Mankind and the Planet

Pages:
 §  1 
 §  2 
 §  3 
 §  4 
 §  5 
 §  6 
 §  7 
 §  8 
 §  9 
 §  10 
 §  11 
 §  12 
 §  13 
 §  14 
 §  15 
 §  16 
 §  17 
 §  18 
 §  19 
 §  20 

Mankind and the Planet, past, present and future Philosophical Speculations

Page 3

4. Man and Mankind constitute the aim of the universe, since that is how they came about.

5. If life and human beings exist only in a tiny corner of the universe, on a single spot called earth, then, in the vast recesses of space and matter, this spot is not the gravitational, but the purposive centre of the universe; the milliards of solar systems and galaxies are then nothing but its 'environment' 'humus', 'mould', just as this spot is the humus and environment for life and mankind.

6. The disproportion of mass as between earth and all that it contains and the material rest of the universe should not blind us to the proportionality of relevance, i.e., the relevant importance of the different parts or contents of the universe in forming a picture of the whole. The relevance may well be inversely proportional to the mass. A confusion or a paralleling of both these proportions characterises science because science is impressed by the proportion of mass and judges its relevance to the whole accordingly.

7. If mankind and its immediate base, the animal and plant world, constitute the evolutionary summit and, therefore, the central focus of the universe, the remainder must be imagined as spheres of environment for life.. Earth itself would be the first sphere of that environment, the solar system would be the second sphere, our galaxy the third sphere; an ultimate sphere would comprise the remainder, whatever the number of differentiated spheres to be be interpolated, in this very rough large scale scheme. Even the ultimate material sphere, the main mass of world matter, must be conceived of as linked to the phenomenon of life, however tiny, quantitatively, this may appear in comparison with its enormous non-living matrix. The latter is there 'for life' whether as refuse, building material, environment – a comprehensive architectural whole of realms that contain one another like Chinese boxes, the innermost being the stage of life. The world is as large as life requires it to be for its entire development in all eternity.

We note that there may well be an interesting sequence of magnitudes yet to be discovered. Research into the subject of quantities might look at a comparison of the mass of living matter on earth at a given moment in time with non-living matter on the earth, of the latter to the mass of the solar system and to the estimated mass of the remaining spheres – estimates, which, according to recent research in physics, are no longer beyond the grasp of science. Such information would give us some idea of the diminishing – or extending – rate of the quantity mass of the universe,seen in terms of the relation of the non-living to the living.