complexity intro
change & stability
prog. complexity
more complexity
homo nobilis
references
discovery story
implications
invitation
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The Advent of Homo nobilis, stellaris (IV) |
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For the origin and driving force of the "nobilis" designation, we now turn to another, and even more fundamental law of the universe - the law of Change & Stability, which is not only the foundation of the law of Progressive Complexity, but governs everything that exists and goes on in this universe. Everything.
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It is an incredibly beautiful, and immensely powerful law (see CHANGE & STABILITY in these pages). We have already seen it at work everywhere in these pages, as it provides the Stability which is manifest in the continued existence - over billions and millions of years - of the many stages of the evolution of Life from amoeba to humankind. After all, amoeba, as all the other fundamental stages of evolution, at every level of Complexity - and including the antecedents of our kind - are still with us.
But this law is also the driving force of Change which - in conjunction with its inseparable Stability - drives all things to progressively higher levels of Complexity. Beautiful and elegant beyond all comprehension.
The Law of Growth and Maturity
In living organisms the law of Change & Stability also manifests as the law of Growth (change) and Maturity (stability). And here we find the origin and driving force of the "nobilis" designation.
We now turn to a familiar example of Growth and Maturity to show how "altruism" arises in the mature phase of all living organisms.
| Almost everyone on this Earth has seen a naked little sparrow chick lying dead on the ground beneath its nest. This is the all too frequent result of having been shouldered out of its nest by its siblings in their struggle to be first with open beak when the food arrives. |
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Yet, the next year, when the surviving siblings have matured, and have their own clutch of chicks, they wear out their wings to bring food to their offspring.
With the advent of the mature phase, there is a total shift in polarity from a total concern with the survival and well being of the self - often even at the cost of other lives - to a total concern with the survival and well being of others, sometimes even at the cost of the own life.
And we encounter these same dynamics in all living organisms. We see it in puppies, kittens and piglets as they struggle for access to a teat, and we even see it among seedlings when time lapse movies reveal what one investigator has described as "an appallingly ruthless struggle over a place in the light".
Yet, and again, once these organisms have reached maturity, they devote all of their lives to reproducing, nurturing and survival - according to the limits of their capability - of their offspring.
The ferocity of a lioness, or a she-bear in defence of her young is legendary, and even a little feathered bit of fluff such as a sandpiper will feign a broken wing to lure a predator away from her nest. And most of us have seen the recent news story of the badly singed cat which had gone back into a burning building, in New York, five times to bring out her kittens, one by one. Even a tree devotes all of its energy to reproduce and nurture - as far as it is capable - its seed.
The same is true even of stars. In their growth phase, and in order to grow, a star must acquire the energy and matter for its growth. Yet once 'mature', it blazes away its accumulated energy to nurture all manner of Life as far and wide as its warmth and energy will reach.
Keep in mind that these are all fundamental universal laws - that they govern from one end of the universe to the other, and that these things are going on all over the universe. The dedication of mature organisms to the survival and well being of their offspring - of lives other than the self - is fundamental to the dynamics of Life in order to perpetuate Life in a universe governed by the law of Growth and Decay.
This dedication to the survival and well being of their offspring reaches its highest expression in the higher animals, due to the necessary long extended juvenile phases of the life forms at the higher levels of biological complexity, and its ultimate expression in the mothers of our own kind. None of us would have survived the first days on this Earth without our mothers.
And while this has been going on since the first ephemeral bit of RNA to stir the waters of the Earth devoted all of its energy to spawn new bits of such RNA - and since mothers have been 'mothers' through endless eons, there has been a deep and profound change within our time. Which is next.
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