GRAZED - FT2 | Rossdanieleaton

All things living are in search of a better world.

Men, animals, plants, even unicellular organisms are constantly active. They are trying to improve their situation, or at least to avoid its deterioration. Even when asleep, the organism is actively maintaining the state of sleep: the depth (or else the shallowness) of sleep is a condition actively created by the organism, which sustains sleep (or else keeps the organism on the alert). Every organism is constantly preoccupied with the task of solving prob- lems. These problems arise from its own assessments of its condition and of its environment; conditions which the organism seeks to improve.

An attempted solution often proves to be misguided, in that it makes things worse. Then follow further attempts at solutions - further trial and error movements.

We can see that life - even at the level of the unicellular organism - brings something completely new into the world, something that did not previously exist: problems and active attempts to solve them; assessments, values; trial and error.

It may be supposed that, under the influence of Darwin's natural selection, it is the most active problem solvers, the seekers and the finders, the discoverers of new worlds and new forms of life, that undergo the fastest evolution.

Each organism also strives to stabilize its internal conditions of life and to maintain its individuality - an activity whose results biologists call 'homoeostasis'. Yet this too is an internal agitation, an internal activity: an activity that attempts to restrict the internal agitation, a feedback mechanism, a correction of errors. The homoeostasis must be incomplete. It must restrict itself. Were it completely successful, it would mean the death of the organism, or, at the very least, the temporary cessation of all its vital functions. Activity, agitation, search are essential for life, for perpetual restlessness, perpetual imperfection; for perpetual seeking, hoping, evaluating, finding, discovering, improving, for learning and for the creation of values; but also for perpetual error, the creation of negative values.

Darwinism teaches that organisms become adapted to the environment through natural selection. And it teaches that they are passive throughout this process. But it seems to me far more important to stress that the organisms find, invent and reorganize new environments in the course of their search for a better world. They build nests, dams, little hills and mountains. But their most momentous creation has probably been the transformation of the atmosphere surrounding the earth by enriching it with oxygen; this transformation was, in turn, a consequence of the discovery that sunlight can be eaten. The discovery of this inexhaustible food supply and of the countless ways of trapping the light created the kingdom of plants; and the discovery that plants can be eaten created the animal kingdom.

We ourselves have been created by the invention of a specifi-cally human language. As Darwin says (The Descent of Man, part 1, chapter III), the use and development of the human language 'reacted on the mind itself. The statements of our language can describe a state of affairs, they can be objectively true or false. So the search for objective truth can begin- the acquisition of human knowledge. The search for truth, particularly in the natural sciences, no doubt counts among the best and greatest things that life has created in the course of its long search for a better world.

But have we not destroyed the environment with our natural science? No! We have made great mistakes - all living creatures make mistakes. It is indeed impossible to foresee all the unin- tended consequences of our actions. Here science is our greatest hope: its method is the correction of error.

I do not want to end this preface without saying something about the success of the search for a better world during the eighty-seven years of my life, a time of two senseless world wars and of criminal dictatorships. In spite of everything, and although we have had so many failures, we, the citizens of the western democracies, live in a social order which is better (because more favourably disposed to reform) and more just than any other in recorded history. Further improvements are of the greatest urgency. (Yet improvements that increase the power of the state often bring about the opposite of what we are seeking.)