Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Spirit 122footprint. Not life’s; for there’s still the path when life was not yet.Spirit is the traveler, passes now through the realm of man. We did not createspirit, do not possess it, cannot define it, are but the bearers. We take it from unmournedand forgotten forms, carry it through our span, will pass it on, enlarged or diminished, tothose who follow. Spirit is the voyager, man is the vessel.Spirit creates and spirit destroys. Creation without destruction is not possible,destruction without creation feeds on past creation, reduces form to matter, tends towardstillness. Spirit creates more than it destroys (though not in every season, nor even everyage, hence those meanderings, those turnings back, wherein the longing of matter forstillness triumphs in destruction) and this preponderance of creation makes for the overallsteadiness of course.From primal mist of matter to spiraled galaxies and clockwork solar systems,from molten rock to an earth of air and land and water, from heaviness to lightness to life,sensation to perception, memory to consciousness – man now holds a mirror, spirit seesitself. Within the river currents turn back, eddies whirl. The river itself falters, disappears,emerges, moves on. The general course is the growth of form, increasing awareness,matter to mind consciousness. The harmony of man and nature is to be found incontinuing this journey along its ancient course toward greater freedom and awareness.In these poetic passages, psychiatrist Allen Wheelis portrays he eerie disorienting viewthat modern science has given us of our place in the scheme of things. Many scientists,not to mention humanists, find this a very difficult view to swallow and look for somekind of spiritual essence, perhaps intangible, that would distinguish living beings,particularly humans, from the inanimate rest of the universe. How does anima come fromatoms?Wheelis’s concept of “spirit” is not that sort of essence. It is a way of describingthe seemingly purposeful path of evolution as if there were one guiding force behind it. Ifthere is, it is that which Richard Dawkins in the powerful selection that follows so clearlystates: survival of stable replicators. In his preface Dawkins candidly writes:” We aresurvival