Category:Evolution

Evolution (from Latin: evolvere "to roll out", "to roll over", "to develop") has been, since the time of the French Revolution, the term for every slow and peaceful development and thus forms the conceptual contrast to revolution (Latin: revolutio "to roll back", "to turn around"), which stands for a sudden, violent change.

In biology, natural history and cultural history, evolution is understood today as the development to new, usually more highly integrated, more complex forms in the physical-chemical (development of the universe and the Earth), biological (development of living beings) and cultural spheres (development of cultures), and as such is largely attributed to purely material causes in the sense of the modern Darwinian theory of evolution.

Anthroposophical spiritual research goes beyond these approaches, which remain in general, and concretely uncovers the complex spiritual and material backgrounds of evolution, which are most comprehensively described by the so-called seven planetary stages of world evolution, which in turn are divided into seven conditions of life and these in turn into seven conditions of form. At present, with our present physical earth evolution, we are in the fourth (physical) condition of form of the mineral kingdom, which is the 4th condition of life of our Earth.

From a spiritual-scientific point of view, evolution means that a spiritually creative being gradually becomes more and more clearly visible in the outer sensual-material appearance. The necessary counter-movement to this is involution, through which the spiritual again gradually withdraws from the outer appearance.