The immensity of the universe: and life is rare (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Saturday, October 24, 2015, 01:53 (3100 days ago) @ David Turell

An essay on the rarity of life in an immense universe. Does that have meaning?:-http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/is-life-special-just-because-its-rare-However, there's another, grander perspective from which life in the cosmos is rare. That perspective considers all forms of matter, both animate and inanimate. Even if all “habitable” planets (as determined by Kepler) do indeed harbor life, the fraction of all material in the universe in living form is fantastically small. Assuming that the fraction of planet Earth in living form, called the biosphere, is typical of other life-sustaining planets, I have estimated that the fraction of all matter in the universe in living form is roughly one-billionth of one-billionth. Here's a way to visualize such a tiny fraction. If the Gobi Desert represents all of the matter flung across the cosmos, living matter is a single grain of sand on that desert. How should we think about this extreme rarity of life?-***-Modern biology has challenged the theory of vitalism. In 1828, the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler synthesized the organic substance urea from nonorganic chemicals. Urea is a byproduct of metabolism in many living organisms and, previous to Wöhler's work, was believed to be uniquely associated with living beings. Later in the century, the German physiologist Max Rubner showed that the energy used by human beings in movement, respiration, and other forms of activity is precisely equal to the energy content of food consumed. That is, there are no hidden and nonmaterial sources of energy that power human beings. In more recent years, the composition of proteins, hormones, brain cells, and genes has been reduced to individual atoms, without the need to invoke nonmaterial substances.-Yet, I would argue that most of us, either knowingly or unknowingly, remain closet vitalists. Although there are moments when the material nature of our bodies screams out at us, such as when we have muscle injuries or change our mood with psychoactive drugs, our mental life seems to be a unique phenomenon arising from a different kind of substance, a nonmaterial substance. The sensations of consciousness, of thought and self-awareness, are so gripping and immediate and magnificent that we find it preposterous that they could have their origins entirely within the humdrum electrical and chemical tinglings of cells in our brains. However, neuroscientists say that is so.-***-And what is that special arrangement deemed “life?” The ability to form an outer membrane around the organism that separates it from the external world. The ability to organize material and processes within the organism. The ability to extract energy from the external world. The ability to respond to stimuli from the external world. The ability to maintain stability within the organism. The ability to grow. The ability to reproduce. We human beings, of course, have all of these properties and more. For we have billions of neurons connected to each other in an exquisite tapestry of communication and feedback loops. We have consciousness and self-awareness.-***-But if we can manage to get outside of our usual thinking, if we can rise to a truly mind-bending view of the cosmos, there's another way to think of existence. In our extraordinarily entitled position of being not only living matter but conscious matter, we are the cosmic “observers.” We are uniquely aware of ourselves and the cosmos around us. We can watch and record. We are the only mechanism by which the universe can comment on itself. All the rest, all those other grains of sand on the desert, are dumb, lifeless matter.-Of course, the universe does not need to comment on itself. A universe with no living matter at all could function without any trouble—mindlessly following the conservation of energy and the principle of cause and effect and the other laws of physics. A universe does not need minds, or any living matter at all. (Indeed, in the recent “multiverse” hypothesis endorsed by many physicists, the vast majority of universes are totally lifeless.) But in this writer's opinion, a universe without comment is a universe without meaning. What does it mean to say that a waterfall, or a mountain, is beautiful? The concept of beauty, and indeed all concepts of value and meaning, require observers. Without a mind to observe it, a waterfall is only a waterfall, a mountain is only a mountain. It is we conscious matter, the rarest of all forms of matter, that can take stock and record and announce this cosmic panorama of existence before us.-***-And given our existence, our universe must have meaning, big and small meanings. I have not met any of the life forms living out there in the vast cosmos beyond Earth. But I would be astonished if some of them were not intelligent. And I would be further astonished if those intelligences were not, like us, making science and art and attempting to take stock and record this cosmic panorama of existence. We share with those other beings not the mysterious, transcendent essence of vitalism, but the highly improbable fact of being alive.-Comment: why is there anything?