When Bill Gates recently told The Observer that artificial intelligence represents an “evolutionary event”, his words attracted considerable attention. And rightly so. But I couldn’t help smiling. Gates is describing something remarkably close to a vision first developed by a French Jesuit priest some eighty years ago.
In 1977, as a twenty-year-old student immersed in the mechanics of vertebrate evolution, I came across a book that fundamentally changed how I understood the world: The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Teilhard was both a distinguished palaeontologist and a Jesuit priest. His ideas were so radical that the Catholic Church refused him permission to publish his major philosophical works during his lifetime. The Phenomenon of Man, written largely during the 1930s and 1940s, was finally published in French in 1955, the year he died.
The English edition appeared in 1959, with an enthusiastic introduction by Sir Julian Huxley, the evolutionary biologist, secular humanist and first Director-General of UNESCO. Despite their very different religious convictions, the two men shared a remarkable vision of humanity’s evolutionary future. Huxley was also an early champion of transhumanism, the idea that humanity might consciously transcend its present limitations.
What captivated me about Teilhard was the extraordinary sweep of his thinking. He saw evolution not simply as the biological process I was studying, but as something far greater: a continuous unfolding from simple matter to increasing complexity and consciousness.
First came atoms, then molecules, then living cells, increasingly complex organisms and, eventually, the emergence of reflective human consciousness.
But Teilhard believed evolution didn’t stop there.
He proposed that humanity was entering a new evolutionary phase in which the development of ideas, knowledge and collective consciousness would become increasingly important. He called this emerging sphere of interconnected human thought the noosphere — a new layer of consciousness enveloping the Earth, just as the biosphere is the layer of life.
Writing decades before the internet, Teilhard imagined humanity becoming progressively more interconnected, with technology helping to create something resembling a global network of thought.
He wasn’t predicting ChatGPT or the internet in any literal technological sense. But the resemblance between his noosphere and our emerging world of digital networks and artificial intelligence is extraordinary.
For Teilhard, this wasn’t simply technological progress. It was evolution continuing through a new medium: consciousness itself. And he believed this process would ultimately lead towards what he called the Omega Point, a final convergence of consciousness and unity with God.
One doesn’t have to share his Christian theology to find the evolutionary argument fascinating.
Indeed, that is what struck me most strongly in 1977. Here was a scientist who had spent his life studying the fossil record, yet saw humanity not as the culmination of evolution but as a transitional stage in something much larger.
Nearly fifty years later, with artificial intelligence beginning to transform how we think, communicate and create knowledge, that idea seems more relevant than ever.
Of course, there is an important question Teilhard could not answer, and which confronts us rather urgently today: if evolution is now proceeding through intelligence and technology, where is it taking us — and who, if anyone, is directing it?
Over the years, I have returned repeatedly to Teilhard’s ideas, exploring the connections between evolution, consciousness, theology and technology. Bill Gates’s recent remarks prompted me to bring together some of those earlier reflections.
I have found resonance with his ideas from scientists and thinkers including for instance Carl Jung, Albert Einstein, Philip Goff and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This has led me to a belief in the one-ness of consciousness within creation, in purpose behind evolution and in love as the driving force behind it.
The posts below are a selection from the past 15 years of my exploration of different aspects of a question that first fascinated me as a student nearly fifty years ago.
Evolution is one of the best-supported ideas in science. The question is not whether evolution happens, but whether the familiar story of life as a ruthless contest among selfish genes is enough.
Over the past fifty years, discoveries in palaeontology, genetics, microbiology, and ecology have revealed a richer picture. Life does not evolve only through competition; it is also shaped by cooperation, partnership, environmental influence, and integration.
This matters far beyond biology. As humanity enters the age of artificial intelligence, the evolutionary story we carry shapes the future we imagine. If life is only a struggle for dominance, AI looks like a rival, perhaps even an existential threat. But if evolution also works through cooperation, integration, and symbiosis, another possibility opens: humans and intelligent machines may be able to co-evolve. We may be about to enter a golden age.
Beyond the Selfish Gene
What most people think of as Darwinism is in fact a subset: Neo-Darwinism. This concept arose in the first half of the last century, in a milieu of reductionism, materialism, and competition. It presents evolution as a process driven by random genetic variation and natural selection. In this system, genes change by chance; bodies, or phenotypes, express those genes; and the organisms best suited to their environment leave more descendants.
This is a powerful model, and it explains a great deal. But as a complete account of evolution it is too narrow. It leaves insufficient room for other forces that can organise, coordinate, and transform living systems.
