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165.9:130.2
Savchenko Angelica, graduate student of the Kharkov
state academy of culture, Ukraine.
PHENOMENON OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF
MAN:
ENERGY AND INFORMATION ASPECT
Keywords: cultural, evolution, man, energy,
development, process, space.
Introduction. In an attempt to find answers to urgent questions about the interaction
of man and nature, about the nature of
man, and his place and role in the universe many researchers are turning
to an old esoteric knowledge,
to the works of ancient philosophers and to the legacy of scientists
of past ages. The new theories in which the evolution and development of mankind is explained with natural factors gain the widespread popularity.
The interest to exploring humanity
as a cosmic phenomenon
also increases.
In a society grows the understanding of the importance of
spirituality, culture and human
rights in the formation of a new complete picture of the world and man, of their energy-information evolution and nature. And perhaps, it is not
coincidentally that modern Western philosophy focuses on the identification of «internal and spiritual structure of
the human mind, its spirituality, reflective consciousness, identity, individuality,
as the center of the principal species differences of Homo Sapiens and of each individual representative
of humanity» [17, p. 27].
At the current stage, a
phenomenon of human cultural evolution requires a thorough and comprehensive exploring, because the future of humanity depends on the
man itself, on orientation of his actions, thoughts, and nature of energy (positive
or negative), via which it interacts with the environment and impacts the
nature. Thus the question of a new understanding of content and basics of world view as the foundation of a new
energy-information picture of the world and man, is a thing of current interest
and it needs exploring.
Formulation of the problem. The purpose of the study is to explore the
phenomenon of human cultural evolution in the context of energyinformation
aspect that will allow exploring human culture as a process that promotes the
development and evolution of mankind.
Results. Man is a subject of many disciplines. The studies of the classics of
philosophy Aristotle and Plato, who
explored the place of man in the system of nature, are the first
and the most interesting studies in this field. Ancient Chinese philosophy
that considered man as an object of nature, but not as its subject had a remarkable influence. This philosophy did not separate the man from natural environment; it gave him the place
in the system of nature, developing
its internal capacity within the natural. According to Chinese
philosophy man must develop his internal capacity, mostly the energetic one,
in order to fully and harmoniously coexist
with nature, but in any case
not to dominate it.
Exploring the human
interaction on the basis of knowledge from various fields of science and
culture, Russian cosmists N. Fedorov, N. Umov, P. Florensky, K. Tsiolkovsky, V.
Vernadsky, A. Chizhevsky solved the problems associated
with the life of man in society. In the philosophy of Russian cosmism man is
described as a being that is in the process of its development, it is still not
perfect, but it has the ability and the potential to creatively transform the
surrounding world and his own nature. Relying upon the principle of energy
origin of the process of self-organization of Cosmos, the researchers explained
the phenomenon of human evolution level and human interaction degree with the
cosmo-planetary energy to provide its development.
Studying the works of V.
Vernadsky on the transition of the biosphere into the noosphere, it is seen
that along with the scientific thought he estimated culture that is an
important phenomenon of society, as a planetary phenomenon [5]. In his researches the scientist claims that the living substance is a carrier and the
creator of the free energy – the biogeochemical energy, which causes
the migration of chemical elements that build up the biosphere. The author
believes that in the last millennium within the living
matter, this new form of energy even greater in intensity and complexity is
newly created and its importance is growing rapidly. This form of energy
associated with the life of human societies, raises a new kind of migration of
chemical elements, the diversity and power of this energy leaves a conventional
biogeochemical energy far behind. He called this new form of energy
"energy of human culture", believing that it is just the form of
energy, that creates a noosphere nowadays [4].
Throughout the history of society
development the culture in that or the
other aspect was the subject of
studying of various philosophers, historians and writers. The term «culture» is one of the fundamental ones in modern science. It's hard to find another word that would have such a large number of shades of meaning. Such expressions as «the culture of the mind», «culture of feelings»,
«culture of behavior» and «physical culture» sound quite familiar to us.
