Evolution and the Conscious Self

Abstract

We are participants in the evolutionary process of life, yet only in the last 100 years has man realized his evolutionary origin. The full implications of this re-orientation of man to nature have not yet been lived with long enough for them to be assimilated to man’s conceptual thinking about himself. The emotional controversies of last century continued into this century and have delayed a wise evaluation of the evolutionary story in relation to man. However, in the last few years there have been publications by leading biologists (Dobzhansky, 1962, 1967; Simpson, 1964; Lack, 1961 ; Thorpe, 1962) that reveal the beginning of an evolutionary philosophy based upon a mature understanding of the evolutionary process as it is at present formulated.