The twentieth century often treated genes as the commanding centre of life. Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, gave this view its most public expression. Its central metaphor was simple and brilliant: organisms could be seen as vehicles built by genes to help those genes survive and replicate.
For many readers, including myself at the time, thisseemed blindingly obvious. It seemed to offer a clean, elegant explanation of life’s complexity. But metaphors can illuminate and distort at the same time. The selfish-gene idea made competition vivid, but it also encouraged a view of nature in which cooperation, relationship, environment, and consciousness were pushed to the margins.
The accumulation of evidence over the past 50 years has shown that view to be incomplete, and at times misleading.
A Personal Perspective
When I studied Vertebrate Evolution at Cambridge in the mid-1970s, I remember the subject feeling very different from the physical sciences. Physics and chemistry seemed to rest on repeatable experiments. Evolutionary palaeontology, by contrast, involved reconstructing vanished worlds from fragmentary evidence: bones, strata, fossils, and the stories we built around them.
That made the field intellectually exciting and creative, because it allowed for interpretation. The fossil record is real, but our reading of it is never free from assumptions.
When Dawkins published The Selfish Gene, I was initially an admirer. Like many others, I saw sociobiology as a thrilling leap forward. I even mistook it, at first, for something close to the evolutionary vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit thinker who saw evolution as moving toward greater complexity and consciousness.
Only later did I see the difference more clearly. Dawkins offered a gene-centred account of evolution grounded in material reductionism. Teilhard offered a vision of evolution as an unfolding movement toward integration, in which the process itself could act upon ideas as well as physical bodies. Teilhard represented this as a movement from the biosphere into the noosphere.
We do not have to accept every part of Teilhard’s vision to recognise that the gene-centred model is incomplete. The broader thrust of his thought—the movement toward greater integration—now looks less fanciful than it once did. Much of his writing in the 1950s anticipated the rise of the internet and of a planet-wide layer of transhuman intelligence.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The Fossil Record: Change Often Comes in Bursts
A simple version of Neo-Darwinism imagines evolution as slow, steady, and gradual: tiny changes accumulating through countless generations.
Sometimes this happens. But the fossil record also reveals long periods of stability interrupted by comparatively rapid change.
Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge called it “punctuated equilibrium”. Species often appear in the geological record, remain relatively stable for long periods, and then change more rapidly during shorter bursts of evolutionary transition.
This does not mean that Darwin was wrong. It means that evolution is not always the smooth, gradual process many people imagine. Stability can give way to rapid transition, often under environmental pressure, ecological opportunity, or wider shifts in living systems. Some innovations also arise through hybridisation or symbiosis, where separate elements combine to create something new.
The history of life looks less like a straight line and more like a tree shaped by sudden growth, pruning, branching, and transformation.
Beyond Competition
The phrase “survival of the fittest” is often misunderstood. It is commonly taken to mean that nature is simply a war of all against all, with the strongest defeating the weakest.
But “fitness” in evolutionary biology means reproductive success in a particular environment. Sometimes that success comes through competition. But often it comes through cooperation.
Once fitness is understood in that broader sense, the narrower story begins to open up.
At the Boundary: Competition or Cooperation?
Peter Kropotkin argued in Mutual Aid that cooperation was not a sentimental exception to evolution, but one of its central forces. Konstantin Mereschkowsky proposed that complex life arose not only through competition, but through symbiosis: different organisms joining together and becoming something new.
For much of the twentieth century, such ideas sat outside the mainstream. Today, they look increasingly important.
Epigenetics: Genes Are Not Simple Switches
Epigenetics has changed how we think about inheritance.
DNA is often described as a blueprint, but this is misleading. A better image might be a script, a library, or a musical score. The same genetic material can be “played” differently depending on context.
Epigenetics studies the chemical tags and regulatory processes that influence whether particular genes are switched on or off. Diet, stress, toxins, behaviour, and environment can all affect gene expression. In some cases, these effects may even influence later generations.
This does not mean Lamarck was simply right in the old sense that a giraffe stretches its neck and passes on a longer neck to its offspring. But it does mean he was not entirely foolish to suspect that life experience and heredity might be connected.
The boundary between organism and environment is therefore more porous than classical theory allowed. Even the separation of species and individuals has begun to look less absolute.
Symbiosis: Life through Partnership
One of the most striking examples of cooperation is found inside our own cells.
Mitochondria, the tiny structures that help power our bodies, were once free-living bacteria. At some point in deep evolutionary time, they entered into partnership with other cells. That partnership became so successful that it helped make complex life possible.
This is the theory of endosymbiosis, developed most famously by Lynn Margulis. It shows that evolution is not only about one lineage defeating another. Often life advances in jumps when formerly separate organisms merge, collaborate, and become inseparable.
