Observed in a certain aspect (the truly scientific aspect, in my view), the human social phenomenon affords evidence that the evolution of Life on earth, far from having come to a stop, is on the contrary now entering a new phase.
By virtue of his acquirement of the gift of individual reflection, Man displays the extraordinary quality of being able to totalize himself collectively upon himself, thus extending on a planetary scale the fundamental vital process which causes matter, under certain conditions, to organize itself in elements which are ever more complex physically, and psychologically ever more centered. Thus (provided always that we accept the organic nature of the social phenomenon) we see being woven around us, beyond any unity hitherto acknowledged or even foreseen by biology, the network and consciousness of a Noösphere.
Through the collective work of science, he feels himself to be on the verge of acquiring the power of physiochemical control of the operations of heredity and morphogenesis in the depths of his own being. So we may say that since by a sort of chain-reaction consciousness, itself born of complexity, finds itself in a position to bring about “artificially” a further increase of complexity in its material dwelling (thus engendering or liberating a further growth of reflective consciousness, and so on…) the terrestrial evolution of Life, following its main axis of hominization, is not only completely altering the scale of its creations but is also entering an “explosive” phase of an entirely new kind.
Any human tendency to fragmentation, regardless of its extent and origin, is clearly of an order of magnitude inferior to the planetary forces (geographic, demographic, economic and psychic) whose constantly and naturally growing pressure must sooner or later compel us willy-nilly to unite in some form of human whole organized on the basis of human solidarity.
Hominization is scarcely conceivable (seen from the point at which we find ourselves) except as terminating, whatever road it follows, in a point of collective reflexion where Mankind, having achieved within and around itself, technically and intellectually, the greatest possible coherence will find itself raised to a higher critical point—one of instability, tension, interpenetration and metamorphosis—coinciding, it would seem, with what for us are the phenomenal limits of the world.
It is very certain that matter on Earth is involved in a process which causes it to arrange itself, starting with relatively simple elements, in ever larger and more complex units. But how are we to account, for the origin and growth of this process of arrangement? Does it proceed from within, being conceived and developed further by psychic forces analogous to our human power of invention? Or does it simply come from outside, through the automatic selection of the more stable (or progressive) groupings among the immense number of combinations fortuitously and incessantly produced in Nature?
That Man displays powers of invention in the creative use of his reflective faculties, that is to say, acts in accordance with an inner sense of purpose, is so apparent that no one has ever thought of denying it.
Regard the process of hominization, with all its accoutrement of social and “artificial” arrangements, as a prolongation and organic continuation of the grand cosmic phenomenon of the vitalization of matter.
It is only through reflective purposiveness, slowly acquired, that Life can henceforth hope to raise itself yet higher, by autoevolution, in the twofold direction of greater complexity and fuller consciousness. Indeed, from now on all the hopes and future of the Universe are dependent on the propitious and stubborn working of this scarcely born power of internal “self-arrangement.”
After a short period of untroubled proprietorship every new source of energy, as we know by experience, gives rise to two related problems: that of the limitations to be imposed on it and that of its preservation. The new force must not be allowed to get out of hand or to exhaust itself. The same applies (although we have thought less about it) to the source of energy abruptly released by Nature through Man, which I have called the “force of purposive thinking.”
Clearly whatever we may seek to build will crumble and turn to dust if the workmen are without conscience and professional integrity.
In one way or another Consciousness, the flowering of Complexity, must survive the ultimate dissolution from which nothing can save the corporeal and planetary stem which bears it. From the moment when Evolution begins to think itself it can no longer live with or further itself except by knowing itself to be irreversible—that is to say, immortal.
It may be said that the historic rivalry of mysticisms and creeds, each striving to conquer the earth, represents nothing but a prolonged groping of the human soul in search of a conception of the world in which it will feel itself to be more sensitized, more free and active.
The complexification of Matter, at the point it has now reached in the human social organism, is physically incapable of advancing further if the Mind does not play a part, not only with its capacity for technical organization, but with its purposive and affective powers of arrangement and inner tension.
The factor consciousness, which for a long time perhaps represented no more than a secondary and accessory effect in Nature, a simple superstructure of the factor complexity, is finally becoming individualized in the form of an autonomous spiritual principle.
In hominized evolution the Physical and the Psychic, the Without and the Within, Matter and Consciousness, are all found to be functionally linked in one tangible process.
Gone, too (at least virtually and in aspiration), is the infernal circle of egocentrism, meaning the isolation, in some sort ontological, which prohibits our escape from self to share the point of view even of those we love best: as though the Universe were composed of as many fragmentary universes, repelling each other, as the sum total of the centers of consciousness which it embraces.
We must assume that under the rapidly mounting pressures forcing them upon one another the human molecules will ultimately succeed in finding their way through the critical barrier of mutual repulsion to enter the inner zone of attractive.
Whereas the Biosphere in its essence is complexity linked but divergent and diffused, the Noösphere combines in itself the properties of a planetary zone (or sphere) and those of a sort of higher individuality endowed with something in the nature of a superconsciousness.
“Noödynamic”: the dynamic of spiritual energy, dynamic of the Spirit. I have ventured to use this neologism because it is clear, expressive and convenient; also because it affirms the necessity for incorporating human psychism, Thought, in a true “physics” of the World.