ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the problem involved in construing evolution as a process to which the cosmos as a whole is subject, rather than as one which involves only selected time-extended strands of the universe. Evolution as conceived in biology is always a process by which organisms of a species whose normal members are increasingly ill-fitted to survive in a changing environment become the ancestors of organisms of a new species. The official world view of a contemporary revolutionary party which seriously aspires to seize power by violence will typically construe the revolutionary process whose justification it helps to provide as a discernible part of the regular and indeed inevitable development of man’s world. Indeed, any contemporary revolutionary ideology which is to accomplish its practical mission of recruitment and of maintaining its adherents “steadfact in the faith” must hallow its social descriptions with at least one of the labels “objective” or “scientific.”.
