Darwin and the Human Future

Abstract

This chapter is a report of the discovery of Darwin’s perception of self-organization and aspects of chaos theory over 100 years in advance of our time; its implications for the development of 20th-century science and society; and the urgent need for the long overdue new synthesis for evolution theory. Recalling an earlier historical situation mirroring ours today, it begins with Russia versus the United States, the Cold War, a period of escalating dread, and a secret meeting of scientists from both sides to see if updating a “survival of the fittest” theory of evolution could head off nuclear annihilation. We see what led us to this point then and now: How the traditional split between natural and social science led to the gulf in understanding of the vital differences between biological evolution and cultural evolution; this led to the inclusion of biological evolution and the exclusion of social science in the development of evolution theory, which bogged down science in the conflict between gatekeepers, defending an imbalanced theory of evolution, versus gatebreakers fighting for an updating. This led to the urgent need for the new synthesis that both gatekeepers and gatebreakers seek. This contrast involves a bifurcation in theoretical ideas and the emergence, possibly, of a new science that synthesizes two divergent viewpoints and offers hope for the human future. We see how the ice was cracked, the logjam broken by the nonlinear revolution that Darwin caught sight of, and how it can now help us to move ahead.