Order and Causation

The experience of the world as orderly, governed by natural laws, has been central to natural philosophy from its very beginning. This is why the Greeks called the world kosmos ("harmonious order"). The concept of order implies the existence of definite relationships among things and events. As Ervin Laszlo notes in his Preliminary Statement, "In a world where no system is entirely closed, that is, isolated from its surroundings, blind chance cannot exist: there are interconnections that provide a complex, if sometimes extremely subtle, input to all events."

Aristotle’s Four Causes

"Causation" refers to ordered relationships in time. When we ask "why?" concerning an event, we may mean either "What purpose did this event have?" or "What earlier circumstances caused this event?" The answer to the former question is an explanation by final causes; the answer to the latter is an explanation in terms of cause-and-effect relationships.

Aristotle postulated four causes for all phenomena, two internal and two external. The two internal causes are matter and form. The two external causes are the efficient cause, which generates the phenomenon thought its action, and the final cause, which determines the action of the efficient cause by giving it a goal or purpose. In all subsequent philosophies, the causes of phenomena have been explored within the four dimensions defined by Aristotle.

Vitalism and Teleology

In modern science, under the influence of physics, the concept of cause has been reduced to the efficient cause. The modern term "causality" denotes the relationship between the efficient cause and its effect. The question of whether there is, in addition, a final cause reappeared in biology in the debate between mechanists and vitalists. While mechanists hold that all biological phenomena will eventually be explained in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry, vitalists postulate the existence of a nonphysical causal agent directing the life processes that defies mechanistic explanations. Teleology—from the Greek telos ("purpose")—asserts that the causal agent postulated by vitalism is purposeful, that there is purpose and design in nature.

Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism

Within evolutionary thought, the mechanistic thinking is represented by the school of neo-Darwinism, which is taught today as established theory of evolution in biology departments around the world. It is important, in my view, to distinguish between Darwinism and neo-Darwinism.

Darwin’s central insight that all forms of life have emerged from a common ancestry by a continuous process of variations, followed by natural selection, is accepted by all serious scientists today. What is mechanistic is the neo-Darwinist assertion that all evolutionary variation results from random mutations—that is, from random genetics changes—followed by natural selection. The geneticist Jacques Monod expressed the neo-Darwinist dogma clearly and forcefully: "Chance alone is the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere."

In evolutionary thought, then, the debate between vitalism and mechanism is reduced to two stark alternatives. The source of nature’s creativity is either a purposeful design, or a series of random genetic changes.

The Systems View of Evolution

The currently emerging theory of living systems, which includes insights from chaos and complexity theory, implies a new understanding of evolution that allows us to overcome the debate between mechanism and teleology. Rather than seeing evolution as the result of random mutations, we are beginning to recognize the creative unfolding of life in forms of ever-increasing diversity and complexity as an inherent characteristic of all living systems.

The key insight that leads to the new understanding of evolution is the recognition that living systems are open systems, feeding on a continual flow of energy and matter. Detailed studies of the physics and chemistry of this flow of matter and energy throughout the system have resulted in the theory of dissipative structures, developed by Ilya Prigogine.

A dissipative structure is an open system that maintains itself in state far from equilibrium. The dynamics of a dissipative structure specifically includes the spontaneous emergence of new form of order at points of instability. This phenomenon of emergence, also known as self-organization, has been recognized as the dynamic origin of growth, development, and evolution.

According to the new systemic understanding of evolution, the driving force of the unfolding of life is not to be found in the chance events of random mutations, but in life’s inherent tendency to create novelty through the spontaneous emergence of increasing complexity and order.

Matter and Form

Throughout the history of Western science there has been a fundamental tension between two very different approaches to the understanding of nature, which are represented by Aristotle’s two internal causes. One is the study of matter (or substance, structure, quantity), the other the study of form (or pattern, order, quality). In classical science the study of matter was dominant, but in systems science the study of form has forcefully re-emerged.

Systems thinking is contextual thinking—thinking in terms of relationships, connectedness, and context. The early systems thinkers defined the pattern of organization of a system as a configuration of relationships. The ecologists recognized the network as the basic pattern of living systems. The cyberneticists identified feedback as a circular pattern of causal links; and the new mathematics of complexity is a mathematics of visual patterns.

Order and meaning

Systems science sees all matter, living and nonliving, as fundamentally ordered and organized. The patterns of organization are patterns of relationships of two kinds—relationships among a system’s components and relationships between the system as a whole and its environment. The letter kind is what we mean by context. Systems science explains the properties of things in terms of their context within a larger whole. If we define meaning as the human experience of context, we can say that nature, as described by systems science, is ordered, organized and profoundly meaningful.

