Evolutionary Learning
for Billions of Years
Biological life arises when not only the past but the future matters to a being. But where and when does life as such originate? While with their capacity for imaginative anticipation, biological organisms exhibit a truly impressive creative advance over the far more repetitive physical and chemical domains, the cosmological evidence suggests that energy has already been engaged in evolutionary learning for billions of years before they emerged.
- Matthew Segall
Biological life arises when not only the past but the future matters to a being. But where and when does life as such originate? While with their capacity for imaginative anticipation, biological organisms exhibit a truly impressive creative advance over the far more repetitive physical and chemical domains, the cosmological evidence suggests that energy has already been engaged in evolutionary learning for billions of years before they emerged.
- Matthew Segall
Imagining the Universe as an
Cosmic Learning Community
Imagine that the universe, with its billions of galaxies and planets, is an expansive learning community—a university without walls. All the things we see around us, from the atoms to the galaxies, are residents of this community, as are we ourselves. All are students, albeit many inorganic and submicroscopic.
Like any university, the universal learning community has classes which enter the stage at different times, building upon what predecessors have learned. Each class has a class project. The task of the first class was to form the first atomic nuclei, such as hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium, within the first few minutes (about 3-20 minutes) after the Big Bang. This process set the stage for the later formation of atoms, which was the second class. After that came the molecules, stars, and galaxies. Around many stars solar systems emerged. On our small planet—and likely on countless others—this progression eventually led to the emergence of biological life.
The classes learn from their predecessors. Each class builds upon the lessons learned in earlier phases and adds its own evolutionary developments. It adds something new. For example, as the inorganic classes evolve, they give rise to increasingly complex forms of organization and consciousness, which did not exist in earlier phases. Biological life, in particular, introduced new dimensions of experience and creativity, leading to the development of culture, art, science, and spirituality. And the process continues. Human beings, as part of this ongoing process, have the potential to explore and understand the universe in profound ways, tapping into the cosmic facilitator's teachings.
Perhaps the universe also includes a cosmic facilitator—a force or presence that is part dean, part mathematics instructor, part theatre arts instructor, and part music teacher. This facilitator is not a separate entity but the living whole of the universe, with a life of its own—otherwise named God. It has no separate office on the grounds of the cosmic university; it is everywhere at once, inside each creature as a lure toward creative becoming.
It meets each creature where it is, aiming to teach one of the deepest gifts of consciousness: love. In human life, it seems, a primary lesson we are to learn is how to love one another. The lesson has yet to be fully learned.
This image - that of the universe as a learning community - provides a framework for understanding the interconnectedness of all things and the evolutionary process that shapes them. Each stage of development, from atoms to biological life, contributes to the collective knowledge and growth of the whole, including the divine whole. The cosmic facilitator, or God, acts as a guide in this grand educational journey, helping each being realize its potential and understand the profound lesson of love. In doing so, the universe continually advances toward greater complexity, consciousness, and unity, embodying the essence of a dynamic, evolving learning community.
- Jay McDaniel
The Cosmic Learning Process
a note on a note by Matthew Segall
Assume, along with Matthew Segall, that human learning is not entirely new. Assume that energy has already been engaged in evolutionary learning for billions of years and that human and animal learning are inheritors of that tradition. As suggested above, the universe is a living university: a kind of school where successive events have been "learning" from their predecessors, building upon what they've learned, and adding to the process.
Assume also that this learning is not simply the accumulation of information but also involves building upon energetic dynamics and, perhaps, forms of sentience. This is the case if, as Matthew Segall proposes in his response to Brendan Graham Dempsey (see below), energy is itself a form of feeling. The outcomes of this learning process include heightened forms of consciousness, and, in our context, a sense of purpose and meaning. We do not invent meaning; it comes to us as part of our ongoing curriculum. We are very young students of billions of years of evolution but also newcomers and pioneers in what lies ahead.
What is our history? Who are our elders? We learn something of this history from science. It began with a big bang, a primal flaring forth, a vast explosion, or a primal birth. Here are some of its phases, some of which are continuing and some complete.
