Pan Spermia In The Veil of Her Moon (2005) © Roger Ferragallo.
The new Millennium loves the cross-pollination of ideas, mainly because of the computing revolution in communications. An episode ("Is The Universe Alive?" 13 June 2012) of Through the Wormhole covers a Millennial theory in physics that the universe, or even the multiverse, may be alive. This theory, put forward by Lee Smolin, applies Darwin's idea of natural selection to the propagation of universes (see my earlier post on how physicists are appropriating Darwin's theory to their ends). Smolin argues that universes reproduce themselves through black holes and form attached daughter universes. Thus our universe may be "just one member in a giant family tree of cosmoses." Smolin finds many parallels and analogies between biological life processes and cosmic reproduction.
Theoretical physicists then ask whether this tree of cosmoses is alive, or possibly even sentient. They wonder whether we could find the brain of this living cosmic tree.
Anthropomorphization aside, some of this thinking comes not from the understanding of biological processes but of computational processes. Physicists are almost unconsciously appropriating computing programming concepts and projecting them upon biology and physics (see my related post, which similarly finds the 1930s' cultural context of the scientific concept of dark matter).
According to these researchers, the universe functions like a giant, impossibly complex, computer; the assumption rests on the idea that if the universe is only a pattern of atoms, then that means the atoms could be organized according to a code. They could therefore be the ultimate "intelligent organism."
Researcher Juergen Schmidhuber blurs the lines between disciplines even more with his work on artificial intelligence. The German computing engineer plans to build supercomputers which are smarter than all human minds that have ever existed (see the Through the Wormhole clip here). He hopes to put teams of those supercomputers working together to find the core code of the universe. If any of this turned out to be correct or verifiable, would the code of cosmic reproduction and consciousness designate the multiverse's ego? Or its soul? Would we be products of a cosmic ego, a cosmic soul, or a cosmic digestion?
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Is our DNA our ego, or is it actually not related to our ego? The great thing about a fractal universe is that if true, you can study the part that you cannot hope to ever experience or witness just by studying the part that you can witness. Maybe the cosmic ego is not the cosmic code at all, if the egos of humans and their 'codes' (i.e. DNA) are any guide.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the cosmic ego is whatever part of the universe has developed or is developing a capacity to accumulate and utilise information about itself, about its own state, i.e. self-awareness. Of all the things currently concretely known about the universe, the best candidate for the part of it that is self-aware is us, the human race. We are proven to exist -- a part of the universe that is self-aware (and increasingly aware of its connection to the entire universe). Maybe the best way to examine the cosmic ego is to look in a mirror? Just a thought.
Hi Paul,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I agree that we have to begin with what we know and not, in the face of these huge questions, doubt reality entirely and allow the vast expanse of what we do not know pulverize our points of certainty into something that is non-sensical or chaotic. On a non-cosomological level, I have seen this happening on the Web, where doubting facts has become the new way of taking on an authoritative tone about bullshit, which suddenly has become credible to a lot of people.
I am looking fwd to more installments on Extratemporal Perception! :)
http://extratemporal.blogspot.com/