The Evolving Kosmos

Note: This article has been adapted from The Organic Masculine.

In my previous article, I offered a friendly primer on integral theory, which offers the foundation to dive into one of my favorite topics in this article: the evolution of the kosmos.

From moment to moment, the kosmos is changing. When I look closely, I discover the change has a directionality: kosmos is in a process of evolution. This drive is toward greater degrees of wholeness and complexity. The developmental drive of becoming is called Eros.

Western culture tends to view the universe as a collection of things in motion. This is the foundation of scientific materialism that emerged in the eighteenth century. The process view of the kosmos, on the other hand, holds that reality is the evolutionary process itself. This view was articulated by Alfred North Whitehead at the beginning of the twentieth century. And now, at the cutting edge of our understanding is the holonic view of the kosmos that sees every thing and every process as a holon. A holon is an entity that is whole in itself, that contains parts, and that is itself part of a larger whole: a whole-part.¹ The kosmos can be viewed as a collection of nested whole-parts in an ongoing process of evolution.

Evolution occurs along three concurrent trajectories: the physical universe, biological life, and psycho/cultural evolution in humans. These three evolutionary processes sequentially build upon each other. The physical universe needed to mature to a certain point for biological life to emerge. The biosphere rests on the foundation of the physiosphere. Similarly, cultural and psychological evolutions required a certain maturation of biological life in order to emerge (i.e., to develop into humans). So, the advancement of human consciousness, both individually and collectively, rests on the more fundamental process of biological evolution, which rests on the even more fundamental process of physical evolution.

I. Evolution of the Physical Universe

Figure 1. History of the physical universe

Let’s briefly consider the evolution of the physical universe. Our best guess is that the universe originated billions of years ago from an infinitely dense point, called the big bang (fig 1). Moments after the big bang, the universe expanded rapidly and uniformly in a theorized period called inflation.² From there, the energy permeating space condensed into particles as the universe expanded and cooled. Within the first three minutes, the whole stage was set. All matter and energy, their distribution throughout space, the four primary forces: strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational, and the key constants like the speed of light were all in place.³ Over the next 13.7 billion years, these basic particles will do some pretty magnificent things.

As space expanded and cooled, electrons slowed enough to be captured by protons into orbit, forming atoms. At this transition, the universe became transparent to light. We measure this today as the cosmic microwave background radiation. This moment of phase change from roaming protons and electrons into atoms marked the universe’s shift from a light-filled soup into darkness. Atoms then coalesced into massive clouds of gas that eventually ignited into the first stars and quasars. These stars collected into galaxies and superclusters of galaxies. Until this point, the universe had only two elements: hydrogen and helium. Massive stars fused all the heavier elements in their cores and spewed them back out through supernova explosions.

As more and more stars lit up the universe, the free-floating gas charged back up, and electrons disconnected from protons in a process called reionization. However, by this time, space had expanded and cooled enough that it remained transparent to light, as it is today. Eventually, our Milky Way galaxy formed, our sun accreted enough matter to ignite, and in its accretion disc, the earth and other planets in our solar system formed.

In the superstructure of the universe, we see an evolutionary movement from undifferentiated cosmic soup, to particles, to galaxies with stars and planets. In the microstructure, we see a similar complexification from undifferentiated light, to subatomic particles, to hydrogen and helium, to the heavier elements (fig. 2). On both macro and micro scales, the physical universe has been in a 13.7-billion-year process of evolution.⁴

Figure 2. Electron geometries of noble gasses

II. Evolution of Biological Life

The emergence of biological life marked a categorical shift in the progression of the universe. Our best scientific guesses propose that a soup of organic material self-organized into a system capable of self-reproduction around 3.7 billion years ago (fig. 3).

Figure 3. Theoretical model for the formation of RNA molecules⁵

The processes of life are fundamentally different from nonbiological systems. The reason for this is that life inherently incorporates self-referential complexities that are beyond physical systems. Imagine that each strand of DNA is a cookbook. In the cookbook are recipes for how to make a cell wall, how to make a ribosome, an endoplasmic reticulum, and a golgi body. In addition, the recipe book has a recipe for how to make this very DNA book, including this very recipe, including this very step here, now. There is an astounding amount of symbolic meaning packed into each strand of DNA. It is a chemical code that contains the blueprint for all of itself.

