Notes on Teilhard's Omega Point: Part 2, Inside the Universe

The Phenomenon of Man is considered to be Teilhard's masterwork. In The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard sets out most of the ideas he is known for:

1. His focus on human consciousness and its relationship to evolution
2. The Law of Complexity and Consciousness
3. The Noosphere
4. The Omega Point

In Chapter 2 of The Phenomenon of Man--The Within of Things--Teilhard takes up the great subject of consciousness and its puzzling but singular existence in the cosmos. I want to begin my notes with this subject.

In Chapter 2 of The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard makes, among others, two related observations:

1. Matter can become conscious
2. Science has largely ignored this fact

In Teilhard's language there is an Inside and Outside aspect to existence. A Within and a Without. The Outside/Without aspect of existence has been the focus of science. It is the material manifestation of the cosmos. The physical stuff of the universe from tables, to our bodies, to stars.

But as conscious creatures we also know that matter can have an Inside as well. "Inside" or "within" your material existence is the experiencing facet of the cosmos, the conscious aspect of matter.

Note that we are not speaking of a ghost in a machine, a spiritual entity existing within a material shell, a soul inhabiting a body. Rather, as Teilhard notes, matter itself, in certain configurations (e.g., humans, dogs, rats), is intrinsically conscious. Matter and consciousness exist in some kind of relationship.

This idea is not unique to Teilhard. Spinoza espoused a view of consciousness and matter that is very similar. From the Ethics:

From Part 2, Proposition 7, Scholium:
...the thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute, now under that. So also a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways.

From Part 3, Proposition 2, Scholium:
...the mind and the body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension.

This is Spinoza's famous parallelism, his view of the relationship between the mind and body. Specifically, the mind (the attribute of thought) and body (a mode of extension: a thing that takes up space) are considered to be two different aspects of a single substance. Mind and body are not two different things that influence each other back and forth. They are, simply, different "attributes" of a single underlying substance. Two ways of looking at the same thing. In the language of Teilhard the substance of the cosmos has an Inside (consciousness) and an Outside (the physically measurable features of matter) which exist in some kind of relationship.

What kind of relationship? We'll get to that in the next post, but for now Teilhard's main criticism is this: Science has been, on a grand scale, ignoring this relationship. We all know consciousness exists. It is the most striking feature of the universe. And yet, science has, by and large, completely ignored it as an object of study. Cosmologists study the origins of the cosmos. Biologists study the origin of species. But where is science systematically studying the Dawn of Consciousness and its relationship to matter?

Let me be concrete. Why is a dog conscious but a rock is not? Both the dog and the rock are made up of the same stuff. Atoms and molecules. So what is the difference? It must be in the way the atoms and molecules are organized. If so, why does one kind of organization lead to consciousness while another organization does not? What is the law governing how consciousness adheres to or emerges from different material configurations? There must, it seems, be a lawful relationship. If so, who in the scientific community is working on specifying this lawful relation? Because I think Teilhard is correct. If science only specifies the laws of the Outside of the universe (those Grand Unified Theories Stephen Hawking and his ilk talk about) science would have surely failed in fully specifying the laws of the cosmos.

The Inside remains.

Next Post: Part 3