected Homo in In general, it has influenced homo sapiens and their societies. As if Nature, abruptly fatigued, or evolution in the event of a breakdown, they would have delegated their functions in homo sapiens.
And, in our efforts to be evolutionists through In spite of everything, we return to the pure and simple act of faith of a Father of God. the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria:
"Once definitely, Once the Creation was finished, man was charged with governing destinies of Nature."
Unless, in our search for traces of an evolution, the to find ourselves effectively. But it should act exclusively in man. And, in this case, we would have to get used to the idea of that man is an exceptional creature, belonging to a privileged species; that man is the object and product of Certain forces:
"Some biologists are now of the opinion that spontaneous mutations, visibly terminated in species animals, they are still produced in the human brain, mainly in the cortical areas, so that the Changes in mentalities would be nothing more than the psycho-sociological aspect of those spontaneous mutations, of original origin. mysterious and perhaps cosmic."(Bouthoul)
Located in these perspectives, contrary to the general theory of evolution, do not We would have no choice but to declare that man is an animal It is an out-of-this-world way, which is a living form that is alien to the process global. Here's a statement that we feel strongly about tempted to do, at our own risk. Well, let's stop tempt.
That being the case, we have to add that this form of which escapes the general process, might very well appear, not at the end of a slow evolution, but in an accelerated manner, and each whenever possible. In the history of our planet, the man may have appeared several times during the millions of years that he they were left behind.
So, considered on the scale of our and the duration of our civilizations, we could say that man is eternal. This hypothesis is not mystical. It does not presuppose a stubborn and vigilant God, who creates man every time he conditions allow them to do so. It's a natural hypothesis. As well as the Chance does not intervene in chemistry, nor would it influence evolution. Just as there are stable molecules, there would be at least one form of life, man, which would manifest itself with constancy, every time he the occasion presented itself; That I would go through many vicissitudes, vicissitudes, ups and downs, degenerations, and in an eternal attempt to come true; fully.
Each new discovery pushes back the date of birth of the first man. In September 1969, a congress of anthropologists and Paleontologists, meeting at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, reject the idea that Neanderthal man was our ancestor, and admits that, more than two million years ago, there was a man who He made utensils and practiced a cult of the dead. But this it is already insufficient. Excavations in Chad reveal a Humanity whose antiquity dates back six million years.
This The clue could go on indefinitely and make us think that, at a moment's notice, On our scale, to speak of the first man is the same as to speak of the of the Universe.
We do not intend to launch the idea that the birth of man could be synchronous with the formation of life on Earth, more than three billion years ago. But it's possible that, in ten millions of years, if the human species emerged, disappeared because of the of certain cataclysms and reappear, in the same way that life is reborn on the islands made unproductive by volcanic eruptions.
"The Darwinian explanation of the transformation of species by slow and gradual mutations are, at present, difficult to acceptable. A property that hasn't had time to assert itself, that It only exists in an embryonic state, it is very unlikely to To attain the adult state: often it is no more than a obstacle in the struggle for life, and, for this very circumstance, it is doomed to disappear. How could he, in these conditions, to develop, phase by phase, that constituted totality for a whole new being?"
This is the question that has been asked formulates a biologist like Heinrich Schirmbeck.
However, and based on the results provided by Anthropology, puts beyond doubt that man,
"An element of Nature, it has a biological past whose roots are rooted in a set of preliminary animal forms."
At the same time, other sages at the same time Stumbling upon the impossibility of explaining genesis evolutionarily of man, they have not hesitated to take a detour to save the obstacle, in isolating man from the rest of the universe and in isolating man from the rest of the universe. From the outset, to attribute to it a future of its own. Thus, Edgar Dacqué, instead of considering man as the most recent form of of a long evolution, he claims to be the "first-born" of the creation, the center of which it occupies. According to Dacqué, man would be the being first conceived in the course of all time, and all Creation would have proliferated around this initial model.
Our hypothesis seems, in relation to the former, a little less Fantastic. It presupposes a stable way of life, which appears and disappears according to whether or not the necessary conditions coincide, which are It manifests, becomes extinct, and reappears in the course of time. Is this a "true utopian delirium," like Dacqué's? In everything In view of the fact that the course of "human" time has become It continues unceasingly before our eyes as the anthropological research, we have a perfect right to search explanations other than those of evolutionism.
In 1856, when the first fragments of the skeleton of! Neanderthals, there was no shortage of experts who declare that man did not go back to such remote times, and that They were the remains of a savage or an idiot. But, for the past few years, In the last century, remains of fossilized men and ape-men, without it being easy, in the face of forms, sometimes indecipherable, sometimes human, to establish filiations and Trace a family tree.
The Neanderthal, who carved the fine tools from the Mousterian period, which built tombs and communicated with the language of know-how, presented today as a moment in human history (fifty thousand years ago) incomprehensibly suspended in the Night of time. It seems like an aberration, the result of crosses between an infinitely older homo habilis, or a homo sapiens already appeared, and the pithecanthropus, a variety of cross, like the man from Solo, in Java.
Dr. Leakey, who for more than forty years has been performing excavations in East Africa, discovered in Kenya in 1948, vestiges of one of the first links in the chain that could give origin to primates and man, vestiges whose antiquity is estimated to be about forty to twenty-five million years old.