Over the course of the twentieth century, systems theorists, cyberneticists, chaos theorists, and biologists teamed up to make remarkable strides in understanding how biological life operates.

Here is how we characterize living organisms:

• Each organism is an open This means it is a bounded entity that is continually in exchange with its environment. Organisms eat food and dispel waste.

• These bounded, open systems balance in states that are far from This adaptive capacity has been described scientifically as a dissipative structure. The open systems of organisms operate differently from closed systems. According to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy is always increasing for closed systems. This means most systems in the universe are always moving toward thermal equilibrium and maximum randomness. Living systems, on the other hand, create islands of order that exist far from equilibrium.⁶

• Organisms are self-organizing. Each organism assembles It displays systemic properties where the pattern that governs the organism contains a level of complexity beyond the sum of the parts. Organisms display emergent behaviors and operate according to network effects and interactions.

• Organisms are self-regulating. This is known as homeostasis. Organisms maintain themselves through internally adaptive processes and in ongoing relationship with their environment. This requires a degree of prehension or sensing of the total system, together with a degree of agency to respond to changing conditions. Organisms are adaptive.

• Aliveness is Individual atoms and molecules do not hold the property of aliveness. Rather, the livingness of an organism must be understood holistically at the level of the organism itself. No subpart or local region of an organism determines its aliveness.⁷

• Organisms are population forming. These groups of organisms interact in complex ways. Flocks of geese, hives of bees, and societies of humans all display emergent group-level phenomena that cannot be understood solely at the level of interacting individuals. Groups of organisms hold collective awareness and intelligence. Members within populations compete, cooperate, and diversify roles within the groups.

• Organisms are generational. While individual organisms have a finite life span, the pattern of the organism is passed down from parent to offspring. Biological life passes down information through generations via the genome. Life remembers. In addition, generational reproduction carries forward the adaptations from individual organisms, mixes genes, and creates opportunities for genetic mutation. And because organisms compete and selectively reproduce, the most successful features of life are dynamically carried forward. Reproduction enables biological evolution.

• Organisms incorporate biofield energy. This final point is not listed in biology textbooks because science does not currently incorporate or account for the non-material realms of consciousness. Science only measures the gross realm. However, the aliveness of biological life is subtle energy. It is prana, chi, elan vital, or entelechy. The complexification of living systems have interwoven the more expansive subtle realm of consciousness into its processes. Systems with more depth embody more complex consciousness. Life’s marriage of the subtle and gross realms represents a profound advancement in the consciousness of the kosmos.

To be clear, the subtle realm is coextensive with the entire physical universe. There is not a single speck of space dust that does not participate in the subtle realm, however faintly. But the incorporation of subtle energy into a meaningful pattern is fundamentally beyond the capacity of purely physical systems to hold. The organizing pattern within a living system operates throughout both the gross physical domain and the subtle energetic domain. Subtle energy is intrinsically woven into the pattern of life.

Living systems are characterized by a remarkably complex organization which endows them with the capacity to respond to external stimuli, to bind or release energy (metabolism), to grow, to differentiate, and to replicate. Biological systems have the further remarkable property that they are open systems, which maintain a steady-state balance in spite of much input and output. This homeostasis is made possible by elaborate feedback mechanisms, unknown in their precision in any inanimate system.