Given this history, there are three thing to note. First, if this entire evolutionary process were rendered into a single day, biological evolution would be extremely brief, perhaps occurring in the last few seconds before midnight. We humans are very much newcomers. Second, other animals on our planet, and for that matter other forms of life, have their own forms of cultural and spiritual evolution that parallel our own and may, by some measures, exceed our own. There is no need to be too human-centered. Third, Cultural and spiritual evolution may well have occurred countless times on other planets and in other dimensions of the universe. The universe is more, so much more, than life on earth. Questions emerge:
Mind: When did "mind" or "consciousness" or "feeling" or "experience" come into existence? For most of the history of the universe, was matter or energy entirely inert, devoid of any kind of inwardness or creativity until life emerged? Or was something like life, or proto-life, there from the beginning?
God: And when, if at all, did God come into existence? Here, for the sake of discussion, imagine God not as a being outside the process but as the living whole of the universe: a womb-like life inside of which the universe is evolving. Here are some options for addressing these two questions:
The Emergence of Mind: Two Possibilities
Emergentism: This view suggests that "mind" or "experience" emerges at a relatively late stage in the cosmic process, specifically with biological evolution. Prior to this, matter and energy are considered devoid of any experiential aspect. In this perspective, consciousness and subjective experience arise as complex systems evolve, potentially as a unique product of biological organisms.
Panpsychism/Panexperientialism: In contrast, this view posits that "mind" or "experience" is present in the very fabric of matter itself, suggesting that the evolution of the universe is simultaneously an evolution of mind. According to this view, all matter has some form of experience, no matter how primitive. Matt Segall, following David Ray Griffin, refers to this as panexperientialism, which implies that everything in the universe has a mental or experiential aspect, even at the most fundamental levels.
The Emergence of God: Two Possibilities
God Arises with Biological Evolution: In this view, God arises only after the emergence of living beings capable of imagining God. The idea of a living whole, and the living whole itself, depend on one another. Prior to the emergence of the idea, there was no God.
God is an Ever-Present Reality: Alternatively, God may have been part of the universe's evolution from the very beginning, as a cosmic lure toward new forms of order and, perhaps, as a receptacle for all that happens as it happens. In this view, the evolving universe is the body of God.
These are the kinds of questions that Matt Segall and Brendan Graham Dempsey raise for us in their dialogue. Both bring science more clearly into the picture. Segall's "Evolution as a Universal Learning Process: Initial Reflections After Reading Brendan Graham Dempsey's 'A Universal Learning Process.'" offer initial questions to Dempsey. I offer some comments below.
In his essay, Segall questions Dempsey's belief that, in the early stages of cosmic evolution, efficient causation was the only kind of causation at work in the unfolding of the universe. Segall follows Whitehead in proposing an alternative: the "energy" of the universe, from the very beginning, has involved something akin to experience.
As Segall explains:
Whitehead affirms that what physicists measure and calculate as 'energy' is, concretely speaking, a creative activity imbued with some degree of experiential quality or unconscious subjectivity, even if of minuscule intensity relative to animal consciousness and human self-consciousness." This means that "energy" itself is a transfer of feeling from one energy-event to another, and that the energy-events themselves are embodiments of something like "subjectivity," however unconscious. Whitehead speaks of these momentary events as "actual entities."
Thus, for Segall, subjectivity itself—the act of feeling the presence of something else from a subjective point of view—is not an emergent property of the universe, prior to which there was no subjectivity at all. Rather, for Segall, subjectivity is the fundamental nature of the universe, as fundamental as energy. Physicists deal with the quantitative dimensions of it, while poets and others in the humanities, I add here, deal with the qualitative dimensions.
Segall's point is that, wherever there is subjectivity, there is something like "learning." This is because a moment of subjectivity begins with an act of receiving influences from past energy-events, being affected by them in causally efficacious ways, and, along the way, "learning" from them. A moment of subjectivity, especially if repetitive of past patterns, is learning from them, and that is how it knows what to repeat. Without learning, there can be no repetition.
Segall puts this point about repetition in terms of what Whitehead calls physical feelings:
Whitehead here makes reference to 'physical feelings.' His technical term for 'feeling' is prehension, and he acknowledges both physical and conceptual forms of it. In other words, there is always both a physical and a mental pole involved in every concrete process at whatever scale it occurs. In the pre-biological world, the transmission of feelings is almost entirely 'conformal,' meaning there is a high degree of repetition. This allows physicists to develop mathematical models with very high degrees of predictive accuracy when applied in the idealized conditions we are better and better at building technological means of maintaining.