The same principle applies at larger scales. Human beings are not solitary biological units. We are ecosystems. Our bodies contain trillions of microbes that help digest food, regulate immunity, and influence health. The “individual” is therefore not as individual as it appears.
We are, in a literal biological sense, communities.
Cooperation as an Evolutionary Force
Cooperation appears throughout life.
Bacteria communicate chemically through quorum sensing. Fungi form underground networks with plants. Social insects build colonies that behave almost like superorganisms. Wolves hunt in packs. Human beings survive through language, culture, care, teaching, and shared memory.
Competition matters. But cooperation matters just as much. Often, the most successful systems are not the most selfish, but the most intelligently integrated.
This is why the selfish-gene metaphor now appears limited, even where it remains useful.
Evolution is therefore not merely a story of conflict. It is also a story of relationship.
Why Old Ideas Persist
Scientific ideas do not disappear the moment new evidence appears. They become embedded in textbooks, careers, institutions, public reputations, and cultural worldviews.
The gene-centred view of evolution became influential not only because it explained important facts, but because it offered a simple and compelling story. It fitted comfortably with a wider modern habit of seeing reality as mechanical, competitive, and material.
But good science must remain open to revision. When new evidence expands the picture, the theory must expand too.
This is the promise of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. It does not throw Darwin away. Instead, it places natural selection within a wider framework that includes development, environment, epigenetics, niche construction, cooperation, culture, and symbiosis.
In other words, the question is not whether Darwin mattered. Of course he did. The question is whether Darwinism, in its narrowest twentieth-century form, is enough.
Increasingly, it is not.
Why This Matters for Artificial Intelligence
This wider view matters now because artificial intelligence forces us to ask what kind of evolutionary story we believe we are living inside.
If life is fundamentally a competition among self-interested replicators, then AI looks like the next rival: faster, more connected, more rational, and perhaps ultimately dominant.
But if evolution also works through cooperation and symbiosis, then a different future becomes imaginable.
Human beings have always evolved with tools. Fire, language, writing, agriculture, cities, printing, electricity, and the internet all changed what we are. They did not merely extend human power; they altered human consciousness.
AI may be another such threshold.
The question is whether we approach it as enemy, servant, or partner. A purely competitive model pushes us toward fear: either we control the machine, or the machine controls us. A symbiotic model asks something deeper: how might human intelligence and artificial intelligence develop together in ways that enlarge both?
This is not a naïve optimism. AI carries real risks. Power, surveillance, inequality, dependency, and misuse are serious dangers. But fear alone is not a sufficient philosophy. We need a richer imagination.
Biology suggests that the future may not belong simply to the strongest competitor. It may belong to the most creative partnerships.
Toward a Larger Understanding of Life
The old image of the isolated individual is breaking down. Biology shows us organisms shaped by environments, genes regulated by experience, bodies composed of microbial partnerships, and species embedded in ecosystems.
We are not sealed egos moving through a dead mechanical universe. We are relational beings, formed by ancestry, community, ecology, technology, and consciousness.
That insight changes how we think about AI. Rather than seeing artificial intelligence only as an alien competitor, we might understand it as part of a larger evolutionary process: the emergence of new forms of connection, memory, and mind.
This does not require every reader to accept a religious interpretation. But it does invite a larger question: what if evolution is not only the history of competition, but also the history of separated things learning to belong to one another?
Teilhard de Chardin imagined evolution moving toward an Omega Point: a final convergence of consciousness. Others may describe the same intuition in secular language, as the gradual integration of life, intelligence, and awareness.
For me, that ultimate unity of consciousness is what I call God.
Whatever language we use, the lesson is the same. The future of life may depend less on selfishness than on symbiosis; less on domination than on relationship; less on the isolated gene than on the creative whole.
The Creative Whole
References & Notes
1. La Mettrie, J. O. de (1747). L’Homme Machine (Man a Machine). A foundational text of mechanistic materialism arguing that human mental processes are entirely physical and mechanical.
2. Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press. Formulated the gene-centred view of evolution and sociobiology.
3. Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1955). The Phenomenon of Man. Harper & Row. Proposed that evolution is an ascending process leading toward increasing complexity and consciousness.
4. Eldredge, N., & Gould, S. J. (1972). “Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism.” In T. J. M. Schopf (Ed.), Models in Paleobiology(pp. 82–115). Freeman, Cooper & Co.
5. McShea, D. W., & Simpson, C. (2011). “The drive toward complexity in evolution.” Evolutionary Biology, 38(1), 78–94.
6. Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. John Murray.