—Ernst Mayr⁸

Life-forms organize and reproduce in a continual process of creation that advances their own self-systems, a property termed autopoiesis.⁹ Auto means “self” and poiesis means “creation,” stemming from the same root as the word poetry. Biological life creates itself. So I’ll define a living system as an autonomous process of self-organization.¹⁰

Biological life further interconnects across species to form ecosystems and ultimately a planetary system. These macro-systems exhibit recursive complexities toward homeostasis, just like the organisms that comprise them. One striking example on the planetary scale is the observation that over the past four billion years, the sun has become about 25 percent hotter, and yet life on Earth has adapted to keep itself within the narrow band of livable conditions with liquid water. This observation led James Lovelock to propose that the biosphere of earth is one living system, known as the Gaia hypothesis.¹¹

Over the past 3.7 billion years, biological life has undergone a process of complexification into greater expressions of wholeness. Simple prokaryotic cells eventually incorporated the nucleus and mitochondria to give rise to eukaryotic cells. Single-celled organisms gave rise to multicellular organisms. Life diversified into fungi, plants, and animals; and life-systems evolved greater relational complexity (for example, the co-arisal of flowers and pollinators) and ecosystems.

III. Evolution of Psychological and Social Consciousness

As far as we know, humans hold a unique trait among biological life: the capacity for self-reflection. In the same way that recursive complexity of organic matter is a distinguishing feature of biological life, recursive complexity of awareness (i.e., self-consciousness) is the feature that distinguishes human consciousness. The realm of purely physical processes is known as the physiosphere, biological life occupies the biosphere, and the noosphere describes the realm of human consciousness. The emergence of this type of awareness in the evolution of life is called the point of reflection:

Reflection is, as the word indicates, the power acquired by a consciousness to turn in upon itself, to take possession of itself as of an object endowed with its own particular consistence and value: no longer merely to know, but to know oneself; no longer merely to know, but to know that one knows.… The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence of that very doubling back upon himself, becomes in a flash able to raise himself into a new sphere. In reality, another world is born. Abstraction, logic, reasoned choice and inventions, mathematics, art, calculation of space and time, anxieties and dreams of love—all these activities of inner life are nothing else than the effervescence of the newly-formed centre as it explodes onto itself.

—Teilhard de Chardin¹²

With the emergence of humans, the inner psychological landscapes of consciousness blossomed into the kosmos. This point of reflection ushered in the self-aware ego for life on earth. Just as life systems are autonomous self-organizing processes of organic matter, the ego is an autonomous self-organizing process of thoughtforms. The ego is essentially a repeated and habitual focusing of attention inward, or “self-ward,” so that consciousness becomes individuated. This self-organizing process is an interweaving of thoughts, identities, beliefs, personality traits, and memories. The self-reflective center organizes and interprets sensory perception, manages priorities, makes plans, and directs behavior.

Egoic consciousness can be understood as an even richer interweaving of the gross physical realm with the subtle energetic realm. Biological life is made alive by the incorporation of biofield energy, which occupies the lower spectrum of the subtle realm (termed in yoga, the pranamaya kosha). At the high end of the subtle realm are the thoughtforms (i.e., the manomaya kosha). As sensory and cognitive feedback mechanisms evolved more complexity, organisms began to access the high subtle realm. A mind is made sentient by the incorporation of thoughtforms from the high subtle realm into the awareness of the living system.

Each individual human undergoes a developmental process of psychological maturation. As he infant grows into child and then adult, the ego emerges, gains agency, and matures. What is developing is the awareness of who I am—which is to say, an evolution of consciousness. This psychic space is experienced within each individual. It is our inner landscape, the psyche. Psychological consciousness is subjective rather than objective and qualitative rather than quantitative.

Over the past century, developmental psychology has been studying how consciousness matures in individuals. I’ll examine these models in my next article. Codeveloping together with the individual egoic consciousness is collective consciousness. This is formed by the language, customs, culture, symbols, and meanings that are held between members of a culture. While psychology is subjective, culture is intersubjective. Culture can be understood as an autonomous self-organizing process that is constituted by relationships. Western civilization has progressed from premodern, modern, and now into postmodern phases in its evolution.

Cultural consciousness influences and is influenced by psychological consciousness. They have co-evolved throughout human history and they codevelop within each individual. In fact, these two realms are constantly interacting.

IV. The Cosmogenetic Principle

How does evolution actually happen? There are still many questions in terms of the biological processes for species. But more broadly, if the entire kosmos is evolving, can we describe this process? I think so!

The evolutionary process itself is the development of a Truth of existence concealed here in an original Inconscience and brought out from it by an emerging Consciousness which rises from gradation to gradation of its self-unfolding until it can manifest in itself the integral reality of things and a total self-knowledge.

