Philosophical Foundations of Education

Evolutionary Humanism: origins and background

I. Evolutionary Humanism is an extension/revision of Classical Humanism with a focus on evolution and evolutionary process in nature and human constructs.

To the Evolutionary Humanists, the concept of evolution, of things (material, biological and non-biological, e.g. earth, as well as and non-material, e.g. human knowledge) changing in a dynamic non-repeating progressive trend toward ever higher organization and differentiation is an absolute reality.


II. Evolutionary Humanist believes a process-driven evolution-centered viewpoint is fundamental to any educational strategy that hopes to keep pace with a rapidly changing society.

A. Evolutionary Humanism provides a valid, internally consistent, and important theme and is truly useful as conception of absolute reality.

B. Biological evolution is only one aspect of a much larger process. There is also the in-organic or cosmic sector and the "psycho-social" or human phase. These phases succeed each other in time, and evolve one from the other. Psycho-social evolution is the evolution of consciousness, thought, and awareness.

C. Humanismís beginnings coincide with the post-World War II period of tremendous social, political, economic, cultural, and even environmental upheaval. Contributing to the stress of the times was the widespread breakdown of traditional beliefs and a growing realization that a purely materialistic outlook alone could not provide an adequate basis for the fulfillment of human life. At the same time a tremendous growth in knowledge began anew.

The following diagram illustrates the relationship of Evolutionary Humanism to its contemporary and preceding philosophies and educational theories.

D. Humanism's initial thesis held little room for the mystical, even rejected religious inspiration and ìrevealedî truth as unnecessary for maintenance and growth of human culture. Here while man is a natural product of countless years of evolution, nonetheless, we are uniquely significant and immensely important as an agent of the further evolution of life on earth and particularly of sentience as the pinnacle of evolutionary achievement.

E. Man is also for the first time in earth history, a single species for all practical purposes dominant in every realm, commanding all resources and with the ability and means to extinguish vast numbers of other species and indeed much of biodiversity entirely and at will. Evolutionary Humanist hold that man is the most important evolutionary force in nature at the present time, and will guide the future of evolution consciously or not. And consciousness in man, its further evolution to a unified field theory of sorts is of the utmost importance.

F. As best described by Julian Huxley in his book of the same name, "Evolutionary Humanism is ìbased on our understanding of man and his (present and historical) relations with the rest of his environment". It focuses on man as an organism, though certainly a unique one. It is organized around ìthe facts and ideas of evolution, taking account of the discovery that man is part of a comprehensive evolutionary process, and cannot avoid playing a decisive role in it." (Huxley, 1964) Or as so eloquently stated in Pierre Teilhard De Chardinís Le Phenomene Humain (1955):

And now, as a germination of planetary dimensions, comes the thinking layer which over its full extent develops and intertwines its fibres, not to confuse and neutralise them but to reinforce them in the living unity of a single tissue.

Really I can see no coherent, and therefore scientific, way of grouping this immense succession of facts but as a gigantic psycho-biological operation, a sort of mega-synthesis, the 'super-arrangement' to which all the thinking elements of the earth find themselves today individually and collectively subject.

Huxley states, "man's religious aim must therefore be to achieve not a static, but a dynamic spiritual equilibrium" and in this sense, religion can be regarded as "applied spiritual ecology". Both Teilhard de Chardin and Huxleyís Evolutionary Humanism predate James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, and may have influenced its development. All three are visionary philosophical positions that firmly establish man within nature, as its cognitive agent, perhaps functioning as a neural network for the earth's thought processes.

Evolutionary Humanism: implications for Education

I. Education is by definition life-long learning to the Evolutionary Humanist, but more than that, it is the history of all learned concepts, from instinct in lower animals to the highly reflective thinking of humans.

A. Evolutionary Humanism as a theory for educational practice is lacking in specific strategies or explicit methods.

B. Of all the ideas to be investigated, in any and all contexts, focus should be on the "evolutionary process ó the most powerful and most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on earth" (Huxley, 1964). In Huxley's educational system, the evolutionary idea is the central unifying theme of learning, and evolutionary biology is the central and key subject in the curriculum.

C. Julian Huxley's Evolutionary Humanistic view of education, consistent with his explanation of its origins in the biology and psycho-sociological development of man, leads him to regard it as an entirely social process. He says that for him, "education is an organ of man in society, whose basic function is to ensure the continuity and further advance of the evolutionary process on earth by the transmission and translation of tradition."

D. Evolutionary process is stressed in all aspects of learning. Subjects are approached only in the context of wholes, as theme-based inquiry, Layered Learning. Cyclic exploration of the basic disciplines with ever deepening inquiry (grade-level). Otherwise, there is no major change in the suggested structure of educational systems (i.e. elementary, middle, high, college remain).

E. Huxley suggest an arrangement with social service organizations such as the Youth Conservation Corps, the Peace Corp. and others. Transitional service (after school, summers, between high school and college, and thereafter) in these organizations and other opportunities in the community will mean the forging of lasting impressions in the learnerís memory through real application of knowledge to real problems, in service to a community in real need and truly appreciative of the studentís efforts.

F. Successful realization of evolutionary humanistic values in education will mean supporting an educational systems that will, in embracing evolutionary ideas as central to teaching and learning, be the prime psycho-social organ for transmitting ad transforming human culture.

I. Evolutionary Humanism is already having an impact on the theory of neural networks and cyberspace.


II. Evolutionary Humanism views consciousness as a process in human evolution, and as mediated by such emerging technologies and techniques as global mass communication, telepresence, the Internet and the World Wide Web, we may indeed be in the initial stages of a new evolutionary level.


III. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (a Jesuit priest, paleontologist, philosopher) is often credited with the more encompassing, evolutionary and visionary view of communications technology's potential value in furthering human consciousness evolution. Teilhard de Chardin's description of the ìnoosphereî is strikingly prescient of the ultimate potential of the Internet as it might evolve to serve as a global mind pool, a cyberspace in which people can meet and exchange ideas, collaborate, upload self-executing interactive and active evolving simulation programs, participate in Virtual Realities, and eventually.... who knows what else?!

A. Teilhard de Chardin's 1955 book Le Phenomene Humain:

We are faced with a harmonised collectivity of consciousnesses equivalent to a sort of super-consciousness. The idea is that of the earth not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form, functionally, no more than a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection.

This is the general form in which, by analogy and in symmetry with the past, we are led scientifically to envisage the future of mankind, without whom no terrestrial issue is open to the terrestrial demands of our action.

To the common sense of the 'man in the street' and even to a certain philosophy of the world to which nothing is possible save what has always been, perspectives such as these will seem highly improbable. But to a mind become familiar with the fantastic dimensions of the universe they will, on the contrary, seem quite natural, because they are simply proportionate with the astronomical immensities.