EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



of the formation of the galaxies; for in any event it is 

 difficult to suppose a situation in which matter, exist- 

 ing prior to the formation of our galaxies, could have 

 existed in a form of greater complexity before galaxy 

 formation, than after the completion of this process. It 

 therefore seems reasonable to state that the complexity 

 of organization of matter in the universe must at one 

 time have been of low order. i 



A somewhat different, but more concise, way of ex- 

 pressing this situation would be to state, that the a 

 priori probability of a given quantity of matter exist- 

 ing in some form of low complexity of organization is 

 greater than the probability of this same quantity of 

 matter existing organized in some form of galactic sys- 

 tem. 



The discussion of a priori probabilities of the ex- 

 istence of systems may well seem unduly academic and 

 beside the point in the first chapter of a discussion of 

 evolutionary development. However the central prob- 

 lem of the development of living things is intimately 

 tied up with these considerations. After all, life must 

 be considered to represent matter organized into sys- 

 tems of great complexities. How such orderly aggre- 

 gates could develop in the first place, persist and con- 

 tinue to become more complex, is not so easily explain- 

 able in terms of the generally accepted laws of the 

 physical sciences. 



One of the most fundamental maxims of the physical 



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