1 - Hello: I have spent many years studying the history of the Universe - But today I would like to look into the future with you
2 - There is an African proverb that says : “If you don’t know where to go, look where you come from” - Maybe we should look up as well. The night sky has always been contemplated by mankind with fear or amazement. It forces us to think beyond our basic needs.
Today we are going to go through the three evolutions: the Universe, the life on Earth and the third evolution of which we are all part, more about that later
Let’s start with the first evolution - You will agree with me that as soon as you look up in the dark, you see the empty vastness of the Universe … well, it is not so empty and not so dark.
We are on a planet (the Earth) circling a very dull star (the Sun). Our star is circling inside a very dull galaxy (the Milky Way). There are billions of stars in our galaxy and there are billions of galaxies in the known Universe. That sets our human condition in a very dull and isolated place.
3 - It has only been in the last century that we have realized the Universe evolves. The stars and the galaxies have not always been around. Indeed, if we work out the expansion of the Universe in reverse, it was a very different picture some fourteen billion years ago.
With the Big Bang model we now understand what happened. The latest Planck satellite image reveals the Universe when it was just four hundred thousand years old. We live in a single Universe that looks the same wherever we observe it. I spent twenty years of my life, along with hundreds of other scientists, to obtain that map.
Here, the details have been exaggerated but really this is much smoother than the skin of a grapefruit. Yet, we are lucky to see some little ripples because they show the seeds of what will eventually collapse to form the galaxies as we know them today.
4 - Within galaxies, stars can form. Then a new range of possibilities happens to make complex atoms.
For example do you know that the spoon you use every morning to eat your porridge, is made of metal produced in a supernova explosion? This image on the left shows how the death of a star can spread iron in the galaxy.
Other stars can shed carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen elements which are central to the chemistry of life. These elements are then incorporated into the next generation of stars. This is what happened to our Sun and the solar system. Thus, the evolution of the Universe is central to producing interesting atoms, the building blocks for the next evolution : Life on earth ...
5 - How life appeared is still a mystery but we now know the basic properties of life. All living bodies on Earth share the same DNA and cell structure. The evolution of life from simple cells to complex multicellular organisms, like onions, dolphins or scorpions, is now understood.
Darwin has found the engine for evolution. Natural selection operates on various attempts obtained by reproduction with variations. Better adapted species are selected from the constraints of the environment.
6 - There are several methods for natural selection to operate.
For example there is the arms race: bigger, taller, faster, more poisonous, and so on. Cheetahs can run fast and grab the weakest gazelles. Thus the population of gazelles gets reinforced into faster running ones. If the gazelles go faster, then in the cheetah population, only the fastest will thrive.
A new equilibrium will then appear between the species. Darwin was stunned at the adaptation of all the species to their environment!
7 - Another way selection can operate is for species to find ecological niches where no one else is present.
For example, the bat uses the night to fly around and find food and then sleeps all day long while other species are active.
A bit like teenagers!
8 - The peacock illustrates sexual selection.
Here the survival of an individual is increased by its attractiveness to the other sex.
For the peacock species, the male has all the beauty ... in other species it can be the female.
9 - In general, evolution works as a blind process with inheritance, a bit like a bush, in which there are many dead branches.
Only the top twigs are still alive on Earth.
Favorable changes are carried over from one generation to the next.
The genes, chunks of DNA, that could increase the population size, have made it in the long run.
10 - Homo Sapiens is just an animal at the end of one twig … hope it doesn’t break! Other Homo species like homo habilis do not exist on Earth any more, they are on dead branches. The standard picture should not be a straight line as you see on the left, but rather a bushy tree as on the right! So, what is so special about human beings? Not bones, not brain, not even language (dolphins have language).
Here is a bold idea to wake you up : My contention is that homo sapiens have several written languages. They are not only utilitarian languages like English. But they are also the arts, music, mathematics, and so on, opening new worlds. Our species can thus communicate in space and time. This is what I call the third evolution.
Ideas which are exchanged between human beings can propagate much faster than genetic inheritance. In the past, it took four days for a man on a horse to travel from Manchester to London. Nowadays you can do the same journey by train in less than 3 hours, well … if it is on time! Whereas the genetic evolution is slow, the speed at which information can spread nowadays around the globe makes this third evolution possible.
11 - OK, so the first evolution is the Universe making the building blocks.
