Ilya Prigogine, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977, and his followers, have showed that the passage of time and evolution follow a pattern that increasingly creates complex auto-organized, diverse and inter-retro-related entities. Evolution is not linear; rather, it jumps. An instance of this is the formation of the brain in embryos. After eight weeks of gestation there is a frenetic production of nervous cells, namely, the neurons, in the embryo – and we still do not know the reasons why this happens. Millions of these neurons are produced everyday. After 35 days, however, this process slows down and a new process initiates, the inter-connection of all these neurons, which are the basis for the mental capacity. Other instances that evolution follows such a pattern can be seen all around us. Moreover, the inter-connections between entities do not stop with the neurons; they also occur within the family, the community, society and the planet. There emerges a pan-connection that is very characteristic of the age we live in.

Teilhard de Chardin had an insight about evolution: the more evolution progresses the more complex it becomes; the more complex the more internalized; the more internalized the more self-conscious it becomes; the more self-conscious the more self-creating it becomes, forming a unity over and above its parts.