ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that an alternative metaphysical framework that fits the requirements of both religion and evolutionary science. It provides an alternative to the materialism that accompanies anti-hierarchical interpretations of evolutionary science. Most religions have perceived in living beings a mysterious empowering spiritual force, identified in biblical circles as the “Spirit of God.” Life is ontologically superior to sheer matter, even though in evolution it is chronologically posterior to the purely physical phases of cosmogenesis. Vitalism’s most famous proponent, Henri Bergson, argued that matter, though earlier in cosmic history, is in fact merely ancillary and preparatory to life. Science, at least implicitly, allows for a level of information hierarchically distinct from that of physical elements themselves. Information, therefore, has the capacity to bring about hierarchical discontinuity among various levels, even though, when viewed in a purely historical or atomistic way, nature seems to be a closed and purely horizontal continuum.
