and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, famously made the evolution of the cosmos the central theme of his posthumous book The Phenomenon of Man (1955). Here he embraced cosmic evolution, and argued for a teleological evolution in w…“earth to earth, ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust” to be literally true. Cosmic evolution provides us with a master narrative in which our own birth, life, and death are integral parts of the universe, without recourse to the supernatur…24. Smocovitis, Unifying Biology, pp. 142–153: 148. Connie Barlow’s book of readings, Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), clearly shows these wider evolutionary themes.
Cosmos and…
Brian Swimme
physicist · 3 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Swimme is a cosmologist and systems thinker who extends evolutionary theory into a comprehensive narrative of cosmic development, drawing on Teilhard de Chardin's vision of evolution as teleological process culminating in collective consciousness. The course readings invoke him within discussions of how cosmic evolution provides a secular master narrative that positions human existence and consciousness as emergent properties of universal evolution rather than supernatural phenomena. His work appears here as foundational to understanding how systems thinking and evolutionary frameworks create meaning-making structures relevant to AI and emergence in contemporary technological culture.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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