The Surprising Spiritual Truth about Evolution

	Book review on METAMORPHOSIS: Evolution in Action by Andreas Suchantke (2009)
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Metamorphosis is a truly exceptional and beautiful book which imparts extraordinary insight into the mysterious but highly ordered processes of evolution.  Andreas Suchantke comes very much from the same Rudolph Steiner tradition as a number of other authors like Jos Verhulst and Johannes Rohen who have recently produced remarkable works on evolutionary biology through Adonis Press (Network 82 and 99).  Like the Rohen book,  Metamorphosis has the format of a large textbook, but even more beautifully illustrated with stunning photographs as well as many of the author's own high quality illustrations. Although Suchantke has an extraordinarily wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge of plants, insects and other animal groups, he explains the significance of his remarkable insights in lyrical and comparatively simple language, thanks in part to the skill of aptly named translator Norman Skillen.  

Conceptually Metamorphosis is in many ways a synonym for evolution, originating with the German 'school' of Naturphilosophie which owes so much to the genius of Wolfgang Goethe. Long neglected in the English speaking world in favor of Darwinism, and the idea that evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest mechanism of natural selection, which tends to treat organisms as material entities that passively suffer random fates depending on the vagaries of the environment, including the ravages of competitive predators, what we may call the 'metamorphosis paradigm' is finally making a comeback, thanks to slow but inexorable shifts in biological understanding.  Much of this shift comes from the increasingly specialised and arcane world of genetics and the relatively new subdiscipline of Evo-Devo  (The Evolution of Development), which represents, among other things, a new look at the dynamics of  embryology and development, and increasing dissatisfaction with various aspects of the Darwinian paradigm.   The reader of Metamorphosis could quickly glean much that the mainstream genetics literature will continue to miss: namely a profound insight into the far from passive, and highly-organised, intrinsic, dynamics of evolution, which have played out with incredible consistency, one can even say  'purpose,' throughout the history of the biosphere. Suchantke calls these dynamics 'higher-level evolutionary impulses' Thus, evolution is 'a hierarchically ordered field of activities ...building up the physical organism at the behest of the superordinate organiser.'

Beginning with several chapters on plants Suchantke shows how they have evolved from spore- and seed-bearers to the flowering and fruit-bearing variety through the well known process of juvenilisation or neotony. If you have ever wondered why a beech tree is so big, a fruit tree a blossoming delight, or a garden of herbaceous plants a riot of flowers, the answer is comparatively simple. The large tree grows continuously and conservatively, never having its growth obstructed by counter forces, namely the flowering impulse, until it is decades old. The fruit tree's growth is suppressed by the flowering impulse much earlier, and the herbaceous flower receives the impulse so early that it never grows into a large plant, consisting in large part of dead wood.  The flower therefore is a way of keeping lines of plant evolution forever young.  The flowering impulse is not a measured, electromagnetic field hovering over individual plants ready to censure their growth, but still its morphogenetic influences are very real and far-reaching. The 'anti-growth' effects bring about a transformation or metamorphosis, as each leaf approaches the yet-to-be-manifest flower, it manifests a more and more juvenile stage, and out of this growth 'retardation' brings forth entirely new and novel structures, such as petals and stamens. These in turn are accompanied by complex new colors and scents. The plant develops a new 'time body' or time gestalt, as the flower reaches out beyond the capabilities of most primitive plants into the sensory world, taking steps towards a future potential. Here, by creating exact vegetative and floral replicas of insects, as in the orchids, it communes proactively and purposefully with the animal world, in a way difficult to explain by natural selection.

Suchantke makes much of the biological 'compensation principle' inherent in this dynamic. He also stresses the polarity between 'axial' and 'spherical' forces: the former raying 'out' peripherally like limbs (plant or animal) the latter intensified or turned 'inward' into enclosed bud, flower and seed-like forms.  These polarities and compensations are rife in the organic world - an intrinsic part of the biological-evolutionary dynamic.   Among invertebrates we have the insect polarity between colorful butterflies given over to the airy, external environment of flowers and light and the enclosed, often dark, sometimes ball-shaped ground- and underground-oriented beetle. (Among insects, the ants and social insects occupy a middle, mediating position, where their avoidance of developmental extremes allow for new levels of behavioral complexity).   Likewise, among the molluscs the highly sensitive squid and shell-less octopi have outward world orientations, while clams (bivalves) are enclosed in sphere-like shells. In between, the in-and-out snails are the only group flexible (unspecialised) enough to occupy almost all marine and terrestrial habitats. Such insect-like polarity occurs in birds, distinguishing the colorful humming bird, from drab, flightless forms like the nocturnal Kiwi of the forest gloom. Amazingly, while butterfly wings and bird feathers develop as quite different organs, they still have perfect color and pattern matching, though only on visible surfaces. Such phenomena reveal 'the existence of a trans-temporal morphic gestalt active in the formative process of the organism and present as a Whole in all aspects of its living form.'

Despite some outdated comments (errors) about dinosaurs, Suchantke otherwise illustrates vertebrate evolution with beautiful images. We see the famous coelacanth fish, a 'living fossil' deep in the waters off east Africa, rotating its fins in counter-lateral movements (i.e. left front with right rear and vice versa) that anticipate the limb locomotion of early, salamander-like land dwellers. Could a fish really rehearse such unconscious movements before developing walking limbs? Equally fascinating is the fact that the early fish were encased in armor (the inward gesture), especially around the head, and that they slowly emancipated themselves from these restrictions by growing more flexible bodies and limbs.  Humans still bear distinct traces of this heritage. The infant has a huge head and dysfunctional torso and limbs that it has to develop peripherally in order to free itself from the forces of gravity.

The implications are remarkable.  Give and take impulses engage with compensating counter impulses to hold back development and metamorphose it into new forms. Thus, the plant holds back its growth to internalise the environment (its incipient sensory relationship with the world) and produce insect-like flowers. This internalisation of the environment  'lights up as the inner content of consciousness.' Thus the 'spiritual content of nature...[is]... internalised and raised to the level of consciousness.' This is particularly obvious in humans who only became self-conscious in the process of internalising 'knowledge' of the natural environment (mainly through language and naming the objects that create a world of meaning). But as Suchantke sagely notes,  the fundamental evolutionary message is not about the products of consciousness (e.g., thinking), 'but about the producer, about consciousness itself. When human consciousness becomes an agent of evolution, the question of the continuity of individual human consciousness arises.'  What then is the significance of the discrepancy between our goals, attainable in principle, our actual achievements, and the subtle feeling we can do better?  We must not underestimate this experience of wanting to induce a better future. It only makes sense if future development is unlimited  'and not condemned by the absurdity of the demise of life'  (which does not happen in the big evolutionary scheme)!  We may see that 'the self as the bearer of developmental resolve, has the possibility of further existence beyond its present life.'  Herein is the surprising, spiritual component of evolution made apparent in our own species, and compellingly made part of the evolutionary story by Suchantke's exposition. May the message be more widely understood as biology matures and evolution becomes more conscious of superordinate processes! 

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