In ordinary sense culture is a valuation concept
and it refers to those personality
traits that are more accurate to
be called not culture, but a level of culture.
If we turn to the heritage of
the Roerich, we will see that in human culture, they distinguished a special
kind of energy, which they
called «psychic energy» or «spirituality». They believed that the man is not
only responsible for the Earth
and all the creatures living on
it, but also he takes part
in their development, by means of his
mental energy being a locomotive
of the whole planetary evolution
[16]. At the same time, not realizing the role of his mental energy,
man can become a brake for the
evolution, according to the Roerich. If the energy of a man is in a state of chaos, everything that surrounds him comes into the same condition.
And the product of human activity is not
only man-made disasters, but also to a certain degree it
is natural disasters.
Roerich believed that
the noosphere is already a reality and man is the driving force of it, which is still not enough aware of the creative and
destructive power of his mind
and psyche.
In the Living Ethics, the terms «cosmic evolution of man» and «the spiritual evolution of man» mean almost the same thing. Cosmic evolution is impossible without the spiritual one, which automatically
launches the cosmic. Inspiration of a man is
not only his ethical and
intellectual perfection, but also
the transformation of flimsy, carnal, mortal, earthly
«animal» into a powerful, spiritual, immortal,
cosmic Being [1].
Thus, the man being active and creating entity, he is the single particle energy
of the whole – of the
universe, his energy
is included into the energy-informational
processes of the Cosmos and it is a source of culture as it is, it
forms its values and beliefs. The energy of human culture is the only result and the cause of development of the internal sense of self
and society in the whole and it contributes to its evolution.
It should be noted that the first
evolutional theories were focused primarily on origin,
existence and changes of biological species (J. Cuvier, J. Lamarck, Ch. Darwin, de Vries). In cultural anthropology the theory of evolution goes to the concept of Herbert Spencer, E. Taylor, and G. Morgan, who
explored irreversible changes of
cultural phenomena, caused by the
need to adapt people organized in
society to their natural environment
[7]. Conjunction of natural science researches
with socio-cultural ones (M.
Harris, J. Stewart) contributed to the emergence of the theory
of specific evolution responsible for
uniqueness and singularity of each culture.
The history of human culture within
the framework of the culturological evolutionist concept of cultural development is understood by us as the
evolutional process inherent to
all peoples, the process of undergoing of the phases and stages of
development, which are already
passed in more developed nations. The main idea of the concept is that the tendency to
change is initially laid in the
culture and this is its essential
feature, and the ultimate goal of
development is internally reasoned.
It should be
noted that
for the XIX century there was a
distinctive so-called single-line evolutionism. It paid attention to the parallels between
biological and cultural evolution,
as each of them has a tendency to complicate and is directed to development of higher forms, to improvement and progress. Real cultures became the subject of the study, and the researchers focused
their attention primarily on the
distribution of artifacts on the extent of the
universal evolutional sequence. The
differences between cultures were explained with the need to adapt to different
natural environments [8].
A later variant of evolutionism is a
so-called universal evolutionism,
which is characterized by the interest
to the culture in the whole, as
to a phenomenon, but not as to different specific
cultures. The third branch of Cultural Studies is a multi-line
theory of evolution, or neo-evolutionism.
Both the single-line and the multi-line evolutionism explore specific cultures,
but the multi-line evolutionism
does not look for universal rules
and confirms of the uniformity of development, it searches for
some similarities in the processes that take place in parallel in
different cultures, thus it actually accepts the existence of some specific features
of development of each culture.
The essential reorientation of evolutional views from
the local to the global evolutionism occurred in science in the second half of the XX century.
Works of V. Vernadsky,
N. Fedorov, K. Tsiolkovsky, V. Behterev, P. Florensky, A. Chizhevsky, in which
the universe and the man were studied
as a single entity, a single, evolving
in Space system that follows the general
principles of universal, started a universal (global) evolutionism.
The term «universal evolutionism» and its concept were introduced for
the first time by N. Moiseev in the
book «Algorithms of Development» (M., 1987) and in the article «The logic of universal
evolutionism and cooperativeness» (Problems of Philosophy. 1989.
