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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 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 When he was between the ages of 11 and 16, Paul Gauguin1 attended a Catholic 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'o`uVenons Nous - Que Sommes Nous - O`uAllons 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. 1.3. ANSWERS FROM BOTH RELIGION AND SCIENCE 11 Figure 1.6: A self-portrait by Gauguin with his painting, The Yellow Christ. 12 WHERE DO WE COME FROM? Chapter 2 LOST IN THE STARS 2.1 Introduction From prehistoric times until the present, every culture has tried to explain the origin of the universe, the sun, moon and stars, and the earth, with its humans, plants and animals. In the earliest of these creation myths, imagina- tive poetical images predominate. The myths of creation were handed down orally, and to hold the attention of listeners, the stories had to be dramatic and entertaining. Gradually, over many thousands of years, astronomy developed, and the earth began to loose its privileged position as the center of the universe. During the Hellenistic Era, (323 B.C.-31 B.C.), Aristarchus of Samos developed a sun-centered cosmology, which was forgotten during the Middle Ages, but rediscovered and further developed during the Renaissance by Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo and Kepler. The work of Isaac Newton brought order and universal natural laws into our picture of the solar system. Finally, in modern times, the discoveries of Einstein, Hubble, Penzias and Wilson have given us a picture of an almost indescribably vast universe, in which our solar system appears only as an insignificant speck. Today we are \lost in the stars". Our planet no longer seems to be the center of the universe, about which everything else revolves.
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