Syntropy, Consciousness and Cosmic Evolution: Insights from Fantappié and Teilhard de Chardin

that will appear to us moved by a special finalism. The class of transformations that more than others seems to involve this phenomenon of negative entropy or rejuvenation or growth, seems in reality associated more than to the vital force or prana of the Indians, to the transformation force or kundalini of the Indians. It is this force according to oriental tradition that specifies the elements in the growth and development of the child. Precisely the fact that the ordinary natural direction is the increase of entropy, a phenomenon directed towards a decrease of entropy requires a very precise purpose or end. Fantappié immediately noticed the importance of a law of finality for syntropic phenomena considering it an essential characteristic of these. In other terms while it is characteristic in entropic phenomena the principle of causality that to a concentrated phenomenon (cause) logically binds a subsequent phenomenon of dispersive character (effect), with the reversal of time that transforms the entropic phenomenon into syntropic phenomenon, that bond comes to be transformed into an analogous bond, which is natural to call principle of finality, valid therefore in the field of all and only syntropic phenomena, for which to a set of dispersed antecedent phenomena (means) comes to be logically connected a concentrated subsequent phenomenon (end), towards which they converge and which of these appears as the crowning and conclusion.

L. Fantappié, The world of syntropic phenomena and life, 1942.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE AND LIFE

Therefore at the end if we want to tighten the reasoning as it was then used by these philosophers we have in the Universe two types of motions. One entropic, disintegrating and one ordering and aggregating characterized by negative entropy. The second in a certain sense takes advantage of the energy of the first and from a philosophical point of view it is in this typology of phenomena that the end of the Universe must be identified. Therefore if we want to find a finality in the Universe we must turn towards those zones of the Universe like the Galaxies that tend towards an ordering and aggregating motion and certainly not to those intergalactic zones of the Universe that tend towards thermal equilibrium. Thus occurs a fundamental distinction between what is the end of the Universe and the end of the Universe. The thermal equilibrium that was indicated by Boltzmann's physics at the end of the nineteenth century does not represent for these Sophianics the end of the Universe, but at most the end of the Universe. Otherwise it would be like saying that the end of an egg is a broken shell: that is the end of the egg but its end is the birth of the chick.

COMPLEXITY, CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

The fundamental point that seems to emerge from these philosophical studies is that the end of the Universe is precisely biological life. But what is biological life? Unfortunately there is no univocal definition to this question, but an elastic definition that can incorporate various aspects of life and which is exactly the same definition already identified by man millennia ago. According to Vedic religions indeed life was characterized by 3 main forces: metabolism or breath called by Indians prana; reproduction which is a form of kundalini energy; evolution governed by fohat. Modern science confirms biological life as resting on these 3 pillars. Here we are introduced to the works of Teilhard de Chardin who being a geologist and paleontologist discoverer of Peking Man and convinced Darwinian as well as religious and man of deep religious faith. Proceeding according to the previous reasonings and noting the presence of a biological evolution he asked himself what was the end of biological evolution. As a scientist he limited himself to noting the fact, but as a theologian and philosopher he wondered about what its meaning was. In that period many scientists including Schrödinger, Fantappié, Pende and many others had identified this strange phenomenon to which biological life is subject, that is the tendency towards increasingly complex and articulated forms according to a process that locally is contrary to the classical laws of thermodynamics. It is indeed in this period that Schrödinger gave life to a series of conferences in Dublin that provided the fundamental basis on what would be the research on the mechanisms of biological and genetic life. It was however Chardin who gave a finality to this phenomenon that today passes under the name of THE LAW OF COMPLEXITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

The higher the degree of complexity in a living being, the greater its consciousness; and vice versa.
Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, 1955

It is important to note how this law formulated by de Chardin and which today has led to countless deviations did not imply that consciousness was caused by complexity, but only a correlation between the two realities. Therefore according to Teilhard de Chardin the end of life is the manifestation of consciousness or better of self-consciousness that we know in Man. If indeed the end of life were longevity, life would evolve towards increasingly smaller structures - there are bacilli that preserved in salt have resisted alive for over 250 million years-, if it were adaptability then organisms would have organized themselves in increasingly modular and easily adaptable and interchangeable structures. Vice versa what is noted is that the physical and biological body is structured in such a way as on one hand to become a support for consciousness and on the other hand to circumscribe it; all of us find the physical body as a limit of consciousness, that is we are more or less conscious of what happens inside it, while what happens outside does not influence consciousness which is therefore circumscribed by the body.

THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

But is this therefore the end...