The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

in the twentieth century, despite the change in terminology have remained basically the
same. But do we have to choose between these two options, which say either that mind
arises as a function of matter in the course of a meaningless evolution, or that mind or
spirit or divine will preceded matter and nature. Or do we simply accept that we probably
will not ever know? It is surprising how many leading thinkers on the human mind
come to this conclusion, arguing that the mind is a chance product of natural selection
which, because it evolved to optimize our survival chances, simply does not have the
capacity to grasp the ultimate questions of meaning, consciousness, sentience, and so
forth. 16 The nature of how the brain works may limit our ultimate ability to know certain
things. “Humanly thinkable thoughts are closed under the workings of our cognitive
faculties, and may never embrace the solutions to the mysteries of philosophy,” is how
Steven Pinker summarized this view. 17
Is there not an option of seeing mind and matter, spirit and nature, as an
integrated whole, sharing a common origin and evolution? Spirit and nature are not
necessarily mutually exclusive explanations for life on earth. We can also consider spirit
and matter as two different modalities of life, mutually interpenetrating, mutually
interdependent, mutually causal, each both cause and effect of the other in dynamic
exchange. We could see spirit and nature as an integrated meaningful whole. Once this
would have been obvious. Now it is anything but. We have no idea anymore what spirit
is, which is why it is so easy to ignore it, remove it from the equation. Our explanations
no longer require it so, therefore, it does not exist.
Thus with the loss of the sense that we are integrated within a meaningful whole,
we have also largely lost our intuitive experience of the spirit. I will be talking a lot about
the spirit in the chapters to come. For the time being allow me to simply define spirit as
the quality in the living world which integrates and imbues the whole with meaning.
Spirit is an active principle, a reality, which we can learn to recognize in our thinking
and perceive in its manifestations. Step by historical step, science has stripped what
we know of the world of its higher or spiritual meaning and replaced it with causal
explanations which are devoid of objective meaning. What meaning remains is deemed
personal, subjective and relative. The fall of a ripe lemon from a tree can be explained by a
combination of causes involving gravity and the nature of plant substance. It has meaning
to me only if I notice it, gather it up and make myself a lemon juice. The existence of
a blue planet spinning through space is equally empty of meaning, at least in terms of
reductionist scientific thinking.
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16
Among those expressing such views are E.O. Wilson, with long term hopes for solving most
of the questions, Steven Pinker in How the Mind Works, Daniel Dennett in Darwin’s Dangerous
Idea, Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, Matt Ridley in The Origins of Virtue.
17
Pinker, 1997, p565.
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