Humankind Advancing, Vol.8, No.1 January 1997

Vital Dust has been written to support the author's tenet that life on this planet is not unique. On the contrary. Wherever conditions are right (as they are on about a trillion heavenly bodies) life will be created from cosmic dust, and wherever life is created, progress toward greater complexity is unavoidable. The very definition of life embodies the capacity to multiply. Cosmic rays produce variation in life forms, which multiply at different rates, and, as their complexity increases, more and more chance mutations become useless or lethal. In other words, the chance element in evolution becomes gradually less important, while more and more tightly determined directions manifest themselves. It is de Duve's thesis that during this process essential similarities are bound to occur.

Just as wings, eyes, and other organs have evolved independently in different species in response to similar conditions here on earth, conditions anywhere in the universe suitable to bring about life will lead to similar survival-oriented attributes. Though living beings on different planets will look vastly different, multicellular organisms will come into being, nervous systems will evolve in those that move around, will congregate at the feeding end of the creature and result in the brain and the mind.

Brains and minds evolve together. The mind-brain dichotomy vanishes as our understanding of matter increases and emphasis is shifted from the material aspect of matter to its energy component (for which the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme uses the beautiful word "creativity"). That creativity pervades the entire cosmos, but only during its interplay within our minds, consciousness and values are created. Values of the right kind, as de Duve carefully demonstrates, are essential for the survival and further evolution of complex organisms anywhere in the universe. If enough wisdom is active, the wasteful trial-and-error method of evolution, which discarded 99% of all species ever evolved, can be replaced by conscious choice. (Wisdom is not identical with intelligence, but includes care, love, and responsibility.)

Is enough wisdom active in our species? De Duve -- keenly aware of the problems of overpopulation, over consumption, devastation of the biosphere, rising crime rates, and the interrelationship of all these difficulties -- does not believe that it is. If present trends continue, if humanity does not succeed in narrowing, and finally eliminating, the gap between science and religion, if our guiding values remain uninformed and self-destructive, and if our most reliable source of the truth deprives individuals of their most valuable inner experiences and leaves the world empty of sense and meaning, humankind will vanish to be replaced by something more enlightened.

He emphatically disagrees with those who believe that science must be abandoned to find values and meaning in life.

"All except a radical fringe would agree that the benefits of science and technology far outweigh their drawbacks. Who would want to go back to the "good old days," when half the children never reached the age of two; when one-third of women died in childbirth; when smallpox, typhus, cholera, and plague decimated populations; when tuberculosis took its toll; when pneumonia, diphtheria, meningitis, and polio killed or crippled millions; when nutritional deficiencies stunted growth; when epileptic seizures were viewed with terror and the victims of ergot poisoning were burnt at the stake as witches? Who would willingly return to the times when humans had to toil day and night simply to keep alive? Surely not the millions who still hover near enough to this precarious way of life to know by experience what it means." (P.282)

"The way to survival is not less science but more wisdom. In this respect, scientists are not the only guides, perhaps not even the best ones. Wisdom is not a necessary correlate of knowledge or understanding, or even of intelligence. (Emphasis added.)

Neither, however, is wisdom to be sought in ignorance, stupidity, prejudice, or superstition. There is a tendency in some circles to refuse to seek the truth so that it may comfortably be ignored. This attitude has gone so far as to cause certain lines of research to be banned because the results may conflict with some preconceived opinion or ideology. Such moves are understandable. But they are doubly perverse. They are insulting by treating humans as immature children who have to be protected from the truth, and they are futile. Truth, whatever we may do to deny or ignore it, is bound to catch up with us." (P.283)

That truth does not -- as it does for Monod -- make the universe cold and meaningless. Its meaning lies in the structure of the cosmos, "which happens to be such as to produce thought by way of life and mind. Thought, in turn, is a faculty whereby the universe can reflect upon itself, discover its own structure, and apprehend such immanent entities as truth, beauty, goodness, and love. Such is the meaning of the universe, as I see it." (P.301)

What makes de Duve's work outstanding is not his major tenet -- that life is bound to exist throughout the universe. This may or may not be true and can very likely not be proven in the near future. What makes his work outstanding is the scientific rigor with which he demonstrates that complex, intelligent life cannot exist or advance without values anchored in global responsibility.