—Sri Aurobindo¹³

Over the last two hundred years, Western philosophy, biology, psychology, and cosmology have been honing in on exactly how the process of evolution works. In 1850, Darwin published his Origin of the Species for biological evolution. Around the same time, anthropology and social-evolutionary theories began to emerge. Freud published his psychosexual development theory in 1909—the first developmental model for psychology. And the idea of an evolving universe entered the scientific arena in 1931 with the big bang theory, proposed by Georges Lemaître. The underlying process appears to be a universal pattern woven across physical systems, biological systems, and social/psychological systems.

The mechanism of evolution was first termed the dialectic of progress. Although the dialectic is often attributed to the German philosopher Hegel, who undoubtedly employed its methodology in his philosophy, the terms thesis, antithesis, and synthesis are properly attributed to his contemporary Johann Fichte. This dialectic describes a three-part process. The first step is any proposition or manifest object: thesis. This is followed by the second proposition, which negates or opposes the first: antithesis. Polarity arises through contrast. Finally, the third proposition resolves the conflict by transcending to a new level: synthesis. Each synthesis then becomes the initial thesis for the next layer of development (fig. 4).

Figure 4. The dialectic of progress: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis

In more contemporary usage, the dialectic has been superseded by the cosmogenetic principle, introduced by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry. They substitute the terms differentiation, autopoiesis (meaning self-creation), and communion as the activities of the dialectic. These three terms have many interpretations and are offered as broad themes for the underlying tripart process. This is the evolutionary engine of our continuously growing kosmos.

We now know that we live in a cosmogenesis, an ongoing, developing reality. Our extension of the Cosmological Principle, which we will call for clarity the Cosmogenetic Principle, assumes that every point in the universe is the same as every other point, and additionally, that the dynamics of evolution are the same at every point in the universe.… The Cosmogenetic Principle states that the evolution of the universe will be characterized by differentiation, autopoiesis, and communion throughout time and space and at every level of reality.

—Swimme and Berry¹⁴

Every entity, whether a proton, a cell, a human, or a galaxy is subject to these three drives. First, each unit becomes its own coherent self. Every whole entity in the cosmos is completely unique and original. This is the first step of differentiation. Second, each entity engages with both internal and external forces that cause change. Nothing is static, and there are no isolated islands in our universe. This is autopoiesis. Finally, each entity becomes a part of a larger whole that transcends to a new level of complexity. This is communion.

For yet another lens on the kosmic process of advancement, we can turn to systems theory. In this perspective, the most fundamental way to understand the kosmos is through holons. Every process and thing in existence is simultaneously both a whole in itself and part of something larger. Every entity is a whole/part. The property of being both a whole and a part, depending on one’s perspective, is called a holon. Whether we are considering a materialistic view of a kosmos made of things, or a process-oriented view of the kosmos, every thing and every process is both a part and a whole—a holon. Each holon contains subholons cascading downward without end (transfinitely). And each holon is a part of larger and larger wholes ranging upward without end. The entire kosmos, inclusive of all phenomena and all consciousness, is continually being superseded moment by moment by a more complex, more developed kosmos that contains and transcends each moment that came before. There is no lower limit and no upper limit. We are all holons, living in a holonic kosmos.

At the beginning of this article, I introduced the term Eros, which is the universal drive toward greater wholeness and complexity. Each holon is subject to this fundamental drive of becoming. Each holon reaches upward. In equal measure, the kosmos exhibits a universal capacity for wholes to reach down and embrace parts, which we call Agape. Every holon, across every scale, naturally reaches downward. These two drives, Eros and Agape, exist in a dynamic tension. They are another way to understand the polarity of thesis-antithesis and differentiation-autopoiesis in the process of evolution. The third phase in this framework is known as either transcend and include or negate and preserve. The third step of synthesis or communion is achieved by advancing to a new level, transcending, while including the parts from the previous level. In moving to a higher level, the prior state is negated, while the component parts are preserved. Ken Wilber likens this process to the successive viewpoints that become available as we climb a ladder:

