In the preceding text “WHAT IS LIFE? … When Life is ‘More’, ‘Much More’”, it became evident that the various phases of life’s evolution on planet Earth show a clear and unmistakable acceleration—an acceleration that also coincides with an increase in the complexity of biological structures. One candidate that emerges visibly in this process of growing complexity is the life form known as Homo sapiens. This text takes a closer look at the uniqueness of Homo sapiens, not in isolation, but as an integral part of all life. Through this lens, a broad dramaturgy begins to emerge—one that opens up many questions pointing toward a possible future of life’s evolution, in ways not previously explored.

Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch

Changelog: April 24, 2025 – April 24, 2025

Email: info@uffmm.org

TRANSLATION: The following text is a translation from a German version into English. For the translation I am using the software @chatGPT4o with manual modifications.

CONTENT TREE

This text is part of the TOPIC Philosophy of Science.

GENES OR ENVIRONMENT?

For many decades, this—or something like it—was the headline of an intense debate that significantly shaped how people behave in everyday life and beyond.

The idea that “genes” can be held responsible for certain “deformations of the body” (often perceived as “malformations”), for certain diseases, or for particular “talents” is widely accepted today. At the same time, it has also long been emphasized that the environment in which a person lives, grows up, and works can influence their behavior and personality.

The research findings of the emerging field of sociogenomics [1] appear to offer a more reconciliatory view in this debate: based on many experiments and studies, a working hypothesis has emerged suggesting that certain “genes” (as part of a person’s overall genome) may indeed carry a potential for an increased likelihood of specific behaviors. However, the actual realization of this potential strongly depends on the nature of the environment. To put it bluntly: a high potential for musical talent will not be expressed if a child has to grow up in a society marked by extreme poverty, child labor, or recruitment as a child soldier. Conversely, actively fostering a child’s musicality can enhance their abilities, but it may also—possibly—come at the cost of suppressing many other skills the child might possess.

[1] Article by Dalton Conley, “A New Scientific Field Is Recasting: Who We Are and How We Got That Way,” March 13, 2025, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/opinion/genetics-nature-nurture-sociogenomics.html.
Also: Dalton Conley’s book “THE SOCIAL GENOME: The New Science of Nature and Nurture,” March 18, 2025, WW Norton – Penguin Random House

A further exploration of this topic may lead to additional aspects that seem capable of redirecting the entire discussion toward a fundamentally different perspective.

Still more as a Black Box?

In the ongoing discussion, we encounter two central elements: “genes,” as part of the human genome, and “cultural patterns,” which are assumed to shape everyday life.

What is clear is that genes within the genome do not directly interact with the cultural patterns of daily life. What we do know is that genes influence various parts of the body and the brain in extremely complex ways. However, we cannot yet claim that this interplay between body and brain under genetic influence is sufficiently understood. For now, it might make sense to treat the body—despite all the knowledge we already have—as a black box that interacts with its concrete, real-world environment. Let us refer to a human actor along with their genome provisionally as a Black Box Actor, or BBActor for short.

Human actors, however, are also part of the environments of other human actors. It is assumed that the observable behavior of a BBActor is influenced by various cultural patterns, which can manifest in the form of rules that shape specific behaviors. This leads to a number of perspectives:

(1) DIVERSE ENVIRONMENTS:
Due to the wide variety of cultural patterns within a society, identical actions by a BBActor can provoke completely different reactions. The likelihood that a particular genetic predisposition will be supported by the environment therefore depends heavily on that environment (war, child labor, extreme poverty, religious views with a multitude of prohibitions, destructive behaviors, …).

(2) PERSONALITY:
Behaviors that help children and adolescents grow into a “personality” typically consist of various bundles of different behavioral traits that together form a kind of “profile,” which is only partially static. These interacting factors must be sustained across many years in various environments in order to foster the development of constructive and stable internal behavioral models.

(3) SOCIAL:
A significant portion of stabilizing factors belongs to the broader domain of social behaviors and social groups to which a BBActor feels a sense of belonging and in which they are positively accepted. Such social relationships require continuous commitment over many years.