7. Lamarck, J.-B. (1809). Philosophie Zoologique. Formulated an early theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics.
8. Kropotkin, P. (1902). Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Heinemann. Argued that mutual support and cooperation play a major role in evolutionary success.
9. Mereschkowsky, K. (1905). “Über Natur und Ursprung der Chromatophoren imPflanzenreiche.” Biologisches Centralblatt, 25, 593–604. An early formal hypothesis of symbiogenesis.
10. Jablonka, E., & Lamb, M. J. (2005). Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. MIT Press.
11. Margulis, L. (1970). Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. Yale University Press. Developed the theory that eukaryotic organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts originated through bacterial endosymbiosis.
12. Zilber-Rosenberg, I., & Rosenberg, E. (2008). “Role of microorganisms in the evolution of animals and plants: the hologenome theory of evolution.” FEMS Microbiology Reviews, 32(5), 723–735.
13. Laland, K. N., Uller, T., Feldman, M. W., Sterelny, K., Müller, G. B., Moczek, A., Jablonka, E., & Wray, G. A. (2014). “Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Yes, urgently.” Nature, 514(7521), 161–164.
14. Imanishi, K. (1941 / English translation 2002). The World of Living Things (Seibutsu no Sekai). Routledge. Introduced habitat segregation, or sumiwake, and a holistic view of ecological coexistence.
15. Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1964). The Future of Man. Harper & Row. Developed the concept of the Omega Point as a convergence of evolutionary and spiritual development.
“Meaning is the essential feature of consciousness…” David Bohm
The first question for me is this: “Is there meaning?” This is, of course, just another way of phrasing “Why?” or “Is there purpose at all?” Surely this underlies all of living for each of us. Sometimes we confront it; sometimes we avoid it — but it is always there. Since we are inside existence, and have no rational external reference point, there can be no purely rational answer. Personally, though, it seems obvious to me that the answer is yes; but that is, in the end, an article of faith, albeit one underpinned by all of the extraordinary “coincidences” in physics that make life possible.
Let’s then take the existence of meaning as a truth. Where does it lie?
Meaning Beyond the Ego
“The dust inbreathed was a house, the wall, the wainscot, and the mouse” T. S. Eliot
It seems to me that purpose is not to be found in what Freud thought of as the “self” or Ego. This is entirely different from Jung’s definition of Self — which is much more interesting. “I”, that is, all of our “I”s, will dissolve as bodies die. At that point, their molecules will be taken up into infinite new forms, just as the body I currently inhabit is made up of atoms that have been part of infinite others — including all of those I have known: my mother, father, brothers, wife, and so on.
Nor do I believe that meaning lies solely within the material world. In fact, the more science uncovers of the “how” of quantum mechanics, the less concrete materiality really appears.
It seems to me that the frantic search for meaning within things — dialectical materialism — is a dead end, or at least a distraction. On the other hand, the material world must surely be a part of meaning. But part of what?
Meaning as Part of a Whole
“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Part of a whole. All is one. Indeed, that is what “universe” means: one thing. Another way of looking at it could be that meaning is found in process — the flow of matter and energy. Perhaps: “the whole flow of energy and matter.” How, though, do we break that down into something we can get our arms around, or understand?
Maybe another way of looking at it is that the material is part of something else, partnered with… mind? Spirit? Antimatter?
Relation as the Site of Meaning
“The relation to the Thou is direct. No system of ideas, no foreknowledge, and no fancy intervene between I and Thou. The memory itself is transformed, as it plunges out of its isolation into the unity of the whole” Martin Buber
That, for me, is where Martin Buber and David Bohm come in. They each talk about meaning as lying within “relation” or “dialogue”: what lies “between”. Buber’s amazing semi-poetic meditation, I and Thou (Ich und Du), has been transformative for me. I would encourage everyone to read at least the first two pages, where he defines the “primary words” as I-It and I-Thou, as opposed to I, Thou, or It alone.
I therefore have two building blocks in my search. First: there is meaning. Second: the place to look for it is relationship.
Why Two Matters
“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence” William Blake
And that is where number arises for me. If meaning lies in relation, then relation requires more than undivided oneness. It requires distinction, edge, and encounter: something that can meet something other than itself.
My daughter, as a teenager, told me she thought that an incredibly important concept was “boundary”, and I have been assimilating that ever since. Without boundary, nothing can be known. You need the “other” to understand yourself.
I wrote this some years ago.
