Chapter 6
The Protoplasmic Venture

“Humans can’t live without seeking to describe and explain the universe.” (Sir
Isaiah Berlin)

Four Great Etiological Questions
1.
What is the origin of life?
2.
What is the origin of human beings?
3.
What is the origin of matter?
4.
What is the origin of the universe?

Biochemical Evolution
• Alexander Oparin (1922)
• J.B.S. Haldane (1928)
• Stanley Miller (1953)
• First laboratory synthesis of a complete mammalian gene (1975)
• Cyril Ponnamperuma
• George Wald (1957)

The Beginning of Life on Earth
• When did life begin on the planet Earth?
• Fossil records indicate that life developed sometime between 4.5 billion years ago and 3.5 billion years ago
• During that billion-year period, some wonderful and incredible events were taking place

Earth’s Life-Forms: An Inventory
• “Hot thin soup”
• 1.5 million species of living organisms
• 10,000 new species added annually
• Estimated 10 million species of organisms exist
• Estimated 10 billion species produced by evolution on Earth since planet began

Biogenetic Theories
• Panspermia
• Spontaneous generation
• Hylozoism
• Creationism
• Vitalism

Can “Life” Be Defined?
• What is “life”?
• Self-replication
• Mutability
• Motility
• Metabolism
• Growth
• Irritability
• Dynamic Equilibrium

Evolution as a Field Theory
• Darwin’s genius: 1) his ability to bring a synoptic mind to these disparate elements and fit them all together; 2) his meticulous gathering of scientific data to support his theory

Three Basic Processes of evolution
1.
The laws of heredity
2.
Mutations produced by changes in the
DNA code
3.
The dynamics of natural selection

Evolution Based on Five
Observations
1.
Species produce like species
2.
There is an enormous excess of reproductive material
3.
Individual variations in genetic characteristics
4.
Competition for food and living room
5.
Environmental niches are dynamic

Evolution and Meaning
• The Doctrine of Progress
• Nietzsche, The main goal of history is to produce a man who has such greatness that he would be a new species
• Bergson, Vital Life-force

Evolution and Progress
• Natural Selection is an Arms Race
• Evolutionary Convergence
• Epigenetics

A Case of Convergence: The
Eye
• Represents a new worldview for understanding all living things
• Exactly the same structures, functions, and behavioral mechanisms exist everywhere throughout the animal and plant kingdoms
• The eye as an example of convergence
• Eyes have continued to evolve along independent lines of development
• No individual organism should be seen as a stage on the way “up” to something else

Suffering and the Arms Race
• “Terrible but true, the suffering among wild animals is so appalling that sensitive souls would best not contemplate it.” --
Richard Dawkins
• What is the meaning of human suffering?
• Traditional Problem of Evil

Philosophic Implications
• “Do we understand how life evolves”?
• What does it mean to say this?
• Chemical biogenesis as first-magnitude field theory
• Ethical considerations
• Cosmic implications

Philosophic Problems
• Irreversibility
• Convergence

Charles Darwin
The Grandest Synthesis
• Darwin saw the key to the puzzle: the mechanism of evolvement is the “struggle for survival” and the “survival of the fittest.”
• Under the perpetual threat of starvation and annihilation in the harsh environment, all species of life on Earth continually struggle for survival, and only the fittest survive.

Reflections…
• What do you think are the most farreaching philosophic implications of the biochemical theory of the origin of life? Do you feel a sense of relief that foundations have been laid for an empirical answer to this question?

Humans
• This chapter describes the evolutionary context for reflecting on the human situation and suggests that evolution has now taken a new and unpredictable turn.

The Sculptor-Gods
Pottery as a universal skill
Shards of pottery have been found wherever people have lived
Clay figurines were made for fun
Creation myths based on sculpting clay
Examples: Tu, Titi and Tame; Ewe-speaking tribes of Togo, West Africa; Toradjas of the Celebes;
Hebrew account of creation; Shilluks of White
Nile

The Story of Human Origins
• Homo Sapiens – “wise humans”
• Homo Habilis
• Australopithecus (Lucy)
• Homo erectus

Update: Human Origins
• Sahelanthropus tchadensis
• Australopithecus afarensis
• Australopithecus africanus
• Ardipithecus ramidus
• Homo ergaster
• Homo floresiensis
• Homo habilis
• Homo erectus
• Homo sapien

Still Trying to Define “Human”
• Physical characteristics
• Ethical feelings
• Esthetic feelings
• Religious feelings
• Soul-essence ( psyche )

The Killer-Ape Theory
• Killing “on principle”…inherited or learned?
• Leakey and Lorenz and the killer-ape theory
• Montagu’s dispute of the theory
• How do we humans differ from our animal kin regarding feelings of aggression?
• What distinguishes humans from other animals?

