0079 Thomas Aquinas has no knowledge in regards to the scientific construct of evolutionary theory.

He has no idea about the impending “discovery” of a new continent, standing to the west, between Europe and India.  He has no idea that this new continent is filled with people that start trending towards civilization around 3000 U0′, rather than 0 U0′.

He has no information about ancient civilizations that lasted hundreds, even thousands of years, in the Near East, only to leave dusty hills containing royal libraries of cuneiform clay tablets, fired into bricks.

0080 What does Aquinas know?

The Genesis stories of Adam and Eve offer clues.

Aquinas portrays Adam and Eve as individuals, in the state of original justice.  Original justice manifests as a rectitude of order among the parts of the sovereign person, who is ultimately wholly grounded in the rectitude of an order towards God.

This seems like a metaphor for royalty to me.

There is no rebelliousness within the kingdom.

The passions among the parts (the people) do not conflict with the soul’s (the king’s) dominion.

Indeed, the reasoned judgment of the soul (the king) cultivates and trains the expression of passions (among the people) in order for the person (the kingdom) to survive and flourish.

0081 How does the double (personal and political) vision of Aquinas key into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

0082 In Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), the authors of the reviewed book make great hay over Robin Dunbar’s formula correlating mammalian brain size to group size.  The hominin brain to body mass ratio increases significantly in the millions of years from the southern apes to Homo sapiens.  So does group size.  Hominins start as bands (50) and end up with communities (150), with higher resonances, all the way to tribe (1500).

The idea of group size resonances occurring at factors of three plays a role in their argument.  However, the authors of the reviewed book do not realize that the evolution of talk might occur within one social circle (the team), then later expand to the entire group (the community) when circumstances change.  Hand talk is locked within the team for over a million years, until the domestication of fire offers a platform for talking itself: gossip after a fire-cooked meal.

Well, hand talk covers more than gossip.  Over time, hand-talk becomes fully linguistic, allowing the proclamation of grammatically correct yet counter-intuitive statements, such as “the raven gathers pebbles from the creek”.  In hand talk, the statement is grammatically correct.  But, it does not make much sense, because ravens don’t swim.

0083 Here is a picture of the various social circles in operation in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0084 Each social circle exhibits its own relational logic.  Each social circle is a site for natural selection of individuals suitable for that social circle.  This includes diverse teams.  Over generations, each long-lasting successful exercise of obligate collaborative foraging selects for adaptations, including neural and muscular, that make the team activity more productive and more fun.  For example, the physics of rock fragmentation becomes intuitively natural, for some, eventually leading to the invention of a new stone tool technology, the Acheulean stone tool, that is made ahead of time and carried along in the team activity.

0085 Team activity?

Hominins figure out all sorts of ways to obtain food that does not conflict with the interests of other creatures.

For example, bury a lot of overripe fruit, then wait a few weeks.  The hole is now full of delicious edible bugs.  The creativity of our ancestors must have been incredible. Their range of culinary traditions may put our own to shame.   Each successful team selects for its own adaptations, both anatomical and physiological, making its exercise of obligatory collaborative foraging more… um… “natural”.  No wonder the size of the hominin neocortex expands over time, along with group size.  It’s like a giant menu of what and how to eat.

As well as what and how to avoid being eaten.

0086 Is this where Aquinas comes into the picture?

Aquinas’s double vision is both personal and political.  The prelapsarian adamah is both a kingdom of parts and a sovereign over a kingdom.  Plus, this sovereign answers to the order of God.

Consider each social circle to be an individual writ large.  Consider the individual hominin as a social circle writ small.  Each social circle has its own nature and grace.  Each person has his or her own nature and grace.

0087 Does Aquinas know that the term, “Adam”, in Genesis, is a pun, meaning both “humanity” (adamah) and “an individual’s name” (Adam)?

Certainly, his political-personal approach calls to mind a harmony of the social circles, where higher social circles operate as sovereign, and lower social circles operate as the kingdom of parts.  Plus, the higher social circles are always aware of an order higher than their own.

0088 Now comes the kicker.

A perfect or complete justness within the souls of the social circles associate to a more perfect or complete governance of the bodies of the social circles, so that the whole and the parts are (relatively speaking) immortal.  Surely, the people who compose the social circles are mortal.  But, the bodies of the social circles are not mortal.  So, adamah is immortal, even though Adam is not.  Yet, adamah is Adam and Adam is adamah.

0089 To me, the immortal harmony of the social circles, selected through cultural (for each expression of a social circle) and natural (for individuals with aptitudes for being productive and having fun within social circles) selection, corresponds to the tree of life, in the garden of Eden.  The mortality of the person resides within the immortality of the tree of life.  We (hominins) are the roots.  We are the fruits of the tree of life.  Plus, the tree of life grows in a garden ordained by God.

Culture and hominins co-evolve.

0090 Yes, this evolution-informed vision is different than an immortal Adam, as some sort of philosopher king, ruling over all the parts of his body, while remaining ordered to the rectitude of God.

