Synchronicity strikes again.
A day after reading, then posting, a reflection by Greg Whetsel, the Grizzly Geek, on the emergence of Spirit, I began reading Morowitz's The Emergence of Everything (see What I've Been Reading.)
Morowitz, a biologist, traces the history of the universe through 28 emergences, incidences of a new property emerging from an existing complex system. Number 3, for example, is stars; number 9 is prokaryotes; number 15 is fish; number 23 is toolmakers; and number 27 is philosophy.
For Morowitz, emergence number 28, still in progress, is spirit. He writes:
When I planned this chapter on emergence of the spirit I never realized how difficult it would be from a purely academic point of view. For the other emergences I know (if sometimes only dimly) what has emerged, while here I was trying to look to the future to the next emergence. This violates my epistemological imperatives. So for the moment, allow me to be a speculative futurist to think about what emergence we may be in the middle of (175-76). . . .
When one addresses the quest for the spiritual, it is some aspect of existence that goes beyond the biological (the second great emergence), and beyond the mental (the third great emergence), into the domain of something more psychic, "a formidable upsurge of unused power" (177). . . .
I assume that something new will emerge in human society, and it will present us with undreamed possibilities in science and the arts. This emergence requires our efforts and requires something spiritual that goes beyond the mind. There will be a new emergence, and we will play a part in what that emergence is. That is our destiny (178).
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