The Next Revolution
Remember the time Earth was the center of the cosmos? You don't. That's thanks to several scientists, especially Galileo. In medieval times, religious people believed in the Empyrean, a space beyond our blue skies where the angels, souls and God lived. But using the telescope came the ability to see beyond blue skies, into other star systems and that ours is one of many, many Galaxies is the Universe. This was the Revolution of Space.
Another story is the world's coming into being the way it is. You put the ingredients of randomness, natural selection, give it enough time and there you have: a diversity of species, changed by reproduction and mutation. Some scientists think these changes are slow, others think they're sudden (Stephen Jay Gould punctuated equilibrium), but all scientists call it... evolution. Darwin had a particular role in finding this Revolution of Time that had a profound impact on our view of the world.
This was a challenging revolution to conciliate with how we understood God's action in the world. Some even used this Revolution to justify their non-belief in God. Some still do. But we cannot forget the real question is not how the world evolves, but why does it evolve at all! Pope Francis in his Laudato Si' said something similar to the universe being the language through which God speaks to us. Therefore, if He is the Creator (not architect, nor designer), what is He saying to us, as self-reflective nature, with evolution? I can think of several possibilities. But essentially on this one: be open and surprised by Time. God is a God of surprises, of the unexpected, grasping us from the future, calling us into becoming (more than being). So we may wonder... after space and time, what is the next Revolution?
We're used to think about political, technological, cultural, spiritual revolutions. But those of space and time are more profound. They're completely out of our control. They are Revolutions of the Cosmos. I don't know if I'm right, but I think there's a man who saw this revolution coming. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and paleontologist. In his groundbreaking book on the Human Phenomenon he says
"Actually, in its pure essence, the entire substance of the long pages above boils down to this simple affirmation: if the universe appears to be sidereally in process of spatial expansion (from the infinitely small to the immense), then in the same way, and even more clearly, it appears to be physicochemically in process of organic enfolding on itself (from the very simple to the extremely complicated) - this particular enfolding of "complexity" being bound experimentally to a corresponding increase of interiority; that is, of psyche or consciousness. (Thus)... the structural relationship noted here between complexity and consciousness has always been known and remains experimentally incontrovertible."
This has been later known as the Law of Complexity-Consciousness. In a world where information is becoming more important that energy, where we experience an ever deeper connectivity, if complexity brought consciousness, then aren't we inside a Revolution of Complexity? Here, the protagonist is not someone like Galileo, or Darwin, or even Teilhard, but Humanity itself.
Complexity diversifies, unites, deepens. Where will it lead if its result is a greater consciousness? I might have a clue. But that's another story...
CC Credits Michael Heiss