Certainly, it sounds different and more research is needed.

But, my goal is only to establish a principle that is intimated by John Paul II’s theology of the body.

The ethos of the gift is a phenotypic expression of our species, because the trait is an adaptation to the gift, as a triadic relation.

0091 Once one starts to fill in the cognitive blanks about human origins that have been opened during the past eight centuries…. as soon as one tries to translate what Aquinas says about the prelapsarian Adam into the evolution of adamah, humanity, in the double framework of the souls and the bodies of mortal beings participating in the souls and bodies of intergenerational beings, composed of diverse and nested (not so much hierarchical) social circles that promote the survival and flourishing of its participants… does one begin to appreciate the intellectual daring of John Paul II’s proclamation of a blessed, holistic and Christian theology of the body.

0092 At this point, I examine the fourth section, covering John Paul II’s integration of original innocence and the ethos of the gift.

To start, take a pencil and strike out the word, “perfect”, and replace it with the word, “complete”.

Why do I do this?

I know a few perfectionists, and they are not completionists.  Completion means fulfillment of an intention.  An oak tree is the fulfillment of the intention of an acorn.  The oak tree completes the acorn.

0093 Aquinas mentions three states of humans.  The following figure shows how the terms associate to biblical teachings, the hypothesis first singularity, and to Alexander Dugin’s political theology.

0094 Well, maybe the above figure overstates the importance of the hypothesis of the first singularity and Alexander Dugin’s political theology.  I mean, look at the three items for glory.  There is no way that they are equivalent.

I am sure that Pope John Paul II, looking down from his heavenly perch, chuckles at the folly.

0095 John Paul II refers to humans before original sin as living in a state of innocence and receiving the gift of grace.  Current Christian philosophy and theology have yet to grasp the implications.  What is the nature of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Aquinas’s account of original justice seems a little too academic.  The state of innocence involves a complete ordering of the lower parts of man by that which is highest in him.  The rule of the soul over the body may be simultaneously labeled “self-mastery” and “interior freedom”.

0096  Too academic?

Doesn’t Aquinas’s account follow the rules of the Greimas square?

0097 Well, yes.

Nevertheless, Aquinas’s explicit abstractions defy the experiences of modern civilized folk… until… “man” is replaced the the term, “adamah”.  “Humanity” adapts to social circles, each of which offers opportunities to exploit and dangers to overcome.  The harmony among these social circles corresponds to the higher parts ordering the lower parts, allowing all social circles to flourish and adapt.  

In short, adamah is the human writ large, just as Adam is adamah writ small.

0098 In our current Lebenswelt of unconstrained social complexity, social circles translate into institutions and organizations.  See A Primer on How Institutions Think, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0099 Self-mastery is required to participate in each social circle.  Plus, social circles celebrate interior freedom.  No one forces a person to join one team or another, even though an evolutionary anthropologist may call teamwork, “obligatory collaborative foraging”.  Social circles celebrate the responsibility to make a choice as to which team to participate in.

I call the distinction between freedom and responsibility a “co-opposition”.

Responsibility₃ serves as a normal context for the possibility of freedom₁.

Freedom₃ serves as a normal context for the potential of responsibility₁.

The integration of the person and social circles ranges from the male-female bond that founds each family (5) to the elders who arrange and negotiate occasional gatherings of communities (1500).  Participation is a gift.  Willingness to participate gives peace of mind.  Participation generates productivity and fun.

Participation₃ serves as a normal context for the possibility of purpose₁.

Purpose₃ serves as a normal context for the potential of participation₁.

0100 Of course, Pope John Paul II does not know the hypothesis that the human niche is the potential of triadic relations.

Yet, he focuses on a relation that is undeniably relevant to natural selection.  For our lineage, male-female pair-bonding is evolutionarily ancient, perhaps starting as a co-adaptation that contributes to a successful transition to bipedalism.

0101 How so?

Bipedalism evolves to facilitate transit between widely separated regions of seasonally rich resources, characteristic of the ecology of mixed forest and savannah.

0102 The problem?

The female cannot walk long distances and forage and feed her children by herself.

0103 The solution?

The male adapts to become the female’s helper.

“The marriage deal” is an evolutionary concept discussed in The First and Second Primers on the Organization Tier, as well as A Primer on the Family.  The male offers protection and provisioning.  The female offers fidelity.  Without fidelity, the genes of the protective and provisioning male do not make it to the next generation.  So, fidelity is key to “the marriage deal”.

Further adaptations, both organically and culturally, serve to increase the benefits of the marriage deal.

0104 Of course, a scientific discussion of the so-called “marriage deal” does not compare to the theological rhetoric of Pope John Paul II, where the communion of male and female in mutual self-giving is congruent with adamah’s original happiness.  But, such scientific discussion suggests that the rhetoric applies to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0105 Big time!

The pope’s treatment of marriage applies to every social circle.  Maybe not so romantically.  But, definitely so practically.  Every social circle entails giving and receiving, because the triadic relation of the gift is intrinsic to its operation.  The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.