What might Segall mean by "a mental pole" of process? Not only do submicroscopic events learn from the past, but they also anticipate the future. He puts it this way:
New actualities are happening everywhere all the time, exercising not only their physical power to feel the past but some modicum of mental power to divine the future.
It is in this "divining the future" that another kind of causation enters, which Aristotle called "final causation."
By "final causation," Aristotle did not mean a kind of causation that puts an end to becoming. He means instead the kind of causation that occurs when an entity feels the pull of future possibilities and organizes itself in light of that pull. The "pull" is another kind of causation. It is not that of a past event but rather that of a not-yet-realized possibility. This not-yet-realized possibility may be to repeat the past; it may be the pull of repetition. It may also be, instead, the pull of novelty, that is, the pull of actualizing some possibility that is not given by the past. Either way, it is more than efficient causation. It is, to coin a phrase, possibility-causation.
Thus, learning involves two kinds of causation: efficient causation, the push of the past, and final causation, the pull of the future. These two kinds of causation permeate all levels of reality, extending down into the very depths of matter. This means that even at the most fundamental levels, such as subatomic particles or elementary processes, there exists a dynamic interplay between the inherited influences from previous states and the attraction toward future potentialities. This interplay suggests a universe that is inherently creative and responsive, continuously shaping and reshaping itself through a process of becoming that encompasses both the retention of past experiences and the pursuit of novel possibilities. In this view, the cosmos is not a static entity but a living, evolving process, where every moment is an opportunity for new creation and discovery.
As we consider the narrative of cosmic evolution, we must appreciate the interplay of efficient causation and final causation, a process that has guided the universe's development from its earliest moments. This evolutionary journey is not merely a series of mechanical steps but a complex pattern formed from the threads of inherited influences and future possibilities. Each moment in this history has been an opportunity for learning and adaptation, not only in the biological sense but also in the broader context of cosmic learning.
This cosmic learning process, as Matthew Segall suggests, involves a form of sentience or feeling present even in the most fundamental particles of the universe. It is a universe that feels, responds, and evolves, continually influenced by its past and drawn toward its potential futures. This understanding shifts our perception of reality, highlighting the creativity and responsiveness of the cosmos. We, as conscious beings, are part of this ongoing process, inheriting billions of years of cosmic learning while also contributing to the unfolding story. The universe, then, is not a static backdrop for our existence but an evolving entity in which we play a role, shaping and reshaping the possibilities of what it can become.
- Jay McDaniel
Assume also that this learning is not simply the accumulation of information but also involves building upon energetic dynamics and, perhaps, forms of sentience. This is the case if, as Matthew Segall proposes in his response to Brendan Graham Dempsey (see below), energy is itself a form of feeling. The outcomes of this learning process include heightened forms of consciousness, and, in our context, a sense of purpose and meaning. We do not invent meaning; it comes to us as part of our ongoing curriculum. We are very young students of billions of years of evolution but also newcomers and pioneers in what lies ahead.
What is our history? Who are our elders? We learn something of this history from science. It began with a big bang, a primal flaring forth, a vast explosion, or a primal birth. Here are some of its phases, some of which are continuing and some complete.
- Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: The formation of the first atomic nuclei, such as hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium, occurred within the first few minutes (about 3-20 minutes) after the Big Bang. This process set the stage for the later formation of atoms.
- Emergence of the First Atoms: Following Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the universe cooled over the next 380,000 years, allowing electrons to combine with nuclei to form the first neutral atoms, primarily hydrogen and helium.
- Stellar Evolution: Stars formed from clouds of gas and dust starting a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Their nuclear fusion processes created heavier elements. The life cycles of stars, including their formation, evolution, and death, have continued over billions of years, providing the building blocks for planets and life.
- Chemical Evolution: As heavier elements became available, complex chemical compounds formed from simpler molecules. This process includes the prebiotic chemistry that eventually led to the origin of life, beginning around 4 billion years ago on Earth.
- Geological Evolution: On Earth, geological processes transformed the planet's structure and composition over time, including the formation of the Earth's crust, tectonic activity, and the development of the atmosphere and oceans. This process began approximately 4.6 billion years ago and continues to the present day.
- Biological Evolution: The diversification and adaptation of living organisms over time, driven by natural selection, genetic variation, and other mechanisms, started around 3.5 billion years ago with the emergence of the first life forms and has led to the vast diversity of life forms present today.
