#1404 - evolution
What do you think when you hear the word "evolution"?
Maybe you go back to what you learned at school about how living organisms, including humans, have developed throughout the earth's history. Perhaps you remember Charles Darwin and his famous work. I was surprised when I discovered that in his famous book "The Origin of Species", he used the word "evolution" once only and in the closing paragraph. Darwin preferred the expression "descent with modification". One of the reasons is that the word "evolution" carries a sense of "progress" that is not present in Darwin's idea. In nature, evolution is not about getting somewhere; it is just about moving forward.
The word evolution comes from the Latin evolutionem meaning "unrolling (of a book)". It stems from the Latin verb evolvere, "to unroll, roll out, roll forth, unfold", particularly of a book. It then took the figurative meaning "to make clear, disclose; to produce, develop."
So, now with evolution, we mean the gradual development of something. Period. It doesn't say anything about the destination but the process.
Yet, I love the idea of evolution as a sort of unfolding, a process through which we move towards fully realising the potential of something. However, because we don't know the extent of such potential, we can assume it is infinite, and so, as far as we know, evolution is a never-ending process.