In short, each structure-rung in the ladder generates a different View of the world around it (just as if you were climbing a real ladder). With each next-higher stage of development, the self steps off the previous structure-rung, loses the View of the world from that previous rung, steps up to the next higher structure-rung, and begins to see the world from that new and higher View. Again, just as when climbing a real ladder, the climber (or self-sense) loses the View from the previous rung—but the previous rung itself remains in existence (all the way back to the first rung). Thus, development is “transcend and include,” or “negate and preserve”—the successive Views (or structure-stages) are negated and transcended (as the self steps up to the new and higher rung and its View), but the structure-rungs themselves are included and preserved (all rungs remain in existence).

—Ken Wilber¹⁵

The cosmogenetic principle describes how the universe developed from subatomic particles and light into galaxies, stars, planets, biological life, and humans. This process is completely original. Each one of us is a uniquely original process of becoming interwoven into the grand becoming of the kosmos. That which constitutes us sources from the origin. As holonic beings, it is our nature to originate new creations. This is the original nature of our evolving reality, which Whitehead described as “the creative advance into novelty.” Every holon is original, sources from the origin, and originates new holons. We participate in an original kosmos. Across every scale, this kosmos is evolving through a three-part process: cosmogenesis.

Holons exist in a progression like rungs on a ladder. Each holon becomes the foundation for the next more advanced holon to build upon and each layer forms a part of the layer above. We call this progressive pathway a growth hierarchy. Growth hierarchies, by the way, are distinct from dominator hierarchies, which describe a social structure where certain members exert power over others within the group. Dominator hierarchies describe a form of collective suffering, for example, within hegemonic masculinity. In contrast, growth hierarchies describe how the kosmos advances through progressively more complex stages toward wholeness and actualization.¹⁶

A system of holons, arranged in a growth hierarchy, is known as a holarchy.¹⁷ Individuals and collectives grow from holon to holon along the kosmic developmental ladder. Integral philosophy postulates that human consciousness is in a process of evolution through successive paradigms.¹⁸ These paradigms of consciousness are incredibly rich topics to learn and explore. Stay tuned!

Summary

In summary, the distinct evolutionary pathways in the kosmos are physical, biological, and social/psychological. These three processes exist in a hierarchy where matter forms the foundation for life, and life forms the foundation for subjective and intersubjective consciousness. Each progressive layer carries an increasing degree of complexity, and the system as a whole displays an organized complexity. The kosmos, as the totality of each layer of reality woven together, is in a process of evolution through these concurrent processes.¹⁹ From Whitehead’s perspective, the evolutionary process is the kosmos.²⁰ In this view, I am not separate from the kosmos. There is no inside me that is apart from the outside world. My individuated consciousness is one aspect of the total consciousness of the kosmos. Just as I am on a journey of evolution to know myself, the kosmos is on an evolutionary journey of awakening.

1. “In a systems view of the universe, we recognize and describe whole systems (sometimes called holons) arranged in an ordered series, in such a way that the parts of a whole at one level are wholes at the level ‘below,’ and are themselves part of wholes at the level ‘above.’” Ecology of Consciousness, Metzner.

2. “The inflationary scenario supposes that at some time during the early history of the Universe, a very large dark energy density existed, which led to a rapidly accelerating expansion of the Universe.… During the inflationary epoch, the Universe expands by a factor of 1043 or more. A about 200ts, the inflationary epoch ends, and Act II begins. Act II is a standard Big Bang model, but with initial conditions set during the inflationary epoch. For example, a very small patch can become isothermal, and inflation makes the small isothermal patch into a huge isothermal patch, which expands to become much bigger than the observable Universe.” Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Zuckerman and Malkan.

3. “At the end of the first three minutes the contents of the universe were mostly in the form of light, neutrinos, and antineutrinos. There was still a small amount of nuclear material, now consisting of about 73 percent hydrogen and 27 percent helium, and an equally small number of electrons left over from the era of electron-positron annihilation. This matter continued to rush apart, becoming steadily cooler and less dense. Much later, after a few hundred thousand years, it would become cool enough for electrons to join with nuclei to form atoms of hydrogen and helium. The resulting gas would begin under the influence of gravitation to form clumps, which would ultimately condense to form the galaxies and stars of the present universe.” The First Three Minutes, Weinberg.

