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Ethics and Evolution
| Article
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11545 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
4,173 Words |
| Author
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Erich Jantsch
Erich Jantsch (1929-1980) was a lecturer, founding editor of
Technology Forecasting, and author of several books. His last
book was The Self-Organizing Universe (New York: Pergamon
Press, Inc., 1980.) |
Such a beauty, set beside
So brief a season,
Suggests to our stunned reason
This bleak surmise:
The world was made to hold
No end or telos,
And if - as some would tell us -
There is a goal,
it's not ourselves.
- Joseph Brodsky, The Butterfly
Ethics And Morality
In a structure-oriented view, ethics is often understood as a metaphysical category, as a set of rules of behavior that is valid in an absolute sense or at least given as a logical a priori. This view is further enhanced by the claim to absolute validity raised by religions and ideologies which incorporate ethics for pragmatic ends. The only legitimate attitude, in such a view, is then adaptation, with the highest value being survival. Since survival of the individual is an impossible goal, at least for sexually reproducing organisms, survival of the species usually substitutes as nature's goal as well as a tenable guiding image for mankind. This is an equilibrium view which corresponds to the tacit assumption that he present state of evolution, and especially the human species, constitutes the ultimate aim of evolution, the permanent platform which was meant to be reached. Had an adaptation-and-survival ethics really dominated evolution at any stage, evolution would have come to an end then and there. To set the human state today as being absolute is just another hubris stage today as being absolute is just another hubris to which science seems to contribute more than willingly.
In contrast, in a process-oriented view which emphasizes the evolution of systems, self determination is the focus of interest. Ethics here refers to the dynamics of systems, not the stabilization of a particular structure. But the self-organization dynamics at different levels of evolution emphasize different criteria. At the level of chemical dissipative structures, the core criterion is the ensurance of high energy throughout; at the level of the complex, sexually reproducing cell, it is variety; at the level of the organism, it is flexibility and the ability to cope with the unexpected; and so forth.
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