Thursday, 22 November 2018

Evolution

Is evolution directional? I don't think so. Organisms on a planetary surface will not inevitably become conscious, then intelligent. These qualities will evolve only if they are naturally selected.

Poul Anderson's The Night Face/Let The Spacemen Beware and "Starfog," feature human beings who have adapted to extraterrestrial environments and therefore have gradually "speciated." These speciations would not have been predictable millions of years beforehand.

In Diamond Mask, Julian May tells us that, millions of years hence, human beings will, like Jon "Jack the Bodiless" Remillard, become Mental Men. Born incarnate, they will soon shed their bodies to become naked brains exercising the metapsychic abilities of telepathy, creativity, psychokinesis etc - but how could it be known in advance that such a transformation was going to happen?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And, quite frankly, I would find such an "evolution" revolting! I think most human beings would prefer to remain a composite of mind/soul united with a body. If, because of illness (as was the case with Jon Remillard) the brain had to lose its body in order to survive, that would have been a different matter. But otherwise no.

Sean