Cognition, consciousness, and purpose

One important difference between Aristotle’s scheme and contemporary systems science is that final causes (purposes, goals, plans, blueprints, etc.) play no role in the systems view of evolution, as far as non-human evolution is concerned. In this respect, the new systems view agrees with classical science. However, final causes are important in the study of human affairs.

One of the great achievements of contemporary systems science, in my view, is the clarification of the relationship between purpose and human consciousness. According to the so-called Santiago theory of cognition, the process of knowing is identical with the very process of life and thus an essential characteristic of all living systems. This means that all of living nature is viewed as mindful and intelligent without the need to assume an overall design or purpose.

For humans (and to some extent for other primates as well) cognition involves abstraction and language, which entails self-awareness, conceptual thinking, values, and all the other characteristics of human consciousness and culture.

With our power of abstraction, we are able to form mental images as representations of physical phenomena. The ability to form such mental images is necessary for the identification of a purpose, or goal, and thus necessary for final causes. This means that final causes play no role in the non-human world (apart form some species of higher animals), but are a critical factor in all social and cultural phenomena involving human beings.

Is There a Purpose in Nature?—Summary

Within the context of contemporary systems science, the following answer to this question might be given. Nature is ordered, organized, and profoundly meaningful. All of living nature is also mindful and intelligent. The identification of a purpose requires the ability to form mental images, which is characteristic of human consciousness. Purpose, design, goals, and strategies are critical factors in all social and cultural phenomena involving human beings, but play no role in non-human nature, apart from some species of higher animals.

The central issue of the Workshop, inspired by a statement in a speech by President Václav Havel
⁵⁾, was: Can we recover a sense of purpose and meaning in nature that would fill the spiritual vacuum that is characteristic of our time, and that would lead us to acting with a shared responsibility toward the Earth?

Our discussions remained within the framework of science; we distinguished between purpose and meaning. Meaning is the human expirience of context, which gives us a sense of belonging. The context we were concerned with is ecological, or "Gaian," formulated in terms of systems concepts. The sense of belonging leads to a certain behavior, because when you belong to a household (oikos), you behave in certain ways. Our key challenge is to build ecologically sustainable societies.

Purpose, in the sense of having a goal, an intention, is an aspect of human consciousness. In non-human nature, there are no goals or purposes. However, the roots of human purpose can be found in a certain directedness of evolution, which we may call "purposiveness," meaning that it is something that looks like a purpose.

We are intimately connected with all life and with nonliving nature. The roots of life, including the phenomena of consciousness and purpose, reach down deeply into the nonliving world.

Session 1: Basic Terms

CAPRA: We want to discuss whether the concept of purpose is useful and meaningful in science to understand the organization and behavior of non-human living systems. To enter into this discussion, we first need to come to some shared understanding of our key terms. This is the task of this first session.

It seems to me that meaning is always connected with context. When we want to understand the meaning of something, we connect it with things outside itself, in its environment, in its past, or in the future.

For example, we can analyze a legal document, or a literary text, by establishing the various contexts of its words and phrases. This can be a purely intellectual exercise. Then, there is a deeper sense of meaning. If the context of a phenomenon, or of an idea, includes my own self, or touches me in some way, I will find it meaningful. This implies an emotional dimension.

Two different people may both understand the context of something intellectually, but only one of them may find it meaningful. So, this deeper meaning is subjective, and it can be shared within a particular culture.

FIALA: We may note that in German, there are two different words for the two kinds of meaning: Sinn (deeper meaning) and Bedeutung .

CAPRA: I would like to propose, then, to define meaning as the human experience of context. With this understanding, I believe that we can say that nature, as described by systems science, is ordered, organized, and profoundly meaningful. We shall return to that later on.

LUISI: Purpose, for me, has no meaning apart from a conscious thinker. Both "purpose" and "meaning" are human constructs. Doing science is much easier if you accept that.

CAPRA: Purpose, in my view, implies a mental image, a mental projection into the future. When I have a purpose while I do something, it means that I have something in mind. A plant, a bacterium, or an ecosystem do not have something in mind, to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, the concept of purpose, in my view, should be reserved for a level of consciousness characterized by abstraction, language, and conceptual thinking; a level that includes the ability to hold mental images.

It seems to me that people often use "purpose" when they really are talking about meaning.

