Abstract
There is abundant direct and indirect evidence that life and the cosmos have not remained unchanged since an act of instantaneous creation. Life and the cosmos evolve through an ongoing cumulative process of energetic transformation that is evident even within the life spans of individual organisms. Efforts to understand this process have, however, been impeded by the same abstract dissociation of matter from space that sustains belief in instantaneous creation. The resultant view of evolution as an eliminative ‘survival of the fittest’, brought about by a selective mechanism is both paradoxical and pathological. Selection from amongst a set of competing alternatives in a fixed arena cannot initiate change and it removes diversity. A more realistic understanding arises from appreciating natural flow-geometry. Energy flows naturally in response to the inductive influence of receptive space. Life and individual identity hence evolve through the natural inclusion of space in flux (and flux in space), not the independent existence of each from the other. New varieties arise through the opening up of new possibilities for energetic expression in continuously changing circumstances, not the illusory separation of chooser from choices that arises from objective perception.
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Rayner, A. (2017). Natural Inclusion and the Evolution of Self-identity. In: The Origin of Life Patterns. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54606-3_4
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