¹ 8), although he also expressed these
ideas in 1986 – in «Strategies of reason» (Knowledge Is Power, 1986, ¹ 10.)
It should be noted that there
are two terms that are used in scientific research in parallel – «global evolutionism» and «universal evolutionism». V. Stepin suggests using them interchangeably,
because both of them cover the search
for the most common regularities of evolution of different areas
and scales of
nature, society and human [13].
According to
the evolutional theory there is a continuous emergence of increasingly complex living
systems, regulated forms and states of life in the world.
According to V. Stepin,
universal evolutionism is a compound of
the ideas of evolution with the ideas of
the systems approach. In this sense, it does
not only extend the development to all spheres of life,
establishing connection between abiocoen, wildlife and the
social matter, but it also
overcomes the limitations of
phenomenological description of development, linking it with the description
of the ideas and methods of
system analysis. The principles of
global evolutionism allow uniformly
describing the huge variety of processes that happen in abiocoen, in wildlife and in society [10].
There are
three the most important modern scientific approaches that have contributed to the justification of the idea of universal evolutionism: the
theory of non-stationary universe,
the concept of the biosphere and noosphere
and the ideas of synergy [13].
The theory of synergy became an
integrating beginning to understanding the phenomenon of man. The theory of synergy is the science of self-organization,
which studies the phenomena of
non-linearity, non-equilibrium, global
interactions and universal evolution
[11]. Synergistic study was based on
finding a methodology of
establishing order through chaos, bifurcation changes as
the underlying characteristics of the
processes of evolution. However,
recognizing the importance of
chaos and fluctuations in their active systematical and
structural-forming function in the points of catastrophes, synergy does not consider the physical mechanisms
of self-organization according to the
statement that the choice of the
system in such states is random
[6].
Fundamental
discoveries in various fields of science, in
particular, in geomagnetology, biophysics, parapsychology, physics, biology allow us to
consider the universe as a manifestation
of a unified energy-information field of consciousness with
different levels of organization, from the energy-information to the material one. Thus
energy-information paradigm of world
organization begins to develop as a basis for a new synthesizing scientific
thinking.
Relationships
between man and space
and its evolution are being explored widely
and diversely nowadays. The
notion of man as a being capable
to be creator and to create worlds is getting stronger. The
principles and the rules of synergetic
view of the world, the studies
on quantum mechanics allow looking up at the
concept of human evolution, which
was suggested by P. Teilhard
de Chardin [15]
in a different way. The social nature of the human shows the experience of
nature in its self-development
and becomes a means of memory extension. Thus, a man appears as a being that has become what he is in a result of complications of the organic
and the psychic.
It is
noteworthy that today we can watch the emergence of a new biological science – informational biology that
explores the objects of wildlife,
structures, processes and phenomena
in conjunction to the energy-field
structures and informational processes.
According to this theory «human thought is a
powerful source of informational programs that step into the energy-field structures of the organism, adjusting its program of life ... In human society, a man, his thought, rules, customs, and knowledge is
a source of informational impacts.
At the level of energy and information,
energy-information structures
of an individual are in interrelation
with energy-information structures
of their surrounding, Environment,
Planet and Universe, they change when interacting and influence other systems. Information,
informational, energy-information, quantum processes and interactions are primary in the evolution of nature. Every object in nature is an energy-information system that interacts with other objects
at the level of
energy and information» [12].
The acceptance
of the principle of general exchange of energy and information in
the universe causes the recognition
of the «intelligence of the world space». Informational
universe is intelligent universe. For modern science, it means the ability
to accept and to decode information. This situation is compared to the first principle of the Hermetic: «Everything is thought», «We live in mind, by
mind and with help of mind» [9]. According to the
scientists, who focus on energy-information theory,
the informational matrix of the universe,
which involves the evolutional program
of the structure and development of
matter, can also be called God.