LENTON: Meaning, as a sense of belonging to a larger whole, is enough for me. I don't have to assume purpose.

HO: Meaning, for me, is the experience of wholeness. As Haldane put it, "life is nature expressing herself as a whole."

CAPRA: It also seems to me that the core of President Havel's statement is the reference to the loss of meaning, of the experience of context, of wholeness.

CÍLEK: We are asking for purpose at the moment when we lost it in our lives. Archaic man did not need to ask this question.

NEUBAUER: I very much like the definition that meaning is an experience of context, only I would not limit it to a human experience. Context, however, means not only contact with the immediate environment, but can also refer to a potentiality. There are contexts that involve time, contexts that are dynamic. Purpose, for me, is such a special case of experience of context.

LASZLO: I want to see whether we can rescue some sense of "purpose," or "purposiveness." It seems to me that "following a definite purpose" refers to the Aristotelian concept of final cause. When you spoke of meaning, by the way, I jotted down: "Meaning is the experience of non-random order."

CAPRA: Then, when you say "the meaning of something ," that turns it into context.

LASZLO: Yes. I would like to suggest now, somewhat daringly, that purpose in the Aristotelian sense as final cause has really no place in natural science. If there were a goal that actually directs a process, this would mean that the future, in some sense, is influencing the present. In the present, of course, we can project the future, and that projection can guide our actions. But that requires consciousness.

I wonder, though, whether we could not find something equivalent, metaphorically, in the domains of nature. It seems to me that there is something in nature that we could call "purposiveness." For example, when an embryo develops, it does so in a certain direction, always adjusting to local conditions, of course.

There is a potential in nature that is unfolding, not only in individuals, but also in ecosystems, in the biosphere. There is a direction built in, a directionality as an implicit potential. In that sense I would say that there is a metaphoric equivalent to the human purpose.

LUISI: Using that metaphor, however, requires consciousness.

LASZLO: Yes, but the dynamic equivalent of potential unfolding is there in nature.

TU: We can distinguish between a focused and a diffuse sense of purpose, between a "strong claim" and a "weak claim," so to speak. The strong claim, as you pointed out, requires forming an image and therefore a certain kind of conceptual apparatus that we associate with a certain type of consciousness.

Regarding the weak claim, there is an argument in the human situation that the ability to focus on something, and yet to be able to forget about that focus, makes the real virtuoso. You act in such a way that the purposiveness is diffused.

CAPRA: To conclude this session, I would like to map out some of the agreements that have emerged. I found that there was a lot of agreement on "meaning," on the notion of meaning as the experience of context, or of wholeness. It was also pointed out that there are different kinds of context, and that, in particular, there are contexts that involve time, contexts that are dynamic. We can think of these in terms of a direction of development, a potential unfolding, which we may call "purposiveness." This would be "something like purpose." We also spoke of a "diffuse sense of purpose." So, there is this sense of a diffuse purposiveness in nature, which is connected with a potential unfolding of life. The focused sense of purpose, we agreed, implies a mental image. Finally, we agreed that the loss of meaning is really at the core of President Havel's statement. Meaning as the experience of context, of wholeness, is something we need to rekindle and preserve.

Session 2: Anthropomorphism

TU: I hope that this session will build upon the observations made in the morning. I think we realized that truth lies not in the left or right, but often in the nuances between them. We learned that the mode of thinking that is congenial to this kind of enterprise is not in terms of "either-or," but in terms of "both-and," i.e. in a more dialectic process.

I would like to begin by making a distinction between three problem areas. The first problem area is anthropocentrism, which can be seen as the inability to think outside of a human-centered universe. We suffer from that, and there are deep reasons why we suffer from it. This is something we want to avoid, something we want to transcend.

It is quite obvious that the rise of the modern West during the past two or three hundred years, very much informed by the Enlightenment mentality, has been the most powerful shaping discourse in the modern world. Whether we consider this as a form of anthropocentrism or not, this particular mode of thinking is so powerful that virtually all major spheres of interest in the world today are either intertwined with or inseparable from that particular mentality — world economy, democratic polity, research universities, military and civilian bureaucracies, and so on.

All of these spheres of interest are linked to this particular mode of thinking, as well as some very powerful underlying values of our society — liberty, equality, human rights, the dignity of a person, due process of law, and so forth. One of the most distinctive manifestations of this particular mentality is a form of scientism, especially in terms of instrumental rationality. We need to retrieve other arenas by identifying, in addition to instrumental rationality, "communicative" and other forms of rationality that will help us to think in terms of the human community on the one hand and the human relationship to the environment on the other.

