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By Root 532 0

complexity are the strands of DNA that form the coils of life, which encode the programs for the teleonomic processes and activities of organisms. We may trace a continuous progression from the union of atoms in the simplest molecules to the much more complex molecules of organisms. If the activities of these creatures are teleonomic, the movements of the social atoms seeking companions must be regarded as teleonomic in the same sense. One continuous movement runs through the universe from its prime foundations to its most advanced formations. It is improbable that creatures so purposeful as we humans, composed of atoms widespread in the cosmos, activated by the same energy that courses through it everywhere, arose in a universe devoid of teleology.

Nevertheless, the programs encoded in the genes of organisms and that implicit in the sociality of atoms differ greatly The former, products of a long evolution, are highly detailed, differ from species to species, and are probably rarely exactly the name in two individuals who are not identical twins. Atoms appear to be coeval with the universe and their nature never changes. Their sociality determines only the general course of cosmic development, from the chaos of diffused cosmic dust to planetary systems of quite definite forms and movements, and on some planets a vast diversity of living creatures, whose forms and activities were not predetermined but resulted from their interactions with the lifeless and living components of their different environments, depending much on the chances of mutation.

As to the end or goal of the cosmic process, it appears to be to give value to the universe. No matter how vast its spread, how many millions or trillions of galaxies or stars it contained, a universe with no single being to enjoy its existence would, it seems, be so utterly valueless that nothing of importance would be lost if it were annihilated, leaving only nothingness. The cosmic process is best interpreted as an aeonian striving to increase the value of the

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universe by producing creatures capable of enjoying their existence in it, but unhappily not without much suffering along the way. And this striving or seeking for value or significance appears to be a teleonomic process, programmed, in its general direction although not in its details, by the sociality of the atoms.

An objection to the view that the universe is programmed to augment its value by producing creatures able to enjoy their lives is that, on present evidence, life is so thinly scattered through its immensity. Of the nine planets in our solar system, only Earth is known to support organisms, and billions of years passed before some of them rose to the psychic level of aesthetic appreciation and thirst for understanding. An answer to this objection is that a universe that is apparently eternal and possibly of infinite extent has unlimited time to create, by slow evolution, beings with an advanced psychic life, and abundant resources to form millions of planetary systems, so that a few of them might give birth to living creatures. Possibly the atoms are not devoid of a degree of feeling proportionate to their minute size and intensified and diversified as organization increases. The two-aspect or bipolar ontology, which I regard as the most satisfactory solution of the ancient problem of the relation of mind to matter, postulates that every particle has a physical side, public and the object of scientific study, and a psychic side, which like our own consciousness is private and unobservable by others. When the sentient atoms are arranged in a special pattern, as in a brain, consciousness is intensified and the more advanced manifestations of psychic life develop. Although the foregoing solution of the basic problem of teleology has much to recommend it, we cannot prove it. Despite all our science and all our philosophy, the universe guards its secrets well.

If we insist that teleology implies a conscious purpose widely diffused through the universe, we are on precarious