Human Evolution

In 1802, William Wordsworth wrote a poem usually known by its first line:

This short, seemingly simple poem is fraught with meaning. Wordsworth was one of the principal poets of the Romantic movement that arose in part as a reaction against the Enlightenment. For Wordsworth and the other Romantics, an important part of being human was the connection with Nature, and the fear was that humans lost something when all of Nature became something to be fragmented, studied, and analyzed on a part-by-part basis.

Wordsworth is saying that as a child he could see a rainbow and experience wonder and delight without the need for a scientific analysis of the visible light spectrum. The rainbow is “magical.” The visible light’s refraction into different wavelengths is not so “magical.” According to the Romantics, scientific analysis was too mechanistic and missed the whole of reality. Another Romantic poet, William Blake, said

        Now I a fourfold vision see
        And a fourfold vision is given to me
        Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
        And three fold in soft Beulahs night
        And twofold Always. May God us keep
        From Single vision & Newtons sleep

We now, of course, live in an increasingly mechanized world. When Blake and Wordsworth needed to go someplace, they would have walked, rode horses, or ridden in a horse-drawn carriage. Mechanization and science have enriched our lives in a variety of ways, but that enrichment also has associated costs. Our days are no longer bound each to each by natural piety; we no longer understand natural piety, and most of us are deep in Newton’s sleep.

As a reader of the “Beyond Mastery Newsletter,” you are probably aware of the so-called “New Age” movement, based on the astrological Age of Aquarius. “New-Age” thought has a lot in common with the thinking of the Romantic period. Much of the music of the 1960s and ’70s glorified the a communal lifestyle. If you’re old enough, you will remember Scott McKenzie’s If You’re Going to San Francisco and the musical, Hair. And, of course, you already know that things didn’t turn out quite as the hippies had expected.

Although some hippie communes still exist, most have faded into history. The Romantic poets have pretty much faded into history as well, as modern life doesn’t afford much opportunity

        To see a World in a Grain of Sand
        And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
        Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
        And Eternity in an hour
                William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”

Where we go from here isn’t clear. Perhaps that is so because the way forward is individual rather than cultural. Individuals were, of course, always on the forefront of major changes in cultural beliefs. Newton, for example, led the “scientific revolution,” just as Blake and the other Romantic poets led the “resistance.”

Currently, Quantum Mechanics seems to be the modern equivalent of the Newtonian physics of the early eighteenth century. The really interesting thing (at least to me) is that aspects of quantum mechanics seem to echo Blake’s concept of a world in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. Physics that was “too radical” for Einstein to accept, the idea of a particle being in two places at once has recently been confirmed.

Although I don’t understand it, quantum physics has evidently recently been able to show that a particle can be in two locations at the same time, something even Einstein thought was too “far out.” Mystics and saints, along with quantum physicists, also claim that bilocation is possible. As the hippies discovered, drug-induced “tripping” often resembles the visions of mystics and saints.

Who knows what is likely to happen when physicists discover that the mystics and saints were right about “reality” all along…. What we do know is that, although it took a century or two, Newtonian physics changed physical reality for most people. Most of us now use motorized transportation instead of horses, and we have computers and the Internet instead of quill pens and mail delivery services. Nevertheless, most of us maintain belief systems that would fit right in with those held by Newton’s contemporaries, before Charles Darwin came up with the Theory of Evolution, and long before the threat of Global Climate Change had occurred to anyone.

Perhaps in terms of human evolution, we have evolved as much as we are capable of evolving. It is, of course, always easier to consider things in retrospect than it is to anticipate the future. In science fiction, the technology advances, but humans stay the same (even when some are Vulcans and Romulans rather than human). At this point it seems as though most of us (at least those of us who aren’t quantum physicists) would do well to emulate the saints, mystics, and Romantic poets.