The evolutionary process
has not been suspended or diverted but is still going ahead at full speed in
the context of incessant change in the environment. The question of the
evolutionary significance of human life is a necessary subject for human
beings puzzled by the fact that they are born, live for a limited period and
then all die. The implication is that there may be a significance in the life
of human beings which is not shared by other species.
Is this likely? With Thomas Huxley at St. Andrews, Herbert Spencer played
the only game of golf he ever played; sitting on the cliff watching some boys
bathing Spencer recorded: "We marvelled over the fact, seeming especially
strange when they are no longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should
dominate over all other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on
earth." That this is so was surely only due to that evolutionary oddity, the
large human brain. The role of the human brain has been an interesting
evolutionary experiment - an animal body (emotions, sensations) with an
advanced brain. The gain in knowledge achieved by trial and error by the
genome results in the formation of an image of the material world within the
living system. (Lorenz 1977: 23) But the growth in the size of the human brain
has vastly extended and accelerated this process. Not only can the individual
human being be seen as mapping his personal environment in his brain and body
but humanity collectively can be seen as a great mosaic eye, a many-faceted
eye opening on all time and all space, looking to the future as well as the
past.
It is from this ability to model and predict that we feel the urgency of
the question about the significance of human life. A disadvantage of the
evolution of foresight is that it also foresees death; how to include death
in the model. Whether or not human life in general can be seen as having an
evolutionary significance, there is the separate problem of the meaning or
purpose of the individual human life.
Evolution has had a direction, even if it has not had a purpose or
meaning. The new element is our awareness of the direction. The direction has
been towards greater complexity as a means of increasing adaptability to
environmental change and towards increased ability to manipulate and modify
the environment in the interests of survival. The significance of human life
in general can be seen in this process, the significance of the individual
human life as part of this process. If we are right in identifying the
direction of evolution, then we can speculate about the future, extrapolating
the direction of evolutionary change, considering the possibilities opening
up for future human evolution.