The Immense Journey
• Rapid progress in science/technology has radically altered the selective function of the environment
• Destruction of our natural environment

Soren Kierkegaard
“That Individual”
• Now called Existentialism, it is a philosophy of the experiencing human self, and Kierkegaard’s life is the story of one man’s search for what it means to be human
• “The thing is to understand myself…to see what
God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.”

Reflections…
• Make an attempt to define “human.” How would you describe “essential man”? What are some of the problems we must face in developing a definition?

Earth
• This chapter is a meditation on humankind’s relationship to other living creatures on Earth and to the Earth itself.
It raises the question of who has a right to control and exploit other species.

Our Place in the Scheme of Things
• General evolution
• Human evolution
• Cultural evolution
• 3 stages: 1) Parent-child relationship; 2) man as conqueror; 3) protective feeling toward nature

An Ecospheric Ethic
• Who has a right to do what to whom and why?
• The notion of “right”
• Professor Sessions assessment
• Rachel Carson’s attack
• St. Francis of Assisi
• Professor Charles Hartshorne’s “Ultimate Value”
• Professor John Cobb’s “intrinsic criteria”

Coexistence - In Life & Death
• Physical/ecological relationships
• Psychological/ecological relationships
• Why do we kill for pleasure?
• Human sacrifice
• Anthropomorphizing animal kin: 1) we can’t help it; 2) we want other creatures to like us

“No Man Is An Island”
• Each is a part of the whole, subject to the same physical forces that move the atoms and the planets
• We are part of an awesome protoplasmic venture

Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for Life
• Reverence for life – “In that principle my life has found a firm footing and a clear path to follow.”

Reflections…
• Think about Schweitzer’s Reverence for
Life – a concept he believed to be “the realistic answer to the realistic question of how man and the world are related to each other.” How do you feel about this all-inclusive ethic?

Future
• This chapter describes several future scenarios, both optimistic and pessimistic

The Theoretical Life
• Practical life ( praktikos bios ) – shortrange goals
(…versus the…)
• Theoretical life ( theoretikos bios ) – long-range goals

Research Into the Future
• Utopias and anti-Utopias
• Futures research: 1) forecasting techniques; 2) world catastrophe; 3) world systems; 4) past frameworks obsolete
• What is the goal of futures research?

1.
A world consciousness
2.
A new ethic in the use of material resources
3.
An attitude toward nature must be developed based on harmony rather than conquest
4.
A sense of identification with future generations

The Futurists & the Future
• No single world-picture, although there is remarkable agreement on many points
• Short-range futurists
• Middle-range futurists
• Long-range futurists
• Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock
• Arthur C. Clarke

A New Kind of Realism
• Based on a more objective assessment of empirical data, this realism attempts to project a variety of scenarios in the hope we can, in time, face them and solve them

The Players
• Sir Fred Hoyle
• Edward O. Wilson
• Robert T. McCall
• Ray Bradbury

Many Futures: A Common Vision
• Today’s world has come unglued, unraveled
• There is a pressing need for a sense of global identity and a shared vision of the future – a reason to exist
• A shared vision of our common future is therefore enormously important

Friedrich Nietzsche
The Glory of Becoming Human
• Nietzsche built on a theory of evolution to reinterpret the history of the human race and to lay foundations for his grand vision of the future of mankind
• “Will to power” as the basic drive
• Ubermensch – “Superman”

The Nietzsche Myth
• Myth: Nietzsche is a bigoted anti-Semite
• Myth: Nietzsche is an advocate of Darwin’s
Evolutionary Theory
• Only after Nietzsche’s death was his philosophy appropriated as official ideology of Nazi apologetics
• The Germans saw themselves as the
“master race”

Reflections…
• Recall the statement that opens this chapter: That we create the past and can also create alternative futures; and that we need both past and future to see ourselves in perspective. How much value is there in this way of looking at ourselves and our place in time?