4. “It is the progression of the Universe from the great symmetry and simplicity we imagine for the Big Bang, through the building of the particles we see today, with their complicated relationships, through the synthesis of the chemical elements, first in a pervasive hot plasma and then in the cores of stars, and most recently to the invention of biology and life. That is what the phrase ‘evolution of the universe’ means to me.” Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Zuckerman and Malkan.

5. Adapted from “Structured sequences emerge from random pool when replicated by templated ligation,” Kudella et al.

6. “The crucial breakthrough occurred for Prigogine during the early 1960s, when he realized that systems far from equilibrium must be described by nonlinear equations. The clear recognition of this link between ‘far from equilibrium’ and ‘nonlinearity’ opened an avenue of research for Prigogine that would culminate a decade later in his theory of “dissipative structures.”… Prigogine’s concept of a dissipative structure introduced a radical change in this view by showing that in open systems dissipation becomes a source of order.” The Systems View of Life, Capra and Pier.

7. “The unifying principle of an organism as a mode of being of the organism is integral with but distinct from the entire range of physical components of the organism. It is the source of spontaneity, its self-manifesting power.” The Universe Story, Swimme and Berry.

8. Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist, Mayr.

9. “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a It follows that an autopoietic machine continuously generates and specifies its own organization through its own operation as a system of production of its own components.” Autopoiesis and Cognition the Realization of the Living, Maturana.

10. “Since all components of an autopoietic network are produced by other components in the network, the entire system is organizationally closed, even though it is open with regard to the flow of energy and matter. This organization closure implies that a living system is self-organizing in the sense that its order and behavior are not imposed by the environment but are established by the system itself. In other words, living systems are autonomous.” The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter, Capra.

11. “The process of self-regulation is the key to Lovelock’s idea. He knew from astrophysics that the heat of the Sun has increased by 25% since life began on Earth and that, in spite of this increase, the Earth’s surface temperature has remained constant, at a level comfortable for life, during those 4 billion years. What if the Earth were able to regulate its temperature, he asked, as well as other planetary conditions – the composition of its atmosphere, the salinity of its oceans, and so on – just as living organisms are able to self-regulate and keep their body temperature and other variables constant? Lovelock realized that this hypothesis amounted to a radical break with conventional science. Rather than seeing the Earth as a dead planet, composed of inanimate rocks, oceans, and atmosphere, he proposed to consider it as a complex system, ‘comprising all of life and all of its environment tightly coupled so as to form a self-regulating entity’ (Lovelock 1991).” The Systems View of Life, Capra and Luisi.

12. The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard de Chardin.

13. The Life Divine.

14. The Universe Story.

15. The Religion of Tomorrow.

16. “In dominator hierarchies, with each higher level, the few dominate and oppress the many. In actualization or growth hierarchies, each higher level is more and more inclusive.” The Religion of Tomorrow, Wilber.

17. “The organism in its structural and functional aspects is a hierarchy of self-regulating holons which function (a) as autonomous wholes in supraordination to their parts, (b) as dependent parts in sub-ordination to controls on higher levels, (c) in co-ordination with their local environment. Such a hierarchy of holons should rightly be called a holarchy.” The Ghost in the Machine, Koestler.

18. The term integral was first used by the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo in 1914 (quoted above). It was subsequently employed by the Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser in 1939 to describe a new integral structure of consciousness in humanity. Today, integral theory has been popularized by polymath Ken Wilber.

19. “One kind of evolution prepares the ground for the next. Out of the conditions created by evolution in the physical realm emerge the conditions that permit biological evolution to take off. And out of the conditions created by biological evolution come the conditions that allow human beings - and many other species - to evolve certain social forms of organization.” Evolution: The Grand Synthesis, Laszlo.

20. “The process itself is the constitution of the actual entity.” Process and Reality, Whitehead.