In 1959, the Dr. Leakey discovered the oldest hominid type of the known until then, the zinjantrop australopithecus, which had It was found in Olduvai, Tanzania, 180,000 to 800,000 years ago. In In 1962, he discovered the Kenyan, which dates back to about 100 years. fifty million years and which also seems to be located in the line of hominid ancestors.
In 1963, he thought that a new The discovery made at Olduvai, that of homo habilis, put into question It calls into question all existing theories about the origin of the man.
"The discovery of a creature that exhibited such human-like and lived 1,800,000 years ago "It was a revolution in itself," wrote Madame Yvonne Rebevrol in Le Monde, commenting on the UNESCO Congress. Until then, the line of hominids advanced from the australopithecus to Homo sapiens (i.e., the man of today) who was supposed to have appeared only about 25,000 years ago. years. Evolution was marked by the pithecanthrope, not by the pithecanthropus, later and more evolved than australopithecus, and by Neanderthal man, more primitive than homo sapiens. But behold, a new creature appears, as old as the australopithecines, but which shows striking analogies with homo Sapiens. According to Dr. Leakey, homo habilis is our only ancestor, while the other hominids are nothing more than branches defective companies that had no offspring. The australopithecus, the Pithecanthropus and Homo habilis appeared at the same time, but Only Homo habilis was the starting point of fruitful evolution that led to homo sapiens. It should also be noted that, in different places, but mainly in Great Britain, France, Germany and Hungary, fossil skulls have been found whose characteristics are reminiscent of present-day man, but they come from from very old sites. Recently, at the site of the Omo River (Ethiopia), two very "modern" skulls have been discovered but also very ancient. This dispersion of types is extremely Of course, the evolution of the evolved presupposes a previous dispersion from the trunk, from Homo habilis. (...)
"However, Dr. Leakey is still of the opinion that the man was 'born' in the area comprising East Africa, Arabia and western Africa. India.
In India, a fossil monkey, the Ramapithecus, has been discovered, more but quite similar to the Kenyan, and it has become It also manifests a primitive industry. Mr. Leakey is convinced that systematic excavations in India or in the Arabia would be extraordinarily fruitful, since the East Africa incessantly displays its wealth of fossils. After the Tanzanian and Kenyan deposits, Ethiopia revealed that of the Omo River. The latitude and staggered heights in these regions were extraordinarily favorable to the emergence and The Evolution of Early Hominids. Its volcanic lands are ideal for the preservation of fossils: The more He seeks, the more he finds. Very recently, Mr. Leakey discovered, at Olduval, a skull of homo habilis which appears to be complete or a little less (Le Monde, August 19, 1969). Dr. Leakey showed a tooth found in Kenyan territory, south of the lake Rudolph: This tooth seems to have belonged to a hominid that He lived eight million years ago."
However, Leakey is of the opinion that homo sapiens could only have appeared when he had the opportunity to light a fire, that is to say, "the safety and the peace of mind necessary for the abstract thought." The tools appeared very early, but they did not They determine the passage from pre-man to man.
Man Proper This was born with abstract thinking, the concepts of magic, the religion and art. According to Dr. Leakey, it took a period of considerable time to move from homo habilis to homo sapiens, the antiquity of which would be only about a hundred thousand years old.
This thesis is not supported by anything definitively established. It only marks uncertainties, starting from vague estimates.
This thesis is not supported by anything definitively established. It only marks uncertainties, starting from vague estimates.
The only thing that is certain is that, "the more you search, the more you find." One Homo habilis of several million years. A homo sapiens of a hundred thousand years; and some assumptions constantly called into question judgment, floating in this ocean of time.
But, if they lived Hominids more than eight million years ago, the theory collapses of evolution.
And, if the thinking man has existed for a long time, 100,000 years, we have a logical right to ask ourselves whether it is It is possible to calmly accept the idea that he only acquired lights and power in the last few centuries, that there was only one moment privileged in this long adventure, a moment encompassed in the the last fiftieth part of human time, which in turn arose from the A dark night of eight million years.
And if, as Leakey believes, homo sapiens appears with magic, it is that is, with the attempt to dominate the visible world by means of invisible forces, we can consider our two centuries of technology as one of the forms assumed by the protracted magical quest, among the many that were developed, successfully or without it, in the course of time immemorial. This way of looking at the The question is, in any case, less fantastic than the way in which that presupposes two centuries of revelation in a hundred thousand years of lethargy and, in short, extraordinary racism temporary.
It is curious that we combine with such satisfaction the idea that the The last quin00th part of human time has turned us into lords of all thinking humanity, with the evolutionary idea that It links our ascension to the obscure general process of the living, which It made the reptile come out of its silt, and the blind chemistry that, By adding two small balls to his weak brain, he gave rise to the cerebral hemispheres.
Perhaps it would be useful to the mind, at least to Exercise Mode, Considering Reverse Attitudes: Situating Ourselves less exceptionally in human history and more exceptionally in the history of the living; To think that man could be a stable form, capable of manifesting itself repeatedly, with successes or catastrophes.
This temporary anti-racism and the feeling of that Humanity could be, on Earth and in the Universe, a stable emergency form, an endpoint of the energies, the the expression of the being's eternal effort to manifest itself, could be influencing civilization, society, and morals.
That the Let the humblest man be an object of incalculable value. That the the totality of human time is considered with the greatest predisposition to respect, admiration and amazement. Yes We rummage through the storehouse of unadmitted doctrines, We find a fairly suitable one: humanism.