Metaphysical Yada Yada

Continuing with yesterday's meandering stream of thought, it seems our modest crick can flow to, or flee from, the ocean. 

That's a cryptic beginning.

Don't worry. It gets weirder.  

I'm thinking of a book by a metaphysical Darwinian who argued that evolution is like a river that flows uphill, and yet, with no teleological pull. Which is a neat trick, in fact, the greatest trick ever conjured, in that we're only here blogging about it because a river of mud somehow evolved into a torrent of speech.

Poetry fail.

No, I'm being literal. 

How does this defiance of gravity work, exactly? Similar to how one gets rich:

Which sounds like a joke, which it is, but it's no funnier than the story of how the cosmos one day woke up and <yada yada> began blogging about itself:

Life began with simple chemical processes, leading to the formation of self-replicating molecules.

Which reminds me of the famous gag that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind -- in other words, stuff -- in this case, global dominance -- happens. But you can't just yada yada over such a consequential development. Can you?

Over vast periods, through random mutations and gene duplication, organisms became more complex.

Substitute "yada yada" for "over vast periods," and the result is self-reflective and truth-bearing primates. 

As it so happens, my son is taking an introductory psychology class, and was studying last night for today's test. He remarked that he has memorized all the material, even though he has no idea what it means. In other words, he knows the right answers but doesn't understand a thing. 

For example, he knows that a neuron, in a fit of blind electrochemical activity, spits a neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft, which is in turn sucked up by its neighboring neuron, but how one gets from this to conscious awareness he hasn't a clue. I assured him that this is fine, because no one else has a clue either. 

Rather, just remember the formula: electro-neurochemical activity <yada yada> consciousness. Repeat until, in a fit of absence of mind, you end up with a Ph.D. in psychology. That's how it was for me. I well remember having to memorize all those names for brain parts --amygdala, hypothalamus, prefrontal cortex, etc. -- but naming things isn't the same as understanding them.

Simple nervous systems evolved to allow organisms to respond to their environment. These systems gradually <yada yada> became more complex, enabling more sophisticated behaviors.

But as we said in yesterday's post, behavior is one thing, interiority another thing entirely. You can have the longest spatula in the world, but it won't flip the egg without a hand at the other end.

The brain evolved through a series of incremental changes. <Yada yada>, increases in brain size and complexity provided advantages in processing information, learning, and problem-solving. <Yada yada>, the development of the neocortex allowed for higher level thinking in mammals.

Everyone knows this, but the question is, does anyone understand it? Indeed, does anyone understand understanding? Or only know that it happens?  

Changing environments favored organisms with greater cognitive abilities. <Yada yada>, complex social structures drove the evolution of social intelligence. <Yada yada>, these processes provided the raw material for brain evolution.

And here we are. In all of this there is no teleology, because no teleology is permitted:

No Predetermined Goal: 

Evolution is not guided by a predetermined goal or plan. Complex brains emerged as a result of the accumulation of random variations and natural selection.

Which is to say, purely as a result of random yada yada.

As we've been saying in recent weeks, metaphysical Darwinism explains everything so long as you grant it One Free Miracle, or in this case two: the yada yada between simple chemical processes and the formation of self-replicating molecules; and the equally astounding yada yada between simple nervous systems and the development of higher level thinking in human beings.

That's a whole lotta yada yada, but there it is: the evolutionary river that flows uphill. Except to say there can be no up or down in this worldview, rather, only horizontal shuffling. But where there's an up there's -- say its name -- a telos. 

Surely we can come up with a better why. In order to find it, we have to widen our view to a truly cosmic  perspective, since evolution obviously occurs in this particular cosmos. What we need to ask -- and not yada yada over -- is What must the cosmos be like in order for living and self-conscious beings to exist in it? For not just any cosmos will do, rather, only one with specific qualities.

In fact, you could just say qualities, full stop, in the sense that no amount of quantity results in the merest quality. For example, no amount of randomly generated notes results in the aesthetic quality of the symphony. 

Now, we all know that God is one. Some of us believe he is also three, but neither of these terms can be understood quantitatively, for God is not a number, no matter how large. Rather, both God's oneness and threeness are qualities. 

What kind of qualities? Well, for starters, they speak to a dynamic unity in God, as opposed to a static numerical unity. 

Again, God is an event, not a thing. We can even say that God has a telos, only it is internally generated, in that the Son is the eternal telos of the Father, and vice versa. Therefore, when this Trinity creates, we shouldn't be surprised that the resultant creation resembles its triune source. It is everywhere stamped with dynamic wholeness and celestial attraction, AKA teleology. 

A major principle is that this is, and must be, a relational cosmos, or the evolutionary process can never get off the horizontal goround. What this means is that it is a holistic cosmos wherein part is related to whole before we have organisms with part-whole relations, and before we have human beings capable of knowing the whole durn cosmos.

What I want to say is When a part so ptee does duty for the holos we soon grow to use of an allforabit, but Joyce already said it.

More down to earth is Heisenberg's comment that "The same organizing forces that have created nature in all its forms, are responsible for the structure of our soul, and likewise our capacity to think." 

Still, we don't want to yada yada over anything before declaring victory, so to be continued...