Cosmic Natural Selection?

Although we often hear that earth-like planets must exist throughout the universe, when one really looks over the number of parameters that need to be fulfilled, its difficult to understand how possible it really is for a planet just like ours to exist.

The recently published book "Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe", by John Hands, has really got me thinking. In the earlier chapters where Hands assesses cosmological theories, I learned that the orthodox theory of the big bang interprets certain data as meaning that the Universe exploded into being, then immediately decelerated for 9 billion years (indicating a anti-entropic process) only to accelerate as it has been for the last 4.8 or so billion years.

Given how incredible the parameters are for human existence, from the specific area of the galaxy we occupy, to the position of our planet to the sun, to the size of our planet and the makeup of its materials; for example, a solid iron core surrounded by a liquid iron outer core creates the magnetosphere that protects the biosphere from deadly UV rays and the atmosphere from the dissipating effects of solar flares. Were also protected by jupiter in a very special way that secures our orbit around the sun, as well as drawing the majority of the astrids and meteorites in the solar system away from the earth: keep in mind it takes around 4 billion years to create humans i.e. intelligent self aware organisms.

What if the universe we see is the cosmic branching effect created by fundamental universal laws that are in effect the "history" of the process that made humans a contingent reality? This idea, although wacky and unorthodox, nevertheless implies itself (into my head) by the coincidence, at least as interpreted by orthodox theory (and accepting the big bang theory) has the universe in one state and then switching to another state at a time that roughly parallels the estimate for our own planets birth: 4.5 billion years ago. Coincidence?

It's a tempting idea given we know our own species was "selected", or made possible, by the collusion of many different environmental effects, the organization of molecular "dissipative structures" into what Terrence Deacon calls "teleodynamic" processes - or life.

If this ends up being true, it would also conform to Pierre Teilhard de Chardins idea that the future of humanity lies not "beyond the stars", but inward, an "involution", he called it. This, I presume, means a discovery - as a matter of contingency - of our common relatedness, and with that, a recognition that the "space" - or mind - in which we know, is a shared phenomenon, something that exists, and may exist, as an ontological phenomenon, contingently 'made real' by a natural selection process that may be something like a "divine will", as interpreted by many different religions. The Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heshel considered mans existence as Gods "search for him". We exist as an expression of the divine will. Another Jewish thinker, Martin Buber, described the human condition as fundamentally structured in the terms of an "I" and two possible other conditions: an 'it', or a "Thou". He saw that when thinking objectively, objective thought could lead to an objectification of another person, who, In reflecting on his own experience, Buber thought to be a root dysfunction in human perception, since in being related to as an object, the general reaction is a negative one. It's only when we rediscover the "thou", who makes up my "I", that humans discover the meaning of existence.

But notice that the I-Thou dialectic constructs the man-God dialect. Evolution constructed within us the capacity to perceive the intentionality in another conspecific, which ended up being used, around whats termed "the axial age" (600 BCE-100 AD) by religious scholars, for transcendental ideation. The human condition having becoming known in a more deeper way, now framed by 8000 or so years of agricultural existence, and 3,000 years of civilization, and linguistic systems and philosophical systems, has reached a degree of perception that can 'hyperscope' on the Godhead - on ultimate reality.

Whatever the case may be, sometimes I wonder whether the 'tunnel' effect people who have NDE experiences so often describe might be a reversal of the 'creation' process. It sounds crazy and it doesn't have any evidence for it besides an emotional symbolism, but what if, given our biology literally contains a record of the entire evolutionary process (or those parts which were conserved and brought forward) that the retraction of our minds at the point of death follows a universal process, towards a point before space and time?

The human condition having becoming known in a more deeper way, now framed by 8000 or so years of agricultural existence, and 3,000 years of civilization, and linguistic systems and philosophical systems, has reached a degree of perception that can 'hyperscope' on the Godhead - on ultimate reality.

Hyperscope on the Godhead. Like for the last eight thousand years we have just been focusing the hyperscope and now in the last hundred, the last twenty, are bringing it into clarity.

a reply to: Astrocyte

I’m sorry to see your thread has not prospered. It deserves better.

In a word, you are right. Natural selection is not limited to living configurations of matter. It operates on absolutely everything, at every level. Systems and configurations of matter that are better at dissipating energy are selectively favoured, according to the physicist Jeremy England.

However, there is no mind behind the process. Chardin’s ideas, in particular, are pseudoscientific bunk. He just made up his own physics and astronomy as he went along.