“From zero to hero, the world is born with the appearance of 1. The archetypal boundary is right there in the change from nothing to all. But one is one, and all alone, and ever more shall be so. From 1 to 2, consciousness is possible: granularity and separation. We can understand existence because we have edge: a within and a without. Quantum mechanics shows that everything exists only as a cloud of possibility — until observed. It is the act of knowing that crystallises reality out of potential. Deliberately to mix language: it is witness that causes wavefunction collapse. It is consciousness that creates reality, and that is only possible when edge is born with the advent of the number 2. Duality appears to be a fundamental property of existence. Energy is the flip side of matter (E=mc²); everything is wave and particle simultaneously. Yin is nothing without yang. Ich and Du embrace, and the world unfolds.”
That is why, for me, the “mystic number” is 2. With it comes a consciousness of existence, and the possibility of relation and dialogue, which Buber and Bohm so eloquently place at the core of meaning.
So I return to the first question: is there meaning? For me, yes. It is not found in the isolated self, nor in material things alone, but in relation. And relation becomes possible only where there is boundary, distinction, and encounter.
What is real? Is there purpose? Are God and Science in opposition?
I want to argue that the answer to these questions lies in the space between – each of us; rather than within matter or within our individual egos. It is within connection rather than the nodes that information and meaning arises. We need to move beyond the sterility of atheism and its opposition to spirituality and seek truth within the links and reflections between traditions of thought. We should also reconsider the insights of thinkers dismissed by logical positivism. Clearly technological innovation has a material facet. It works – though Quantum Mechanics can’t explain how or why. Yet, the internet and self-learning algorithms may in the process of forming a kind of physical nervous system—part of a universe becoming aware of itself. Our imminent, and perhaps immanent, future may reveal that none of us is alone, and that what we see and touch is just one expression of something larger. Perhaps infinitely so. We may – in these particular bodies – be about to discover that we are not separate beings, but have always been part of one another; and of the whole conscious universe.
The Relational Bridge: Relativity, Quantum Physics, Buber and Merleau-Ponty
It is within relationship that we must look for answers—understood simultaneously as relativity, entanglement, embodied phenomenon, and dialogue
Einstein’s Relativity: Space, time, mass, and energy lose their Newtonian status as fixed, absolute background properties. They exist, deform, and take on identity only in relation to observers and other frames of reference.
Buber’s I-Thou: Translates this physical intuition directly into human ontology. An isolated, self-contained object (I-It) is a mechanical abstraction. True existence and genuine encountering occur strictly in the dynamic, unobjectified space between entities.
Bohm’s Implicate Order: Extends quantum entanglement to show that subatomic particles are not separate billiard balls colliding in a void. Instead, what we perceive as separate material objects in the Explicate Order (the classical materialist view) are merely localized, folded ripples in an unbroken, undivided ocean of movement—the Implicate Order.
Merleau-Ponty’s Chaire (The Flesh): Solves the Cartesian divide between body and world through the phenomenology of perception. Merleau-Ponty demonstrates that reality is composed of a continuous, sensible fabric—the Flesh of the World (la chair)—that bridges the visible (physical matter/body) and the invisible (meaning/consciousness). Perception is not a mind analyzing an external object; it is the world perceiving itself through the embodied subject.
Meaning, purpose, and physical properties do not reside inside isolated components; they emerge strictly through interaction.
The 1970s Blindspot & The Dogma of Mechanical Reductionism
I studied evolutionary biology in the 1970s. The years since have demonstrated how little we know; but my goodness we were arrogant. Science had killed the need for God.This was the era of the gene-centered models popularized by Richard Dawkins and E. O. Wilson. They provided mathematical clarity for specific population dynamics, but they suffered from an overarching philosophical mistake: confusing a biological mechanism for the total nature of reality.
The whole basis of thought has evolved (alas Dawkins hasn’t caught up).
2020’s Relational / Panpsychist Model: Intrinsic Experience & Fields link Matter, Life, and Awareness
By reducing human consciousness to an evolutionary illusion generated by “selfish genes,” 1970s sociobiology relied on 19th-century mechanical determinism while ignoring quantum non-locality, panpsychism, systems ecology, and the observer problem.
Teilhard de Chardin, Imanishi, and the AI Substrate
It is a striking irony of modern science that figures dismissed by mainstream atheism paved the way for understanding contemporary technology:
Kinji Imanishi’s Sumiwake: Demonstrates that living ecosystems self-organize through habitat segregation and species co-existence rather than pure Darwinian warfare.
Teilhard de Chardin’s Evolutionary Vector: Traced the cosmic arc from Geosphere to Biosphere to Noosphere (planetary mind) toward an ultimate point of convergence.
Artificial Intelligence as Infrastructure: Machine learning neural networks aggregate, process, and compress collective human thought into an interactive global matrix. AI acts as the physical substrate realizing Teilhard’s Noosphere—a planetary central nervous system.