So much for the individual perspective.

How does this connect to the larger whole of evolution?

What is clear is that every single biological system—including a human being—is fully part of the entirety of life, which is constantly subject to change. The sum of these changes is what we refer to as (biological) evolution.

Evolution —> Evolution 2.0 (Evo2)

With the emergence of Homo sapiens, the situation of life on planet Earth has fundamentally changed—so profoundly, in fact, that we should speak of an Evolution 2.0 (Evo2).

The description of Evo2 can, at this point, only take the form of a rough conceptual sketch, since the complexity of Evo2 is extremely high. Still, it is important to have a general idea from the outset, in order not to get lost in the multitude of details. Furthermore, there are currently almost no serious attempts within scientific discourse to describe the Evo2 concept—which is the focus here—in any detailed way.

However, if the basic idea behind the Evo2 concept proves to be valid, there will be no way around using it as a foundational framework for future planning and development.

Logic of Everyday Life

If one wishes to reclassify evolution “since the emergence of Homo sapiens” as “Evo2”, then one needs a sufficient number of characteristics that can be identified as uniquely associated with the appearance of Homo sapiens—features that had not existed in this form before.

Here are some such characteristics identified by the author, embedded in suggested relationships that will need to be elaborated further later on:

ABSTRACTION:
It is striking how easily a HS (Homo sapiens) can group different individual phenomena under an abstract concept. For example, an abstract concept like “tree” can refer to many different kinds of trees, and a tree can be associated with arbitrarily many properties. An abstract concept can itself become an element of an even more abstract concept—e.g., many trees can be grouped under the concept “forest.” If we think in terms of elements and abstract concepts, then abstract concepts form a meta-level, and the associated elements an object level. Since an HS can evidently turn elements of a meta-level into an object level of a higher order by simply introducing a new meta-level, this object-meta-level mechanism resembles an elevator into abstraction—one for which there seem to be no fixed limits.

TIME AS CHANGE:
HS possesses the ability to grasp change. Change implies a before and an after. In this before-after structure, the phenomenon of time is indirectly manifested. Time thus appears as a kind of meta-property of any kind of change. It can be understood as a linear structure in which one after becomes the before of a subsequent after. This linearity has led to the creation of time machines (clocks) that generate events at regular intervals—so-called points in time—which can be quantified using numerical signs. These allow us to define the concept of duration. The assignment of real events to abstract time points forms a fundamental tool for measuring the world.

SPATIAL STRUCTURE:
With its own body in the world, the HS has a mode of perception in which everything perceptible appears within a spatial arrangement. There are many individual phenomena arranged in a set, which indirectly (as with time) manifest a surface or even a space. Through the appearance in space, there are spatial relations such as above–below, in front–behind, smaller–larger, etc.

These meta-properties—space, time, and abstraction—form a kind of coordinate system, which enables the HS to organize the totality of their perception of the external world into a structure that renders the external world accessible in a simplified representation.
(Note: The two coordinates space and time, under different labels and within a different framework, can already be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason from 1781/1789.)

In addition to recognizing the meta-property of time, HS also possesses the following ability:

POTENTIAL CHANGE (GOAL[S]):
The ability to recognize change as a structure of before and after is extended in HS by the ability to generate artificial “afters” in relation to a current before. Whether we call this ability imagination, thinking, or describe it in terms of creativity/fantasy, the fact remains: HS can generate a chain of merely imagined events parallel to a chain of real experienced events. If such an imagined chain of events refers to possible real events that could occur due to potential changes, then these imagined sequences enable a form of planning—planning today for what one wants to be the case tomorrow. What should be the case in such a chain would be a kind of goal: a state one wants to reach. Evidently, an HS can imagine such possible goals even before constructing a corresponding chain of events. In this case, the specification of a goal can motivate the construction of a sequence of possible events that makes the initially imagined goal appear reachable.