The second area is anthropomorphism, which refers to a certain use of language, especially metaphorical language. In trying to understand the complexity of the universe, we need to use terms and ideas that are familiar to us. Thus, we may use teleological language, and we are conscious of what we do. That form of anthropomorphism is not only unavoidable, but is sometimes even allowable and can be thought-provoking.

For the third area, we may use a term that has not been used in science, so far, but is used in comparative religion. It is the term "anthropocosmic," which is a combination of "anthropological" and "cosmic." An anthropocosmic vision is a vision of human relationship to the environment. This brings us to the question of our wholeness and to meaning. That human relationship to the environment enables us to think not only anthropologically, but also cosmologically. To me, that may be a new vision that may turn out to be very helpful.

LASZLO: We have been discussing whether the concept of purpose is useful in natural science. But behind the organization of this workshop stood a slightly different question: Is the idea of directedness, or purposiveness, in nature useful for humanity at the present state of our history? Can it help us to understand our place and role in nature?

In a speech give at Stanford University in 1994, Václav Havel made a similar statement to the one he made at the Forum 2000:

If democracy is not only to survive but to expand successfully and resolve these conflicts of cultures, then it must rediscover and renew its transcendent origins. It must renew its respect for that non-material order which is not only above us, but also in us and among us, and which is the only possible and reliable source of man's respect for himself, for others, for the order of nature, for the order of humanity, and thus for secular authority as well. The loss of this respect always leads to loss of everything else [...What] modern man has lost [is] his transcendental anchor, and along with it the only genuine source of his responsibility and self-respect.

Our question, then should be: Can we find something that can revitalize this "transcendental anchor"? The transcendental anchor would be, finding in nature a source of order that would give us what the Germans call Vorbild, a model for human order. It would give us an orientation, a compass. My own view is that this directedness in nature is a key that can open a door for finding our place. For whatever directedness there is in nature comes to expression also in humanity.

Regarding anthropomorphism, I would say that the concept of purpose, interpreted as purposiveness and linked to the idea of directedness in nature, would be a permissible anthropomorphism. It would be able to help humanity to use knowledge from the sciences to guide its steps. The use of the concept of purpose, then, would be legitimate not because it is useful to science, but because it is useful to humanity.

HO: I would like to urge everybody not to leave out art from our considerations. Authenticity is judged exactly in the same way in art and in science. It is judged according to how intimately our theory, or work of art, brings us to resonate with the soul of reality, the reality in which we are all immersed, without which there would be no meaning whatsoever.

Poetry, for example, is the most precise way of describing our relationship with nature. The Romantic poets and the good scientists share this very real intuition of what nature is like. Good art is always very, very precise. To me there is no separation between science and art.

LENTON: I wonder about your criterion of how to judge science. After all, the best theory is still the one that best fits the evidence we have. Sometimes we have to throw away a theory on those grounds, even though we find it immensely appealing.

HO: I agree that your theory got to be reliable, but there is also a deeper way of judging its authenticity, and that is just the same in art.

LASZLO: There are a few fundamental paradigms, or "world hypotheses." Any one of them is capable of giving you a fairly complete worldview. So, metaphysically, there is no distinction between art and science, but sociologically there is. Science is a consensual social enterprise. What counts as science is what the scientific community validates and legitimizes. There is a distinction between knowledge that may be in your head, and knowledge that is formulated as legitimate science.

Session 3: Meaning in Nature

LUISI: In this session, we will again talk about meaning; so we will touch upon topics we have already discussed, but perhaps with a slightly different emphasis. I shall summarize some of the main points by way of a science-fiction tale. One of the reasons for this is that speaking in a third person will allow me to say things I would find difficult to say speaking in the first person. People like me, who are very active in experimental science and belong to an establishment, find themselves sometimes in a schizophrenic situation of representing the scientific establishment and, at the same time, new paradigms that are against the establishment. Therefore, speaking in the third person will make my story easier. So, here is the story⁷⁾ .

As you know, there are people in Alpha Centauri who are green people. One day, the director of the Board of Explorers sent a young green explorer to see what happened on the Earth. The young explorer came down and looked at the Earth, and this happened about 5 million years ago when there were no humans on the Earth. There were animals, and trees, and oceans, and mountains; lakes, fish, and myriads of bacteria, but no humans.