4. Is Reality Evolving or Is Awareness Emerging?
The distinction between physical evolution and emerging awareness dissolves when viewed through a panpsychist or relational lens:
In classical materialism: Physical matter randomly evolves, and subjective awareness accidentally pops up at the very end. There is possibly no purpose to existence.
In a panpsychist / relational framework: Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Physical evolution is simply awareness structuring itself into higher levels of complexity to reflect upon its own nature. There is most probably purpose to existence.
From subatomic wave-particle duality to ecological interdependence, and from Martin Buber’s human encounters to the global AI network, existence is not a collection of isolated particles fighting for survival. It is an undivided reality waking up to itself. Something that most likely has a purpose and direction.
I am with de Chardin. I speaking personally. I believe that the force that propels evolution is Love. A personal love that sustains us and all-that-is. My enquiry has brought me back to Christianity.
Reading List
1. Classical Evolution, Heredity & Sociobiology
Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species (1859) – The foundational text of modern evolutionary biology and natural selection The Descent of Man (1871) – Extends evolutionary theory and sexual selection directly to human origins and morality.
Alfred Russel Wallace Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection (1889) – Wallace’s comprehensive overview of natural selection, detailing where his views aligned with and diverged from Darwin’s.
Gregor Mendel Experiments in Plant Hybridization (1866) – The foundational paper establishing the discrete physical laws of genetic inheritance.
Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene (1976) – Popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the concept of the meme. The Blind Watchmaker (1986) – A defense of cumulative natural selection against teleological arguments for design. The God Delusion (2006) – The flagship text of “New Atheism,” arguing against supernatural belief from a strictly mechanical evolutionary perspective.
E. O. (Edward O.) Wilson Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) – Synthesized animal behavior and genetics to found sociobiology. On Human Nature (1978) – Applied sociobiological principles to human culture, ethics, and religious behavior.
Robert Trivers Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers (2002) – Collects his groundbreaking 1970s papers on reciprocal altruism, parental investment, and parent-offspring conflict.
Stephen Jay Gould The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002) – Gould’s masterwork critiquing hyper-adaptationism and presenting punctuated equilibrium. Rocks of Ages (1999) – Introduces NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) regarding science and religion.
Richard Lewontin The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment (2000) – A critique of genetic determinism, emphasizing the reciprocal interaction between organisms and their environments.
2. Relational Physics & Quantum Mechanics
Albert Einstein Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916) – Einstein’s accessible explanation of how space, time, mass, and gravity form a relative continuum.
Louis de Broglie Researches on the Quantum Theory (1924 Doctoral Thesis) – The original formulation of wave-particle duality for matter.
Niels Bohr Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (1934) – Collects Bohr’s early writings framing the Copenhagen interpretation and quantum complementarity.
David Bohm Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980) – Outlines the undivided holomovement, connecting quantum entanglement, non-locality, and consciousness. The Undivided Universe (with Basil Hiley, 1993) – An ontological interpretation of quantum theory.
3. Relational Philosophy & Phenomenology
Martin Buber I and Thou (Ich und Du, 1923) – The foundational text on relational ontology, distinguishing I-Thou encounter from I-It objectification.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception (1945) – Demonstrates that consciousness is embodied and rooted in perceptual engagement with the world. The Visible and the Invisible (1964, Published posthumously) – Introduces his ultimate concept of “The Flesh of the World” (la chair).
4. Systems Ecology, Biosphere & Gaia Theory
Kinji Imanishi The World of Living Things (Seibutsu no Sekai, 1941) – The foundation of Japanese ecology, introducing habitat segregation (sumiwake) and species co-existence over individual warfare.
Vladimir I. Vernadsky The Biosphere (1926) – The landmark scientific work demonstrating that living matter is a primary geochemical force transforming Earth.
James Lovelock Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979) – Formulates the hypothesis that Earth acts as a self-regulating super-organism.
Lynn Margulis Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (1998) – Outlines symbiogenesis, arguing that cooperation and cellular fusion (endosymbiosis) drive biological innovation.
5. Mind, Noosphere & Panpsychism
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955) – Traces evolution from the Geosphere through the Biosphere to the Noosphere and the Omega Point. The Future of Man (1964) – Essays exploring global interconnectedness and technological integration.
Édouard Le Roy The Origin of Human Life and the Evolution of Mind (1928) – Early philosophical lectures co-formulating the concept of the Noosphere alongside Vernadsky and Teilhard.
Philip Goff Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (2019) – A defense of panpsychism as the solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023) – Argues for teleology and purpose in the cosmos beyond traditional monotheism or materialist reductionism.
