Creative Evolution Overview

This is a brief summary as at 20 March 2002.

1. The creation of the universe is a gradual evolutionary process spanning a giant staircase of levels which leads from the simplest phenomena to the most complex. (More)


2. Evolution resembles a game of Snakes and Ladders: it has a direction of progress, creative leaps up a level and disastrous setbacks down a level, and players who are hostages to fortune.


3. Just as creative evolution on the broadest scale consists of a number of distinct stages, biological evolution is itself composed of a number of smaller steps.


4. The evolutionary universe has the same kind of intelligence as a Snakes and Ladders board: one built into its structure from the outset.


5. Human history is meaningful because it is part of the creative evolutionary growth of the universe.


6. Human history is itself evolutionary in character and is played out on an ordered hierarchy of creative levels.


7. Thanks to industrial capitalism, space-age technology and the cultural drive to conquer new territories, humanity now has the power to spread life from one world to many.


8. The immediate practical reasons why human civilisation will colonise space are for growth, security and inspiration.


9. The values which space colonisation will promote are liberal, rational, cosmopolitan and progressive. They will evolve as society evolves.


10. In a liberal, rational, cosmopolitan and progressive society the religious moral universe of good versus evil is replaced by the evolutionary one of progress versus regress.


11. Human progress is one, it is synergic and decentralised: in the long run, advances in the technological, political, ethical and cultural realms tend to reinforce each other.


12. We cannot tell whether there exist limits to growth, or to progress.


13. Progress cannot be made problem-free in advance; new technologies cannot be made safe in advance.


14. Progress has a yet more subtle aspect which is so hard to grasp and resistant to measurement that its long-term effect is seldom considered: this is the expansion of conscious awareness.


15. The identification of progress with increasing consciousness has a moral implication: moral systems which value respect for others and compassion in the face of suffering are clearly progressive, whereas those that advocate indifference and cruelty are clearly regressive.