So much for the foundational elements of a “logic of everyday life.”

By themselves, however, these elements are not yet sufficient to achieve anything. For that, something more is needed. HS possesses this more.

Communication and Cooperation

No matter what kind of internal states an HS may possess—if they are unable to share these internal states, or at least parts of them, with other humans, they remain an isolated body in space and time, unable to cooperate with anyone.

COOPERATION:
Cooperation requires that an individual HS can reach an understanding with other people about goals that should be achieved and about the processes that must be undertaken together in order to realize those goals. In this context, the term cooperation is also a meta-concept that brings together many—not exactly simple—qualities.

SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE:
A standard tool for enabling cooperation is the organization of an exchange of signs in such a way that the signs used correlate with a meaning that is approximately the same for both the speaker (writer) and the listener (reader). When this is the case, an HS can, for example, talk about certain plants that need to be found, and another HS will understand the spoken words in such a way that the words used by the speaker trigger an inner representation of those plants that the speaker intended. At the same time, the listener can activate an inner image of possible locations and appropriate paths. Equipped with this, the listener can set off to find the intended/desired plants, collect them, and bring them home.

Even this simple example makes it clear how quickly cooperation through language-based communication can increase in complexity. Coordinated action involving many people in a complex, dynamic situation across multiple locations over time requires, in addition to strong language skills, much more:

MOTIVATION:
Why would someone be motivated to join a collective effort?

KNOWHOW:
Do the participants have enough knowledge/experience to actually achieve a shared goal?

SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE:
Does the potential group contain enough members with sufficient social acceptance so that proposals are taken up by others as viable goals?

RESOURCES:
Joint actions in space and time require a wide range of resources to enable the necessary activities. The people involved themselves need adequate energy and water for their bodies; additionally, there must be enough time, appropriate tools, and various other things.

Tools: Matter and the Future

In addition to the previously mentioned factors that define the special potential of Homo sapiens, there are many others that must be considered. Two stand out in particular:

(1) Tools that allow HS to almost completely manipulate the material environment (including biological systems) in such a way that the objects being worked on take on a completely altered form, often with entirely new functions.

(2) Tools that enable HS to explore abstract representations (e.g., images, models, etc.) of the real world (including biological systems), incorporating potential dynamics (forms of change) across abstract time spans, in such a way that possible future states of the world and life within it can be made visible in outline.

These two factors form the foundational building blocks of an evolutionary revolution, which has placed the trajectory of evolution into a historically unique state—one whose potential has neither been adequately recognized nor sufficiently explored. These capabilities thus indeed mark a completely new phase of evolution: Evolution 2.0.

The following points, however, deserve special attention:

Technical tools that allow the visualization of possible future states of the world and of life are machines equipped with algorithms capable of performing the necessary simulative operations. However, their functionality fundamentally depends on the following factors:

(1) They also require energy to operate—and not a small amount.

(2) They require representations of real-world situations for their simulations, which must:

    (2.1) be empirically accurate
    (2.2) reflect the dynamics behind the phenomena
    (2.3) account for interactions between factors

(3) They require goal concepts that help filter from the vast number of possible future states those that meet the criteria for a sustainable future of life—whether on this planet or elsewhere.

The issue of goal concepts may be the most difficult of all: Who has access to such goals? Machines, as such, have no access to them. Humans, as part of life, have demonstrated over their roughly 300,000-year history that they are generally capable of setting goals, but they have also consistently changed their goals over time—due to various causes. What remains unclear is the vast potential for goals in the rest of life beyond the human species.

The Question of Ultimate Meaning

In this scenario, life in general—and perhaps Homo sapiens in particular—emerges as the central candidate for identifying appropriate goals for a compelling future of life within the known universe (or even beyond it). But how can humans define goals for the whole when they themselves are still in a phase of clarifying their own goals?

The growth in freedom of action and creative power is simultaneously a growing challenge to the self-awareness of life on this planet, in this universe:
What are you even here for? Who are you waiting for? Don’t you realize that it’s your turn now?