Roger Penrose The Emperor’s New Mind (1989) – Argues that non-computable physics and quantum mechanics are required to explain human consciousness, ruling out classical AI consciousness. Shadows of the Mind (1994) – Expands on Orch-OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) in microtubules alongside Stuart Hameroff.
Rupert Sheldrake A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (1981) – Introduces morphic resonance and non-physical structural fields. The Science Delusion / Science Set Free (2012) – A critique of the ten core dogmas of modern scientific materialism.
7. Artificial Intelligence, Digital Infrastructure & Systems Theory
Alan Turing “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950, Paper in Mind) – Formulates the Turing Test and the foundations of AI philosophy.
Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th Edition, 2020) – The definitive textbook covering classical AI, deep learning, and probabilistic reasoning.
Nick Bostrom Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) – Examines the trajectory toward artificial general intelligence and collective planetary cognition.
Francis Heylighen “Return to the Noosphere: The Emergence of the Global Brain” (2016, Academic Monograph) – Synthesizes digital networks, AI, and systems theory with Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of planetary consciousness.
It feels as if we are approaching a huge change to humanity. To those of us who are children of the 60’s this may just be “the dawning of the age of the Aquarius”. Aquarius . Let the Sunshine In Transformation. I believe so, and argue for that below.
But,
It feels like we’re rushing toward extinction. After all this is what confronts us:
Environmental devastation: A crisis most feel powerless to stop, thwarted by greed, nationalism, and predatory capitalism.
Erosion of community: Natural, face-to-face human connection is increasingly interrupted and mediated by apps and social media.
Spiritual vacuum: Materialism has become our de facto religion, while traditional faiths—which explicitly call for love and forgiveness—are routinely distorted by politicians.
Existential technological risk: Human egotism has already driven leaders to terrible actions, yet a coldly rational, potent AI that cares nothing for the planet could simply extinguish us all.
Yet,
These dangers may simply be the birth pangs of a new stage in the evolution of consciousness—an emergency giving way to glory. Perhaps we are in the throes of an emergence, something akin to the Age of Aquarius!
This is the future that evolutionary biologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin predicted half a century ago. For him, the universe has always been conscious, with matter and spirit acting as the inner and outer layers of reality. He traced this accretion from uncoordinated plasma after the Big Bang, through quarks, atoms, and molecules, driving chemistry toward the birth of life and biological evolution. Self-awareness arrived with Homo sapiens, and with it, the agglomeration of ideas into a web of knowledge no longer strictly bound by biology.
What gives evolution its impetus and purpose? Teilhard believed that the underlying reality is the force of love—what Dylan Thomas called the “green fuse that drives the flower.” It is a love that leads to integration rather than fragmentation and loneliness.
Teilhard would surely have recognized the grave dangers of AI. However, these threats primarily concern the human species within its current physical incarnation. In common with most deep thinkers, he believed in our transcendental coexistence within “all that is.” He saw within evolution the inevitability of consciousness becoming fully aware of itself. At each stage, humanity crosses thresholds: from the physical to the chemical, and from the chemical to the biosphere. We are now crossing into the evolution of pure ideas within the noosphere, leading toward an ultimate, blinding flash of awareness: the realisation of consciousness and God. This is my hope and belief.
This entire discussion is teleological; it speaks to purpose. So much of the modern world is devoted to the physical questions of “How?” rather than “Why?” and “Whither?” To move beyond mere mechanics and ask why we are here naturally connects us to Eastern rather than Western patterns of thought—traditions that have deeply inspired thinkers such as Carl Jung, Martin Buber, David Bohm, and Philip Goff.
Is this teleological view consistent with the determinism of physical theories of the universe, such as Tim Palmer’s Rational Quantum Mechanics and block universe, or Milo Wolff’s Wave Theory? Perhaps by exploring the role of underlying quantum structures and wave mechanics, we might begin to bridge the gap between physical determinism and cosmic purpose—ultimately understanding both the Why and How of existence.
I am probably having a conversation with myself, but it helps to write it down. I’d be delighted if someone were to challenge or add to these inquiries?
The great existentialist philosopher – Martin Buber – speaks about dialogue and distinguishes it from love. I have included some quotes at the end of this note from his 1929 essay “Zwiesprache” (Dialogue) below, together with a short note about Buber and Jesus.
Here is my thought
Genuine dialogue is about meeting, arising from mutual awareness. This can happen even as two stranges glance at each other in passing. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant by “Love thy neighbour as thyself”; that is, become as fully aware of and in sympathy with your neighbour as you are with yourself. This perhaps also applies to Jesus’ second injunction about how we should love God (with all our heart).
