where do we come from?

509 Pages·2017·4.37 MB·English

WHERE DO WE COME FROM?
WHAT ARE WE?
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
John Scales Avery
February 13, 2018
2
Contents
1 GAUGUIN’S PAINTING AND QUESTIONS 7
1.1 The Bishop of Orl´eans’ catechism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2 Gauguin’s painting and attempted suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Answers from both religion and science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 LOST IN THE STARS 13
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Mesopotamia, 4000 BC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Ancient Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4 Eratosthenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.5 Aristarchus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.6 Copernicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.7 Tycho Brahe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.8 Johannes Kepler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.9 Newton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.10 Albert Einstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.11 Edwin Hubble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.12 The Big Bang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.13 Suggestions for further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3 LIFE ON EARTH 57
3.1 Formation of the Sun and the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2 The history of evolutionary theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.3 Modern theories of the origin of life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.4 Life elsewhere in the universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4 OUR ANCESTORS 91
4.1 Timeline for the evolution of life on the Earth . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.2 Early ancestors of humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3 Ardipithicus ramidus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.4 Australopithecus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3
4 CONTENTS
4.5 Y-chromosomal DNA and mitochondrial DNA . . . . . . . . . . 104
4.6 Exodus: Out of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5 EMOTIONS 121
5.1 Ethology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.2 Darwin’s book on emotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.3 Brain chemistry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
5.4 Nervous systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.5 Chemical synapses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.6 Neurotransmitters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
5.7 Oxytocin, the “love hormone” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.8 Mother love and rage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6 TRIBALISM. NATIONALISM AND WAR 149
6.1 Rank-determining conflicts compared with group conflicts . . . . 149
6.2 The accelerating speed of cultural evolution . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.3 War threatens human survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6.4 Nationalism: a dangerous anachronism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.5 The devil’s dynamo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
7 THE BIRTH OF ETHICS 191
7.1 Ethics can overwrite tribalism! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
7.2 The Ten Commandments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.3 The life and message of Gautama Buddha . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
7.4 Confucius and Chinese civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
7.5 Lao Tzu: Unity with nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
7.6 Socrates and Plato: Dialogues on ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
7.7 The ethical message of Greek drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
7.8 Christian ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
7.9 The ethical message of Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
7.10 East-West exchanges in Toledo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
7.11 Tolstoy, Gandhi and non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
8 THE INFORMATION EXPLOSION 239
8.1 The invention of writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
8.2 The invention of paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
8.3 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
8.4 The Industrial Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
8.5 A revolution in communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
8.6 The invention of computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
8.7 The collective human consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
CONTENTS 5
9 SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL 275
9.1 The warning voice of Malthus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
9.2 Growth cannot continue forever . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
9.3 Schumacher’s book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
9.4 The economics of happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
9.5 Gandhian economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
9.6 The threat of catastrophic climate change . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
9.7 Transition Towns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
9.8 Human society as a superorganism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
9.9 Population and food supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
9.10 Sustainable future populations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
9.11 Population stabilization today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
9.12 Refugees from climate change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
9.13 Social values and levels of consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
9.14 The transition to a sustainable economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
9.15 Population and goods per capita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
10 RESPECT FOR NATURE 363
10.1 Learning to live in harmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
10.2 Learning from pre-industrial cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
10.3 The earth is our mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
10.4 Crimes against indigenous peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
10.5 Realities of climate change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
11 ETHICS FOR THE FUTURE 421
11.1 Some goals for the future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
11.2 The ethics of Mahatma Gandhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
11.3 The ethics of Albert Einstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
11.4 The ethics of Saint Francis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
11.5 The ethics of Pope Francis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
11.6 All humans are brothers and sisters! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
11.7 The ethics of Henry David Thoreau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
11.8 The message of Bertha von Suttner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
11.9 Helen Keller’s message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
11.10 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . 449
11.11 The voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
11.12 ICAN wins the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
11.13 Compassion versus greed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
11.14 The fragility of our complex civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
11.15 Looking towards the future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
11.16 Chaplin’s speech: Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
6 CONTENTS
Chapter 1
GAUGUIN’S PAINTING AND
QUESTIONS
1.1 The Bishop of Orl´eans’ catechism
Whenhewasbetweentheagesof11and16,PaulGauguin1 attendedaCatholic
boarding school in France. At the school, the Bishop Dupanloup of Orl´eans
himself taught the class in liturgy. The bishop had devised a catechism in
which three main questions were asked: “Where does humanity come from?
Where is it going? How do we proceed?”
1.2 Gauguin’s painting and attempted suicide
It is possible that these questions influenced Gauguin when, many years later,
he began an enormous painting whose title asked very similar questions. By
this time Gauguin had become an influential post-impressionist artist, the
leader of the symbolist movement. Gauguin was admired by a small circle of
artists but, like his close friend Vincent van Gogh, he was unrecognized by the
larger public until after his death.2
In 1891, when he began the the huge painting, Gauguin was living on the
island of Tahiti, where he had gone in search of a society free from Euro-
pean prejudices. Dogged by failing health and financial worries, he planned
to commit suicide after finishing what he regarded as his best painting. He
1(1848-1903)
2Gauguin’s prices reached a new peak in February 2015 when the New York Times
revealed that his Nafea Faa Ipoipo (Quand te maries-tu ?) had been acquired in a private
deal for $300 million. At the time, the painting was part of a Paul Gauguin retrospective
at the Beyeler Foundation. Sold by the artist for FF 500 in 1895, the painting suddenly
became the most expensive artwork in the world!
7
8 WHERE DO WE COME FROM?
did, indeed, attempt suicide by taking an overdose of arsenic, but the attempt
failed, and he lived until 1903.
1.3 Answers from both religion and science
Gauguin’s famous painting can symbolize the questions that humans through-
out the ages have asked. Is there a purpose to life? What is our place in
nature? Is the earth the center of the universe? What will happen in the
future? Are humans special, or are the similar to other animals? Is human
nature good or evil? Why do we sometimes act with loving care, and at other
times commit genocides? Can war be eliminated?
Both science and religion have proposed answers to these central questions.
Since I am a scientist, this book will approach the central problems of human
existence by looking at the gradual development of scientific knowledge about
our place in the universe. However, religious ethics have played an enormously
important role, as will be discussed in Chapters 7, 10 and 11.
Most thoughtful observers today believe that human civilization is entering
a period of crisis. As all indices move exponentially upward, including popula-
tion, industrial production, scientific development and the power of technology
over nature, the problem of achieving a stable and peaceful world remains se-
rious, challenging and unsolved.
Can humanity and the biosphere survive the todays explosive growth of
population and industry? Can we escape the twin threats of catastrophic
climate change and thermonuclear war? Can we avoid a large-scale famine
caused by population growth, climate change and the end of the fossil fuel
era? Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Figure 1.1: D’ou` Venons Nous - Que Sommes Nous - Ou` Allons Nous.
1.3. ANSWERS FROM BOTH RELIGION AND SCIENCE 9
Figure 1.2: Where do we come from?
Figure 1.3: What are we?
10 WHERE DO WE COME FROM?
Figure 1.4: Where are we going?
Figure 1.5: Both religion and science have attempted to answer these
questions.