A New Paradigm Emerging

A new system, scientific in origin and philosophical in depth and scope, is now on the rise. It encompasses the great realism of the material universe, of the world of the living, and of the world of history. This is the evolutionary paradigm. The old adage "everything is connected with everything else" describes a true state of affairs. The results achieved (by the evolutionary sciences) furnish adequate proof that the physical, the biological, and the social realms in which evolution unfolds are by no means disconnected. At the very least, one kind of evolution prepares the ground for the next. Out of the conditions created by evolution in the physical realm emerge the conditions that permit biological evolution to take off. And out of the conditions created by biological evolution come the conditions that allow human beings —and many other species—to evolve certain social forms of organization. Scientific evidence of the patterns traced by evolution in the physical universe, in the living world, and in the world of history is growing rapidly. It is coalescing into the image of basic regularities that repeat and recur. It is now possible to search out these regularities and obtain a glimpse of the fundamental nature of evolution of the evolution of the cosmos as a whole, including the living world and the world of human social history.

Ervin Laszlo