Are these two commandments a call to dialogue?; so that we become fully aware of, and turned toward our neighbour. This is something one could then practice, something similar to mindfulness. I have always wondered how you could just conjour up “love” as a feeling, an affect. There are so many of us now who do NOT love ourselves. How then can we ‘love another as ourself”?
Whereas perhaps we can more easily practice becoming fully aware of our neighbour. That might indeed be the road to love; a Love which is the joy that I believe underlies all creation.
As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says
“Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God”.
Buber quotes
Three types of dialogue. In his 1929 essay Buber describes dialogue as genuine meeting with full awareness. He developed this later (I and Thou,1937) into a whole philosophy of relation; where all meaning is contained in therelationshipbetween (zwischen) people and the “other”. Here is the first quote:
“There is genuine dialogue – no matter whether spoken or silent – where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them. There is technical dialogue, which is prompted solely by the need for objective understanding. And there is monologue disguised as dialogue, in which two or more men, meeting in space, speak each with himself in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources.”
Dialogue and love. In the second quote he distinguishes between dialogue and love:
“I know no one in any time who has succeeded in loving every man he met. Even Jesus obviously loved of “sinners” only the loose, lovable sinners, sinners against the Law; not those who were settled and loyal to their inheritance and sinned against him and his message. Yet to the latter as to the former he stood in a direct relation. Dialogic is not be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, and company in with the other, the love remaining with itself – this is called Lucifer”
Buber, Zionism and Jesus. Buber was an intellectual Hasidic Jew. He was a lifelong Zionist, but who strongly disagreed with how the new state was constituted. He thus refused to become the first president of Israel. He “favored a binational state that encompassed and honored both Jewish and Arab ethnicities, and centred on mutual love and respect. He believed that Jesus was the greatest of all Jews and that his message was the flower of judaism. He describes Jesus thus:
“from my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother”
It seems to me that the fundamental issue that haunts each of us is – insecurity. How, then, to deal with that? And it’s worth addressing. In my experience the more secure a person is, then the more listening, creative, compassionate, generous, talented and capable of joy they are. (And happiness is life lived in the expectation of joy). Conversely when we feel insecure we experience withdrawal. We become self-centred with attendant unhappiness and disconnection. Our horizons contract to world as prison. How then does security arise? Where do we find an ability to like in confidence? (Con Fides; with trust). There is abundant evidence that this is determined very early in life by carers – of course normally parents – creating a predictable loving and connected environment in which the child can develop. (Oliver James points out one parent should normally be present full-time for babies and toddlers). The connection to good and evil? In fact are these useful constructs at all.; or simply perceived positive and negative outcomes of random events? Indeed we do need to deal with these concepts before tackling any personification or accretion of these into God and Devil. For me, what resonates is; Firstly science is uncovering deep meaning at the most fundamental level. Experiments on matter at the most microscopic levels shows that existence is an infinite series of possibilities, potential – until observed. It is the act of observation that, in effect, crystallises out this particular existence from the cloud of possibilities. That raises the issue of observation. Surely there must be an “observer” to create this particular reality. Sure enough, our species are the most efficient engines of observation, whether through science or the arts. We each of us spend our life in observation (or as some would call it – witness, some knowledge). Interestingly our gathering of knowledge is escalating in a geometric progression. (Are we approaching Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point”?) It appears to me that at least one of our purposes as humans is to be just this – engines of observation crystallising out existence. That puts the onus on us collectively. WE – life. Does that not change a world view? Good and evil is created as we create existence. Accept that good and evil do exist, as outcomes of our collective path through life. Accept that is is our joint task to work for good effect around us, and do we not at least connect to purpose – rather than trying to live with our eyes tight closed against the fear that we float on a sea of random meaninglessness.
“And all shall be well and /All manner of thing shall be well/When the tongues of flame are in-folded /Into the crowned knot of fire /And the fire and the rose are one.” Eliot, Little Gidding
When we live at the point of intersection – “the still point of the turning world”. Where spirit meets beauty, and we meet each other in relation, After all everything is energy and matter (e=mc2), wave and particle, in spacetime or not (God, conceived as the Word existing beyond time).
Observation crystallises particular reality *1
We are, as Teilhard de Chardin says “co-creators of the universe”, and as he believed, as did TS Eliot, the driving force in the evolution of consciousness is. Love.
“Science alone cannot discover Christ. But Christ satisfies the yearnings that are born in our hearts in the school of science… Science will, in all probability, be increasingly impregnated by mysticism.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (My Universe, 1924, IX, 83)