The young green explorer saw the ocean, the fish, and the trees, and he soon realized that all these things are connected with each other by causal relationships. For example, he noticed that oceans are there to help water evaporate, which makes clouds and rain. The rain causes trees to grow; the trees produce oxygen, sugar, and starch; the sugar and starch are used by animals to feed themselves, and the oxygen to breathe. The animals produce CO₂, which in turn is used by all other chemical activities on the Earth. Sunlight is the catalyst for this production of sugar, starch, and oxygen; and it also produces ozone, which forms a protective screen.

So the green explorer wrote in his board book: "It seems that trees are there to permit animals to feed and breathe; and all these trees and animals die, and by dying permit the birth of new organisms. On this planet Earth," he wrote, "there is no production of new molecules. All is based on the recycling of whatever is there. It's all a reshuffling of molecules that have been there since the very beginning of the Earth."

And the explorer concluded happily: "On this planet Earth, nature is a chain of connectiveness, where everything is connected to everything else, in the same way almost as the little pieces in a watch are connected to each other. Each of the pieces has a meaning, and the overall meaning is to keep the watch working. Similarly, it seems that the overall meaning of nature on this planet Earth is to keep the whole machinery at work. If the water were not there, nature would not work. If trees were not there, animals could not live, and so on."

With this discovery of the network of relationships and meaning among all parts of nature, the young green explorer returned to Alpha Centauri and reported to the old green director. The old director listened with great interest, and then said: "This network of connections all sounds very nice, but who built it?" "Nobody built it," replied the young explorer. "That's clearly nonsense," said the old director. "Surely, if you found a watch somewhere, and the watch is working so perfectly, with all its parts made to function within the whole, you would conclude that there is a watchmaker."

"Yes," said the young explorer, "but this is not so on the Earth. On the Earth, all this order came about by itself. There is something that we may refer to as emergence of order, by which certain structures arise spontaneously. Moreover, they are endowed with the property of increasing their complexity. When the complexity increases, new properties emerge, and at a certain level of organized complexity, a quality emerges that we may call 'life'."

The old man listened carefully without being very convinced. "So, all the order of life on Earth," he asked, "has emerged through spontaneous thermodynamic processes?" "Yes," said the young explorer, "that's what I found." "But this means that there is no purpose in life," the old man continued. "All these cats, and lizards, and fish on the Earth — why are they there? If life arose by itself on the basis of pure thermodynamic forces, then surely there is no purpose in life."

At this point, the young explorer was a little confused, but then he said: "I can see some kind of purpose in all this. Each lizard is very busy to live, which means to maintain not only its own life, but all kinds of life relationships, taking part in this web of interrelationships within its ecosystem. So, the purpose of life on Earth is to maintain these life relationships; nothing else."

The old man listened and nodded, and after a while he said: "I have one last question. Why is your lizard green?" The young explorer was a little taken aback; so the old man continued: "Could it have been red?" "Yes," replied the young explorer, "the lizard could have been red. There is something called 'evolution,' by which these living organisms are able to change, increase their complexity, and move in a certain direction. The lizard came out green during its evolution because of a series of happenstances. This is true not only for the lizard, which could have been red, but also for blood, which could have been green."

"Then, do I understand you right," asked the old man, "that on this planet Earth, which is so perfectly interconnected, everything could have been completely different? Giraffes could have short necks; fish could have three eyes instead of two; monkeys could be without tails; daisies could be black instead of white and yellow, and so on." "Yes," said the young explorer, "it could have been so. Everything could have been completely different, and yet there would be again these chains of interconnectedness, where each part depends on the others and could not exist and survive without the others."

The old green director was satisfied with this report, but after a while he got curious and decided to visit the planet Earth himself. In the meantime several million years had passed on the Earth, and when the old green scientist arrived, he found the planet populated not only by plants, animals, and microorganisms, but also by humans.

He studied this new animal species very carefully, and then wrote in his board book: "This new animal is endowed with two new features that were not present in any of the other animals. The first feature is spirituality — aiming towards higher ideas — and the second feature is destructiveness, by which humans are able to destroy life on their own planet. By looking at evolution," he added, "I am not able to say which of these two features will dominate. It might well be that evolution has created a species that is going to destroy life on Earth, so that the wheel of life will start again from zero, as it should be."

MARKOS: Why did you choose a hypothetical green man to open a window on life without humans? Why not a whale or a bacterium? We have nothing in common with green men from outer space, but we have a common ancestry with all organisms on Earth. And, of course, at the molecular level we are really all quite the same.