The second evolution is about complex life. Now let me tell you more about the third evolution …
We have our own circles : family, friends, city, country, sport, faith, ...
We show loyalties to our social circles by doing things in common and exchanging ideas.
For example, I don’t talk to my wife about football … I have another circle for that !!
I think that the third evolution is cognitive in nature. It is all about the link between people and their social circles, and it has happened in the last ten thousand years. These social circles are now quickly merging around the Earth.
12 - All these circles are somehow represented inside our own brain, and are coded with chemicals between neurons. Neurosciences have done a great leap forward, but we are still very far from understanding this strange object called the brain. We have barely scratched the surface !
There are a hundred billion neurons in each brain, which is, by the way, about the same number of stars as in our galaxy. Each neuron is connected with at least ten thousand other neurons.
The brain is only 2% of the human body weight. However it uses 20% of the oxygen intake and even 25% of the glucose consumption. And despite popular belief, we do use one hundred percent of our brain at all time.
So in fact the human body is just a slave taking care of a Central Processing Unit ... the brain !
13 - But, a brain is nothing on its own. For its development, a brain has to connect to other brains in order to synchronise ideas like … a table ... food ... love.
The social side of human beings cannot be overstated.
We start as some fragile little being, thrown into the deep end, having only our parents to help us cope with life. This is the immersion in our social circles that makes us become who we are, through education and by having more interaction with others.
I think it is fair to say that, in a way, we are born at twenty: it takes twenty-odd years just to get afloat with the complexity our civilization has reached.
Some people at fifty still don't get it !
14 - Back to ideas, which are central to the third evolution. There are many stupid ideas (splash on a puddle: children like that), forbidden ideas (to score in football with your hand), and even sometimes “sustainable” ideas (we are all equal).
That’s where the society or the circles act on those passing ideas, by filtering them out: this is a sort of natural selection in the Darwinian sense. There are no good or bad ideas … there are just ideas which are relevant or not. That’s typically how religions can spread … or some food dishes … they are somehow adapted to the society over time.
15 - Technological advances show the selection process vividly.
The arms race is in action everywhere: more blades on a razor, for a cleaner shave ... or flying higher, faster, longer, more comfortably.
16 - There are also ecological niches, say a drone. It has a limited range but does not need a pilot on board.
And there is selection by seduction, for example with the brand by Apple.
So we find in the evolution of technology the same patterns as in the Darwinian natural selection.
17 - Comparing the 3 evolutions: the Universe, life on Earth, and ideas, we can see that one evolution is embedded in the previous one. Let us now describe some of their common interesting features.
For a start, they are all digital: they are ruled by round numbers … Atoms in the Universe have each got a discrete number of electrons. That gives rise to the periodic table of the elements.
All living bodies on Earth are DNA-coded with only four chemical letters A C G T.
And the third evolution is coded with letters of different alphabets ... and now binary coding is everywhere.
18 - Another common feature is diversity.
Many outputs can be obtained just by assembling the same building blocks in different ways. There are many genes in common between giraffes and okapis, or between onions and leeks, they are just combined differently. For the third evolution, linguists are amazed at the number of ways we can combine words to make meaningful sentences.
There is a single Universe. As far as we can observe, the physical laws we have found on Earth apply everywhere in the Universe.
There is a single brand of life on Earth … the one which is coded by DNA. And there is only one species that carries the third evolution: homo sapiens.
Complex life does not occur spontaneously. Animals are born with almost the same genes as their parents. And in the same way, strong ideas have a history and are transmitted over and over : this is what we call communication of general practice and knowledge!
19 - Finally, we have already seen that the three evolutions share similar selection processes.
Now here is a controversial issue:
I claim that a new method has emerged among humans to select ideas. In only a few centuries, the experimental method has led to a growing corpus of scientific knowledge and technology which is just staggering.
We are constantly generating new ideas … and the ones that can withstand experimental evidence will spread like wildfire.
20 - This is it: end of our journey through the three evolutions. The Universe … life on Earth … and the third evolution ... which is how human beings exchange ideas in space and time. The more you share, the more you can advance.
Enlarge your circles, go out of your comfort zone and … Over the edge!
Look around for inspiring ideas, make mistakes, well … not too many, because making mistakes is part of selecting ideas. Put the concept of evolution into your everyday thinking.
Things don’t pop out of nowhere ! Where you come from, gives you a big clue as to what lies ahead.
Thank you