The tradition
of studying
the human nature in the
system of energy interactions was
founded by Aristotle. The philosopher,
used the term «energy» to
define the actual being of an object, its active action, linked to the transition from possibility to reality. Therefore, the «energy» differed both from the
possibility or potentiality of
this action, and from the implemented
action full of realization or the result of this
realization – entelechy [2].
Aristotle
claimed that every entity contains
an inner goal. Due to the target carried
in the subject, the result exists in
entity in a kind of latent state until its implementation. It shows itself only when the process is finished and the movement reaches its completion –
the goal of development.
Thus, if we consider the
energy as a power
that provides some kind of interaction
between objects and as a power that
promotes opening a potential of a subject, it is culture that
can be considered as an energy-informational
method which may
and should mobilize the energetic potential of individual
to create that or the other
values, properties, characteristics which display the effect of the real energy field
phenomena that correct the processes of self-organization of mankind.
Since culture emerges and appears in various interactions (of society,
of nature, of people), it is a process in fact. Cicero understood the culture as
a process of enhancement and improvement.
V. Ostwald in 1909-1911 proposed an «energetic» definition of culture as a process
of «transformation of
energy into the human-helpful energy, perhaps more saving use of energy without waste»
[18]. According
to A. Akhiezer, culture – is «an intense search of the man
for himself and for his place in
the world» [3]. At one
time, E. Tylor, along with the well-known definition of culture, offered also such a formulation «from the perfect viewpoint the culture may be studied as a general improvement of the human race» [14]. This may also tell that culture is a definite process, which is entirely dependent on its carrier and it is evolutionary.
It may be
confidently noted that the culture promotes the evolution; it is embodied in man and exists with him, appearing in a variety of interactions, in collective and individual activities, in cultural practices, in creation of that or the other objects.
Such understanding of existence and implementation of culture, probably, corresponds to the hypothesis of
the binary structure of the universe,
which includes two layers of reality: the world of material objects
and informational, or semantic field – a sphere of information that
enables the existence and functioning of the sphere of spirit, of
all that is supposed to be perfect.
Findings. According to studies of many modern scientists the energy-information
exchange is inherent in everything that exists in the Universe.
Results of exploration of energy-information
interactions find a lot of forms and junctions to
evolutionary programs and principles of
self-organization and self-motion
of matter. The apparent unpredictability of natural disasters and catastrophes is primarily caused by inaccurate understanding
of the properties of
energy-information interactions in abiocoen and wildlife.
Due to the
current global environmental crisis the necessity of studying
the interactions between nature,
universe and humankind gains a particular importance today. Solving the environmental crisis affects the man himself, because in order to survive on this planet it is necessary to completely change the cultural coordinates, the attitude of man to nature and to himself. Since man is able to interact with the surrounding
world at all levels of entity and
the level of this interaction depends on his quality characteristics and the level of assimilated information, human culture, in this
case may be understood as a result and a
complex of these interactions.
Development and evolution of the
human being as a cognizing and acting subject of cognition,
and as a biosocial being indicates
that the implementation of its potential is possible
in a result of long and consistent stages of self-organization and
self-improvement. Only on passing through these stages, man is able to open
all his potential in its anthropological
space content, gaining the experience
of consistency of its actions aimed for self-development and humanity development
in the whole. We believe that the biological evolution of man is directly connected with energy-information
origin that is in a man. When an energy-information evolution
of the system occurs, the qualitative characteristics of
its biological parameters change and as
a result of interdependence of
these actions the process of cosmic
evolution happens.
In everyday life, we do not realize the unity and interconnectedness of all things and
phenomena, separating the world to
substantive objects and to
segregate events. The principles of
evolution make us look at the
world as at a complex system of interactions of different parts of a whole.
The interaction between man, nature and society
need to become perceived at this stage. Man must consciously interact
with all of these structures, taking responsibility for the consequences
of his actions and thoughts. He should understand the necessity of changes
and be ready to bring them into his life. The problem of comprehension of the future is one of the most vexed and urgent problems
of the present. Understanding of human nature and its role in the evolution of humanity is to cause noospheric coevolution
of man and nature, and to their harmonious
mutual development.
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