Evolution of the Living - History of the Thinking. Is some Homomorphism possible?

Abstract

The search for similarities or correlations between the evolution of living beings and human societies is nothing new. Philosophers have tried to answer the problem for a long time, before leaving it to scientists. Considering the new discoveries made during the latest half-century in the science of the living as well as in social science, is it possible to undertake this study in a new way? This is the aim of the present communication, it seeks to enlighten one upon the other the new discoveries made on the living and on the thinking by federating them thanks to a concept belonging to the systemic approach: homomorphism. Half-way between a metaphor and the supposedly exhaustive setting-up of a model, homomorphism is a partial and imperfect analogy between two concrete systems, an analogy able to give light and be fruitful at the same time. This homomorphism will be looked for on two levels: - the level of the driving force behind the evolution of the living on the one hand, by reverting to the recent works that aim to go beyond neo-darwinism; of the driving force behind human history on the other hand, starting from the analysis of the great British historian Arnold Toynbee, - the level of the phenomenological description of evolution over the long term, regarding living systems as well as human cultures and civilizations. Can one discover rules in this “long evolution” tendency and discover there a twofold orientation (meaning both direction and meaning) as Teilhard de Chardin thought? Thanks to these confrontations, the author of the present paper hopes he can show that the evolution of the living can help understand the history of the thinking, and reciprocally that the history of human cultures and civilizations can help understand the plasticity and inventiveness of the living.