- Cultural and Spiritual Evolution: This stage encompasses the development of human societies, cultures, and spiritual practices. It includes the evolution of language, art, religion, philosophy, and social structures. Cultural evolution reflects humanity's ability to create and transmit knowledge, values, and beliefs across generations. Spiritual evolution represents the deepening of human understanding of existence, purpose, and connection with the divine or transcendent. This process has been ongoing since the emergence of early human civilizations and continues to evolve as societies and individuals explore new ways of meaning-making and spiritual expression.
Given this history, there are three thing to note. First, if this entire evolutionary process were rendered into a single day, biological evolution would be extremely brief, perhaps occurring in the last few seconds before midnight. We humans are very much newcomers. Second, other animals on our planet, and for that matter other forms of life, have their own forms of cultural and spiritual evolution that parallel our own and may, by some measures, exceed our own. There is no need to be too human-centered. Third, Cultural and spiritual evolution may well have occurred countless times on other planets and in other dimensions of the universe. The universe is more, so much more, than life on earth. Questions emerge:
Mind: When did "mind" or "consciousness" or "feeling" or "experience" come into existence? For most of the history of the universe, was matter or energy entirely inert, devoid of any kind of inwardness or creativity until life emerged? Or was something like life, or proto-life, there from the beginning?
God: And when, if at all, did God come into existence? Here, for the sake of discussion, imagine God not as a being outside the process but as the living whole of the universe: a womb-like life inside of which the universe is evolving. Here are some options for addressing these two questions:
The Emergence of Mind: Two Possibilities
Emergentism: This view suggests that "mind" or "experience" emerges at a relatively late stage in the cosmic process, specifically with biological evolution. Prior to this, matter and energy are considered devoid of any experiential aspect. In this perspective, consciousness and subjective experience arise as complex systems evolve, potentially as a unique product of biological organisms.
Panpsychism/Panexperientialism: In contrast, this view posits that "mind" or "experience" is present in the very fabric of matter itself, suggesting that the evolution of the universe is simultaneously an evolution of mind. According to this view, all matter has some form of experience, no matter how primitive. Matt Segall, following David Ray Griffin, refers to this as panexperientialism, which implies that everything in the universe has a mental or experiential aspect, even at the most fundamental levels.
The Emergence of God: Two Possibilities
God Arises with Biological Evolution: In this view, God arises only after the emergence of living beings capable of imagining God. The idea of a living whole, and the living whole itself, depend on one another. Prior to the emergence of the idea, there was no God.
God is an Ever-Present Reality: Alternatively, God may have been part of the universe's evolution from the very beginning, as a cosmic lure toward new forms of order and, perhaps, as a receptacle for all that happens as it happens. In this view, the evolving universe is the body of God.
These are the kinds of questions that Matt Segall and Brendan Graham Dempsey raise for us in their dialogue. Both bring science more clearly into the picture. Segall's "Evolution as a Universal Learning Process: Initial Reflections After Reading Brendan Graham Dempsey's 'A Universal Learning Process.'" offer initial questions to Dempsey. I offer some comments below.
In his essay, Segall questions Dempsey's belief that, in the early stages of cosmic evolution, efficient causation was the only kind of causation at work in the unfolding of the universe. Segall follows Whitehead in proposing an alternative: the "energy" of the universe, from the very beginning, has involved something akin to experience.
As Segall explains:
Whitehead affirms that what physicists measure and calculate as 'energy' is, concretely speaking, a creative activity imbued with some degree of experiential quality or unconscious subjectivity, even if of minuscule intensity relative to animal consciousness and human self-consciousness." This means that "energy" itself is a transfer of feeling from one energy-event to another, and that the energy-events themselves are embodiments of something like "subjectivity," however unconscious. Whitehead speaks of these momentary events as "actual entities."
Thus, for Segall, subjectivity itself—the act of feeling the presence of something else from a subjective point of view—is not an emergent property of the universe, prior to which there was no subjectivity at all. Rather, for Segall, subjectivity is the fundamental nature of the universe, as fundamental as energy. Physicists deal with the quantitative dimensions of it, while poets and others in the humanities, I add here, deal with the qualitative dimensions.
Segall's point is that, wherever there is subjectivity, there is something like "learning." This is because a moment of subjectivity begins with an act of receiving influences from past energy-events, being affected by them in causally efficacious ways, and, along the way, "learning" from them. A moment of subjectivity, especially if repetitive of past patterns, is learning from them, and that is how it knows what to repeat. Without learning, there can be no repetition.