CAPRA: We have not only molecules, cells, and other material structures in common with other organisms. More importantly, we also have non-material things in common with all life forms — patterns of organization and life processes. Scientists usually focus on the material structures, the constituents, and not on the patterns of organization. Systems thinking is new, because it adds to the perspective of constituents two further perspectives — the pattern perspective and the process perspective; and there we have a lot in common with all other life forms.

LUISI: Would you agree, however, that the nonmaterial derives from the material? Since there are only molecules and their emergent structures, does it not follow that the nonmaterial is an emergent property of the material? This is something that modern science generally accepts.

CAPRA: I am not in agreement with that. If you look at matter, you see that matter is always ordered and organized. You don't have "unorganized" matter from which organization emerges. Matter is always organized, and any pattern of organization is something nonmaterial.

LUISI: When I make soap bubbles by shaking a soapy liquid in a dish, I make this beautiful order. This is a pattern of self-organization that is purely material. There is no transcendental principle at work.

CAPRA: Well, the pattern is not material.

LUISI: Why not? I make it out of soap molecules.

CAPRA: You create relationships between material entities, but the relationships themselves are not material. A relationship is not something material.

LUISI: How do you know?

CAPRA: Let me put it this way: You have a material structure, and then you can abstract a pattern of relationships from it. That pattern of relationships has no weight, no inertia. It is not something material.

LUISI: Now let me ask you all whether you agree with the green man's notion of the meaning of life, which he expressed in a very dry, scientific way.

CAPRA: Let me try to rephrase the green man's statement in a less dry, perhaps more poetic way. When I look at the world around me, I find that I am not thrown into chaos and randomness. I am part of a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in my body was part of previous bodies — living or nonliving — and will be part of future bodies. In this sense, I realize that I will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. I am connected to everything else on the Earth right now, through this web of relationships, as well as in the past and in the future. This gives me a profound sense of belonging. The experience of context is an experience of belonging to the whole, and this is where I find meaning.

LASZLO: I would say practically the same, but would emphasize the dynamic element more. The future is a process of evolution, of development. What is evolving is the total web. Within that evolving web, then, evolve individuals and collections of individuals. Moreover, it is very important today that we become aware of the evolution of human cultures. Speaking personally, the sense of my life is to contribute to this evolution. It is not just to live. To me, evolution is a key element in my life.

CAPRA: Do you need this sense of evolution to experience meaning, or is this an additional dimension, in addition to the sense of belonging?

LASZLO: Belonging means belonging to a dynamic totality.

CAPRA: But even if you were not aware of the dynamic nature of this whole, it would still be nice to belong.

LASZLO: Absolutely. Belonging is primary, but when you realize that you belong to something that is in movement, you become part of that movement.

TU: What has been central to our discussion this morning is the awareness of being interconnected. It is a sense of belonging that is intrinsically meaningful to us. This, in fact, is what the Chinese classic, the Book of Changes, assumes. There is no creation myth in the I Ching, and it describes a thoroughly relational worldview. We don't have the Heideggerian notion of being thrown into a meaningless world and then having to struggle to find meaning.

The fact that we are interconnected in numerous ways — this cosmic story cannot be reduced, no matter how deconstructionist or relativistic you want to be. This cosmic story seems to be so real that it is perhaps the only master narrative that cannot be deconstructed. All other cultural narratives are subject to some modification. So, that gives us the primary basis for a sense of meaning.

LUISI: Let me now summarize the discussions of this session very briefly. I think we reached considerable agreement, given the difficulty of our subject. We agreed that meaning exists only within a cultural context. There is no "observerless" meaning, and with the personal involvement of human observers the world of feelings and emotions may come into play at varying intensities.

Regarding the question of purpose in life, we all accept the notion that life is there, even without a creator, that it is the product of an increasing complexity of matter and of patterns of organization. At the level of a single individual, the purpose of life lies in this interconnected web of relationships. The sense of belonging to this web is something we experience as meaningful.

We also agreed that evolution is the dynamic component of this sense of belonging.

Session 4: Systemic View of Evolution

LASZLO: There is a feature of general evolutionary theory that seems to require "purposiveness." There is no pre-determined, designed, or (as far as individual details are concerned) predictable direction of evolution. However, overall (statistically) systems tend to move

• further from thermal and chemical equilibrium,
• toward lesser entropy,
• to increased free-energy flux density (defined as energy / time x space),
• toward increased structural complexity,
• toward increased dynamism and autonomy.