Eckhart Tolle on the Evolution of Flowers

Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years.

--------------------------Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, the opening lines

‘A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose’ is the current sensational top best seller at Amazon.com and has been for quite a while, years maybe. Tolle begins with this very poetic passage about flowers and stuff. In fact I was so impressed when I originally read it that I kept this extract in one of my sites.

But what I wonder at is, why these spiritual types seem to have utter disregard for science, logic, facts and reason? The occasional poetical upsurge apart, they seem to be lost in their own world, out of touch with reality. When Tolle is writing about evolution, he has the duty to first research the subject a bit and then write, because millions, or who knows, hundreds of millions, of people would be reading it (he being the Amazon god, only next to Rowling). If only the author sat on the Internet for a few minutes and did some cursory browsing on the subject he was dealing with, he could have fared much better in the facts department. Obviously this is not a spontaneous discourse, so he has absolutely no excuse for coming up with sloppy science, showing nothing but contempt for readers’ intelligence and knowledge.

114 million years ago, Tolle says. MSN Encarta says, “Flowering plants are thought to have evolved around 135 million years ago from cone-bearing gymnosperms.” A discrepancy of about 20 million years is nothing to ignore about, even on evolutionary scale of time. The first sentence of ‘Understanding Flower and Flowering’ by Beverly J Glover says, "The oldest fossil flower currently known is 127 million years old.” That means the actual point/phase of origin would be much older.

Interestingly, there was a recent documentary called “The First Flower” on PBS and throughout the long documentary some dates are just discussed only once or twice briefly, hovering around 144, 135, 126 mya. The point is, even the very experts who have devoted their lives to this research cannot indicate the approximate point of origin, plus or minus a few million years. And look at the scientific language they use, “thought to have evolved” “currently known” and so on. But Tolle, the spiritual guru, comes along and asserts with spiritual authority seemingly emanating from the beyond, one fine day, 114 million years ago! Wherever did he get that date from!

Besides, he doesn’t seem to know the basics of evolution. Except for sudden catastrophes, everything in evolution happens as a protracted process of gradual development. Can we say, for example, one fine day, the first homo sapien sapien woke up and saw the sun light? There are no one fine days, or one mornings just after the sunrise, in evolution. The hominid species evolved gradually for a couple of million years; we say modern man evolved around 120 thousand years ago, but this is just to get a rough idea. We can never ever find out which particular morning after sunrise, the first modern man emerged, so that we can celebrate the anniversary every year! It is not just a question of our inability to know, but the process itself didn’t happen that way. It must have taken thousands or most probably tens of thousands of years of countless generations of people for even that final transition to occur, and for technically modern man to emerge!

And the same applies to flowers. The first flowers, about whom Tolle so ecstatically waxes about, would have hardly looked like flowers. To quote the PBS documentary, “The first flowering plants didn't resemble any flowers we know today. They didn't have petals, they didn't have fragrance, they weren't beautiful. They simply were functional.” Any one with the least notion of Darwinian evolution could have easily guessed it!

To me, human beings are the true flowering of life on the planet earth, but look at modern humans as they were even as recently as 30-40 thousand years ago, as shown in various scientific documentaries, they don’t seem to possess the slightest grace and beauty of human beings as we historically know them. However, they and us are the very same species! So, neither did the first flowers (Tolle actually says ‘flower’, not even flowers!) emerge suddenly and seemingly spontaneously one fine morning, nor did the first flowers of angiosperms which gradually over millions of years evolved from the ‘flowers’ of gymnosperms look any thing like the way flowers later evolved to be. For anyone with a little touch with science, this is all very commonsensical knowledge, and when those who don’t seem to have a touch with science write about topics dealing with scientific subjects like evolution, they should at least spend some time doing a little research.

Tolle goes on to talk about awakening to the purpose of life, raising the consciousness of the planet and all that, fine enough, but how about learning to check on simple facts when you write about them!