Segall puts this point about repetition in terms of what Whitehead calls physical feelings:
Whitehead here makes reference to 'physical feelings.' His technical term for 'feeling' is prehension, and he acknowledges both physical and conceptual forms of it. In other words, there is always both a physical and a mental pole involved in every concrete process at whatever scale it occurs. In the pre-biological world, the transmission of feelings is almost entirely 'conformal,' meaning there is a high degree of repetition. This allows physicists to develop mathematical models with very high degrees of predictive accuracy when applied in the idealized conditions we are better and better at building technological means of maintaining.
What might Segall mean by "a mental pole" of process? Not only do submicroscopic events learn from the past, but they also anticipate the future. He puts it this way:
New actualities are happening everywhere all the time, exercising not only their physical power to feel the past but some modicum of mental power to divine the future.
It is in this "divining the future" that another kind of causation enters, which Aristotle called "final causation."
By "final causation," Aristotle did not mean a kind of causation that puts an end to becoming. He means instead the kind of causation that occurs when an entity feels the pull of future possibilities and organizes itself in light of that pull. The "pull" is another kind of causation. It is not that of a past event but rather that of a not-yet-realized possibility. This not-yet-realized possibility may be to repeat the past; it may be the pull of repetition. It may also be, instead, the pull of novelty, that is, the pull of actualizing some possibility that is not given by the past. Either way, it is more than efficient causation. It is, to coin a phrase, possibility-causation.
Thus, learning involves two kinds of causation: efficient causation, the push of the past, and final causation, the pull of the future. These two kinds of causation permeate all levels of reality, extending down into the very depths of matter. This means that even at the most fundamental levels, such as subatomic particles or elementary processes, there exists a dynamic interplay between the inherited influences from previous states and the attraction toward future potentialities. This interplay suggests a universe that is inherently creative and responsive, continuously shaping and reshaping itself through a process of becoming that encompasses both the retention of past experiences and the pursuit of novel possibilities. In this view, the cosmos is not a static entity but a living, evolving process, where every moment is an opportunity for new creation and discovery.
As we consider the narrative of cosmic evolution, we must appreciate the interplay of efficient causation and final causation, a process that has guided the universe's development from its earliest moments. This evolutionary journey is not merely a series of mechanical steps but a complex pattern formed from the threads of inherited influences and future possibilities. Each moment in this history has been an opportunity for learning and adaptation, not only in the biological sense but also in the broader context of cosmic learning.
This cosmic learning process, as Matthew Segall suggests, involves a form of sentience or feeling present even in the most fundamental particles of the universe. It is a universe that feels, responds, and evolves, continually influenced by its past and drawn toward its potential futures. This understanding shifts our perception of reality, highlighting the creativity and responsiveness of the cosmos. We, as conscious beings, are part of this ongoing process, inheriting billions of years of cosmic learning while also contributing to the unfolding story. The universe, then, is not a static backdrop for our existence but an evolving entity in which we play a role, shaping and reshaping the possibilities of what it can become.
- Jay McDaniel
A Universal Learning Process:
The Evolution of Meaning
Paperback – June 27, 2024 by
Brendan Graham Dempsey
Click here.
In this first volume of his book series The Evolution of Meaning, Dempsey introduces a theory of meaning based in thermodynamics and information processing. If the acquisition of meaningful information is what allows entities to keep far from equilibrium, we can appreciate cosmic complexification through evolution as a learning process.
Tracking the trajectory of this learning process through the emergent levels of Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture, we see how meaning takes on new shades of depth and informational richness across scales.
By the time we reach the domain of human culture, we can recognize notions of meaning, value, and the sacred as extensions of more fundamental processes on which they are based but to which they cannot be reduced. This framework allows us to situate human meaning-making within its broader evolutionary context and will inform the attempt in future volumes to track the complexification of such meanings across human history.
Tracking the trajectory of this learning process through the emergent levels of Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture, we see how meaning takes on new shades of depth and informational richness across scales.
By the time we reach the domain of human culture, we can recognize notions of meaning, value, and the sacred as extensions of more fundamental processes on which they are based but to which they cannot be reduced. This framework allows us to situate human meaning-making within its broader evolutionary context and will inform the attempt in future volumes to track the complexification of such meanings across human history.