The Universe Might Be Alive
This is a response to a recent article by Tim Andersen, in which he argued that the universe is not alive, conscious, or thinking. As someone who does believe these things, I thought I would make some observations about his argument. This will be just a few brief comments rather than a full analysis.
His basic point is that “simply because a certain structure, such as the neuronal and dendritic pathways of the brain, resembles the complex structures of the universe at the scale of billions of light years, does not mean it is alive, conscious, or thinking”. That is indeed true but, on the other hand, it might mean that. Andersen does not go into detail about how strong or detailed these resemblances are. All we can say is that they are strong enough to have led others to the opposite conclusion, that the universe is much like a human brain which, if true, would suggest that it is indeed a living organism¹.
His first defence of his position is that “there may be forces that do try to enforce a certain resemblance between these structures, but this is only a surface pattern”. This is a very strange sentence. I assume he is using the word ‘forces’ to avoid any suggestion of ‘mind’. If something is trying to enforce something else, however, this suggests will and intention, therefore consciousness. I’m guessing that, since he can’t possibly have intended that meaning, he hasn’t chosen his words very carefully. I’m also not sure what he means by ‘surface’ in this context. What other levels does he believe might lie beneath the surface? I’m assuming he meant ‘superficial’, again to suggest that the resemblances are not real or meaningful, merely coincidental. I repeat that the resemblances are strong enough to have led others to the opposite conclusion.
Anderson then adopts a familiar scientific attitude: “Analogies between the universe and biological life have a certain mysticism to them that can make the more rational types of us balk”. According to Andersen then, the idea that the universe might be alive is a mystical idea. I take ‘mysticism’ here to be intended as a pejorative term, possible synonyms being woolly, flaky, romantic or New-Agey. Rationality is assumed a priori to be a better attitude.
Anderson speaks of course from a scientific viewpoint, hence his preference for rationality. I come from a spiritual worldview. However, what I intend to suggest here is that science — at least cutting-edge, forward-thinking science — is also coming to believe that the universe is alive and conscious.
I don’t know where Andersen places himself philosophically, but the idea that the universe is not alive or conscious is a statement typical of materialism. Historically, however, the ancient sages had a far better understanding than modern science of how the universe works, at least until the arrival of quantum physics, as argued by Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics. The worldview of the ancients was that the universe is indeed alive. I’ll let Marcus Aurelius speak for them all: “Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass”. How he knew this, and felt able to say it with such certainty, is an interesting question, although it was presumably not through the faculty of reason.
It was perhaps instead through intuition, in the same way that the first trip to the Moon made people aware intuitively that the Earth might be a living organism. As Peter Russell notes: “The view of Earth from space brought with it… the realization that the planet as a whole may be a living being… The whole planet appeared to be alive — not just teeming with life, but an organism in its own right”. He comments: “the living Earth is not an organism we can normally observe outside ourselves: it is an organism of which we are an intimate part. Only when we step into space can we begin to see it as a separate being”¹.
In the context of Andersen’s theme, we should note that, even if it is possible to step into space and observe the Earth from afar, it is not possible to step outside the universe in order to observe it as a living being. At least not through the normal senses — perhaps it is possible in a mystical state of consciousness. The ancients were very into meditation and mysticism.
It’s not just ancient philosophers like Marcus Aurelius saying this. The inability to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness has led modern philosophers like Thomas Nagel and Philip Goff to contemplate panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Modern quantum physicists — for example David Bohm, Danah Zohar, and Fred Alan Wolf — have also suggested, on the basis of the relevant science, that matter is or might be conscious.
Now, the universe is made of matter. If consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, then that surely means that the universe is alive. Is there any conscious being which is not alive?
If planet Earth is alive, then there is no reason not to believe that the universe might be. A scientist who thinks that the Earth might be alive is James Lovelock, well known for his Gaia hypothesis. This is of course controversial, and not proven, and there is at least one scientist on Medium arguing strongly against it — Massimo Pigliucci, see here. I suggest that both he and Andersen are arguing from an increasingly outdated worldview. (I am planning to write a series of articles defending the Gaia hypothesis at some point.)
Two excellent articles have appeared on Medium recently, one by Geoff Ward who talks about an imminent (third) Copernican revolution, by which he means a radical change of worldview: “The nature of a ‘Copernican revolution’ is to change everything for everybody”. This coming revolution is specifically “the acknowledgement of consciousness as primary, fundamental and causal, and the overturning of the prevalent materialist paradigm of reality”.
The primary purpose of his article is to review a new book by Gayle Kimball, The Mysteries of Reality: Dialogues with Visionary Scientists, which “features interviews with 19 scientists, all of whom are of the conviction that the materialist paradigm is destructive and limits human abilities and potential, and must be replaced by a more accurate expansive and useful understanding of reality”.
One of the scientists interviewed was the physician Eben Alexander III, who said: “This revolution we are talking about, in which consciousness is fundamental and physical matter exists only as a projection from consciousness, will make the Copernican revolution look relatively minor by comparison”. Ward comments that Alexander “has realised that the materialist model is ‘fatally flawed’, and should have died off with the advent of quantum physics, but it has held on fiercely despite evidence to the contrary”.
As a civilisation, it is therefore reasonable to suggest that we should long ago have come to the conclusion that consciousness is primary, fundamental and causal, that the universe and everything in it is alive in some sense. The worldview of materialism from which Andersen and Pigliucci are speaking should therefore have already disappeared because of the quantum physics revolution. This was indicated by the physicists I mentioned above. By coincidence, that is precisely the theme of a series of articles that I’m currently writing on Medium, and of a Zoom talk that I’ll be giving later this year.
The second recent Medium article was by Douglas Rushkoff, who believes that we are living in a renaissance moment in which “we can retrieve what we lost the last time around”. He believes that we are moving on from individualism to a collective sensibility, which I would put in even stronger language, the creation of the one family of humanity.
I like to put these two ideas together. We are on the verge of a radical change of worldview, what is called the New Paradigm. Even though that suggests linear progress, it will involve a renaissance, that is to say, a rebirth of the ancient worldview.
If the idea that the universe is alive is a ‘mystical’ idea, perhaps that merely means that mysticism may be a better approach to truth than materialist, rational science, which limits itself precisely because of its desire to remain ‘rational’. Perhaps we should listen to the visionary scientists instead.
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics and astrology. All these articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here).
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Footnotes:
- see, for example, ‘The universe is similar to a huge human brain, scientists have found’, here.
2. The Awakening Earth, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, p 5–6
