Evolution

The idea of evolution sends us directly to Darwin's theory, but this is not an idea limited to a theory, but from the simple concept that time passes and if we wait long enough, things change, nothing remains constant. There is a flow of time that dictates the pace of transformations and, with a little good luck, we will progress on track, that is, we advance and do not worsen our very existence as a society of human beings.

The biological evolution of man and animals the way Darwin describes it is a continuous process but an extremely slow one, where a significant evolutionary change takes many thousands of years and happens over many generations.

To wait for a biological evolutionary move that could favorably alter the human species, minus the random factors, would take forever, but... Relatively recently in human history, at the time of the invention of agriculture, a kind of evolution emerged that was not a biological one but more of an energetic societal development with some practical outcomes. These were quickly channeled to the organization of separated social groups with their own conducts, traditions and eating habits, expressing a communal culture that is differentiated from the others.

The families and clans knew that living in groups is safer and to live together they had to exchange information among themselves, primarily some messages about the food supply and other resources for the group.

Societal development is a way of life that got disconnected from biological evolution as a consequence of the advent of language. Through the consolidation of social networks among groups, the human speech flourished by telling stories. These stories turned out to be essential for the societies to establish their own culture.

This cultural disassociation from natural biological life took place through the elaboration and usage of invented conventions, through imagined interpretations of great myths and sacred things, and by understanding the world in a different way, a place where each individual member can offer a new interpretation of reality and convey it to the validation of the other members.

The numerous possibilities opened by the societal expansion of human ethnicities led to the advancement of information, so much that within just a few thousand years, and not millions of years as in biological evolution, this upcoming cultural evolution left traces of profound significance in all human groups.

The continuous preparation to live amidst ever-growing societies has paved the way to a code of moral values (inside each group’s perspective); and also to independent personal identities, to a set of own emotional values, to new intellectual expertise and to elaborated religious concepts.

But this was not the end of the evolutionary possibilities. A third evolutionary step came about, and just by the time that the social type of evolution yielded its last fruits, the technological era arrived.

New procedures and new technologies have always come to light throughout human history, but not like modern science, as we understand it, but a kind of polytechnics, a set of collected specific know-how.

Because of the invention of mathematical calculus, the operator set required to solve a given problem is a very well resolved and structured algorithm; it is very specific, not general, it is the solution to single problems.

At the age of technology, the research and development of ideas are guided by scientific methodological testing and documenting, powering a qualitative leap of innovative achievements at the service of mankind.

And we are here now, at this point of the path where technological transformations advance toward the future, as we are the holders of increasingly more sophisticated technologies, the consequences of our accrual from past transitional stages.

And we head further on, perhaps infinitely so, for as long as there will be new knowledge to be discovered.