Philosophy of Environment - Environment and Evolution

Environment and Evolution

The philosophical current indicated under the name philosophy of evolution has been developed since the 1970s by Humanist Ecology (also called Environmental or Evolutive Humanism) and by the neo-darwinian school. Its purpose is the long-term evolution of the complex living being in its universal environment, analysed through its Human cultural expression.

This trend is unique to the quasi religious Evolutionist Humanism advocated by Julian Huxley, notably during the founders congress of the IHEU (International Humanist and Ethical Union) in 1952.

Further than the basic scientific theory of evolution (notably neo-darwinian, Evolutive Humanism, developed by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould), looks at the necessity for Man of a permanent adaptation of both his organism and his thoughts to his universal environment. And from there to the relativized relation to belief and to uncertainty, because human ideas evolve and are transformed, as are physical qualities, in a universal process of evolution and adaptive improvement in their environment. But this does not suppose determinism, genetic or cultural, it refers to the evolutive interactivity and reactivity, partly random, of the living being with his surroundings. According to Marc Carl, "Man must necessarily learn to manage the insufficient appearance and the uncertainty of information to fit and to develop in his relational interactions with his environment, as well as physically and culturally". In a universal environment still as much as 90% unknown, this evolutive cogitation therefore tries not to be locked in premature schemata and answers. It encourages humility in proposals and intuitive boldness in investigations. A subjacent humanist thought encourages human beings to deliberately take his destiny in his hands, in careful correlation with his environment, knowing that human thought is one of the most impacting manifestations of the living being, as an agent of transformation of the environment, and consequently not only of the Earth's environment. In terms of philosophy of evolution, the organized collective thought of humanity, and in general his evolutive culture, appears as the key to development of our species in its universal environment, and the key to a possibly significant interactive modification, in the long term, of this environment. It is principally a prospective step.

This cultural trend seems to have emerged because the concept of progressive permanent adaptation, which is no longer appreciated only by its scientific aspects, also took a metaphysical dimension (in a sense of research of the essence of the human), which consequently encourages analysis of human evolution, an agent which potentially modifies our environment, in philosophical terms. The possibilities and the risks of this evolution, non-deterministic because of its integration into a dynamic complex living system, gives the human existence and destiny a new sense. And to be involved in such a cogitation opens a philosophical way in which curious minds could not miss advancing sooner or later, a way which rests on a regenerated metaphysics, encouraging us to take back in an evolutive way Aristoteles original concept of physis and its substance, and to search with modern conceptual tools the essence and the sense of our life.