We argue that Anticipative Capability (AC) is the best descriptor of evolutionary advancement, and that the evolutions of survivability, consciousness, intelligence, wisdom and evolution itself are broadly equivalent. Key to establishing this equivalence is the adoption of a viewpoint which rejects both 19^th century anthropomorphism and late 20^th century anti-anthropomorphism in favour of an anti-anti-anthropomorphic stance which presupposes the continuity of evolvability and AC between blind inanimate dependence on Newton’s Laws and human technological control. We suggest that the random nature of purely Darwinian selection has been progressively modified towards a more directed form through a number of mechanisms which first simulate AC – e.g. in amoebas and the Venus flytrap – then later implement it – e.g. in insects and animals. We conclude that AC in the absence of self-observation is unlikely; that self-observation in the absence of scalar development is impossible; that emergence of scale corresponds to the emergence of a “theory of self” in infants; and that the attainment of “wisdom” in humans is associated with the development of cervical hyperscalarity.

_________________