This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Punctuated equilibria [is] the abrupt appearance of life everywhere in the fossil record… suggest evolution has taken place in major creative episodes in different times and place, but with huge periods of stability in between. New species, then, have formed in those episodes during thousands rather than millions of years. This is often called the “lucky monster” theory.
Appearance | Evolution | Life | Life |
Any revolution which denies the right to criticize is bound to wallow in stagnation and backwardness.
Revolution | Right |
The chromosome reproduces itself exactly and exactly once, building itself up from materials around it, mostly proteins. Nothing similar has been known to occur outside living matter, though regarded chemically, the DNA molecule is not fundamentally different from any other large molecule. Clearly then, some other principle prevails in living nature… Consider the DNA molecule… the main constituent of the chromosomes, with its 10,000 links, in which four different types occur in various arrangements… and assuming 32 links of the chain contain 8 of each type we get for the odds of a particular arrangement 1:1017 That is, one to a hundred thousand billion… the inevitable conclusion sis that whatever evolution may depend on, it certainly does not depend on chance.
Chance | Evolution | Inevitable | Nature | Nothing |
A grand meta-narrative is a story of the development and purpose of human history in which we as individual can find a place and play a role. Four basic meta-narratives: (1) Platonic Christian is the idea of life as a journey to another unchanging realm. (2) Hegel’s view that history is the unfolding of the consciousness of God. (3) Marx’s notion of another revolution ushering in a new era. (4) Nietzsche’s idea that there is no “beyond” and that the only meaning comes through creative activities through which we shape a life for ourselves.
Consciousness | Era | God | History | Individual | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Revolution | Story |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
A nonviolent revolution is not a program of “seizure of power.” It is a program of transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power.
Power | Revolution |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
If practically everything in one’s life depends on the evolution of the level of one’s consciousness, it would seem that, aside from the mere survival needs, developing the level of consciousness would eclipse all other endeavors in importance. That would seem to be so, but that has to be integrated into the overall context of one’s life. Endeavors and activities can remain the same but need to be recontextualized and repositioned within a spiritual framework. To spiritualize one’s life, it is necessary only to shift one’s motive. To constantly be aware of one’s actual motive tends to bring up positionality and the pairs of opposites, such as gain versus service or love versus greed.
Consciousness | Evolution | Greed | Life | Life | Love | Need | Service | Survival |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The evolution of consciousness requires a wide range of opportunities and a playing field that affords almost unlimited options for development. If human life represents a learning process, then society is the ideal school that affords an extremely wide range of options for numerous levels of consciousness to develop, progress, define, identify, and grasp endless subtleties as well as learn more gross lessons. The ego is extremely tenacious and therefore often seems to require extreme conditions before it lets go of a positionality. It often takes the collective experience of millions of people over many centuries to learn even what appears upon examination to be a simple and obvious truth, namely, that peace is better than war or love is better than hate.
Better | Consciousness | Ego | Evolution | Experience | Extreme | Hate | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Peace | People | Progress | Society | Truth | War | Society | Learn |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
Spiritual goals tend to become increasingly important and integrity becomes the yardstick of happiness. This leads to the evolution of consciousness in which the ultimate goal becomes the perfection of one’s relationship with God.
Consciousness | Evolution | Goals | God | Important | Integrity | Perfection | Relationship |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
Enlightenment is therefore a progressive realization and does not represent a finished product, or a final end, or the completion of the evolution of spiritual possibility.
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and regression, of evolution and dissolution.
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
If the self-conception of novelty is the basic wonder of the universe, this eliciting of mind from the potentialities of world-stuff, and its intensification and increasing importance during evolution is the basic wonder of life.
Evolution | Life | Life | Mind | Novelty | Self | Universe | Wonder | World | Novelty |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
Biology… has thus revealed man’s place in nature. Hs is the highest form of life produced by the evolutionary process on this planet, the latest dominant type, and the only organism capable of further advance or progress. Whether he knows it or not, whether he wishes it or not, he is now the main agency for the further evolution of the earth and its inhabitants. In other words, his destiny is to realize new possibilities for the whole terrestrial sector of the cosmic process, to be the instrument of further evolutionary progress on this planet.
Destiny | Earth | Evolution | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Progress | Wishes | Words |
Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors: the individual… bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment, with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
Change | Evolution | Impulse | Individual | Initiative | Power | Sympathy |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
`Mind’ and `matter’ appear as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies. There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity… This earth is one of the rare spots in the cosmos where mind has flowered. Man is a product of nearly three billion years of evolution, in whose person the evolutionary process has at last become conscious of itself and its possibilities. Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible for the whole further evolution of our planet.
Earth | Evolution | Humanity | Man | Mind | Phenomena | Religion | Science |
T. E. Hulme, fully Thomas Ernest Hulme
The process of evolution can only be described as the gradual insertion of more and more freedom into matter.
The next great advance in the evolution of civilization cannot take place until war is abolished.
Civilization | Evolution | War |