[Stephan Martin]

Duane, thanks for your courage in sharing your personal direct experience of a living universe. I know many others who have had experiences in this direction, including myself and other scientists. For a while, the psychologist Charles Tart was keeping an archive of scientists’ transcendent experiences, and he feels that this type of data from scientifically trained individuals are especially important since part of scientific training is to maintain a healthy skepticism towards the data and resist premature interpretation. Accumulating similar experiences from large numbers of individuals is important to help avoid the “messiah effect” and to begin to see common overlaps between experiences. One area where these experiences overlap is the widespread experience and agreement among these individuals that the universe is infused with both consciousness and aliveness. 

This is also the widespread view of many indigenous peoples that I have spoken with around the world – that everything that exists is alive in some way, including the universe as a whole. It might not be too big a leap to suggest that many of the ancient cultures of the world believed (and perhaps experienced) the world as a living being. Certainly it was the case for many of the ancient Greeks such as Plato who thought it obvious that the world was alive, since how could something which was not alive give rise to individuals who were clearly alive?

However, these data are qualitative in that they come from the direct subjective experiences of individuals, and can’t be measured quantitatively via instruments, which makes them much less convincing to contemporary science.  

So there might be different aspects to the living universe, some of which can be measured quantatively in biological systems, such as metabolism, etc.. and some which can only be experienced through more qualitative approaches to knowing.  To mix qualitative and quantitative data can lead to great confusion, which is partly what may be happening in this dialog. Also, after reflecting on Ursula’s definition of metabolism as a specific set of reactions and energy transfers limited to a particular set of biological systems, I tend to agree with her.  Trying to fit galactic activity into the biological idea of metabolism may miss what may be really going on at the galactic scale, which could be an entirely different type of energy exchange and perhaps aliveness of an entirely different order and character.

There’s more to say about the qualitative perception of aliveness, and I think many people have the sense or intuition of this aliveness, but it gets filtered out through our common worldview. I can give some examples next time, but I’m prepping for a public talk tomorrow, so I’ll finish this post up here.

 

[Stephan Martin]

Ursula makes a good point in highlighting the life/matter bias that has deep roots in our contemporary worldview. Ideas that matter/earth is sinful, fallen, ‘dirty’, etc… have a long history in western culture, and one that contemporary ecological philosophers such as Freya Matthews (For Love of Matter) and others have addressed by suggesting that the duality between the two may not be fundamentally real or helpful in creating a more participatory view and positive engagement with the world/universe. Matthews approaches this by suggesting that rather than maintaining a world of subjects and objects (which could represent living beings and matter in the present discussion), that we propose that subjectivity is inherent to the world itself. This lines up nicely with Brian Swimme’s view of the universe centrating into many unique centers of experience  and Thomas Berry’s “communion of subjects.” Perhaps subjectivity (to whatever degree it exists in various forms) might be a useful concept here in bridging the “participatory gap” between humans and the universe, rather than trying to demonstrate participatory engagement through common structures of life and livingness?

[Stephan Martin]

Duane – thanks for the reference to the SciAm article on our Growing, Breathing Galaxy. I’ve requested it via interlibrary loan and will be happy to share it when it arrives.

It seems that there may be two threads emerging in the discussion here: one about the on-going “livingness” on the universe, in terms of its dynamism and continual emergence on a moment by moment basis. The quantum particles that emerge from the quantum or false vacuum, by the way, are thought to be virtual particles (which means not fully real but mathematical possibilities). They can become real particles through the application of an electromagnetic field, which provides energy that pulls them into “realness” out of the void.

The other thread is whether the universe possesses properties (such as metabolism, growth, etc…) that are commonly agreed upon as necessary for life. I see the two as different, in that describing the qualities or characteristics of something does not necessarily tell you what it is exactly (think about how describing the characteristics of a person falls short of knowing them fully), especially in the case of emergent systems, which the universe, or multiverse may be. So even if we all agree that the universe possesses properties that we agree are requirements for life, these may not be enough to demonstrate that it is a living system. Something which is like a living system and shares its characteristics such as computers or computer viruses, does not mean it is a living system, and this is a big debate among computer and cognitive scientists right now.

However, it might open the door to considering other approaches to understanding life, which as James pointed out, is still very much a mystery. It’s interesting that many of indigenous peoples the world over would agree that the universe and all that exists is alive in a very real way, and yet most western scientists would not. Why is this? Partly I think it’s because indigenous people would consider qualitative approaches to knowing as sufficient evidence whereas western scientists would need quantitative data as well. Life may be difficult to define precisely because its “livingness” is a qualitative perception that can’t be easily quantified, even though the properties of life (such as metabolism rate, growth rate, etc…) can be precisely determined. Indigenous scientists such as Dr. Gregory Cajete (Native Science, et al.)  and western scientists such as F. David Peat (Blackfoot Physics et al. ) have proposed we need both types of knowing for a full view of reality, and I would tend to agree with them.

It feels like we’re really pushing the paradigm here with this discussion – thanks for all the great ideas flowing!

 

[Stephan Martin]

Hi Duane,
Glad to be joining the conversation at this point. A helpful approach to understanding whether the term metabolism applies to the universe might be to apply it to nested and emergent biological systems and see at what point (if any) the term breaks down as we apply it to larger scales. I think biologists would all agree that cells and organisms all metabolize by exchanging energy with the environment, and they might feel comfortable applying the term to collections of biological entities such as nests, colonies, or even ecosystems. At ecosystems, it begins to push the boundary between traditionally defined living and non-living entities. For example, the largest ecosystem on Earth could be considered to be the biosphere itself, which metabolizes sunlight as it’s primary energy source. This extends the ecosystem to at least the Sun-Earth system. At this point I think most astronomers would be uncomfortable using the term metabolism to describe the energy dynamics of the system, and would see it as a biological metaphor applied to a physical system. But I’m not sure it doesn’t apply here as well, if we’re using David Christian’s definition as a starting point. Astronomers also talk about galactic ecology, the exchange of energy between various parts of the galaxy and the enrichment of the interstellar medium (the “soil”) over time through stellar nucleosynthesis – is this metabolism on a galactic scale?

It may be that these larger-scale metabolic processes occur on such long timescales (millions and billions of years in the case of galactic metabolism) that we simply don’t have enough scientific observations and evidence to answer the question “Is the universe a ‘living system’?” from a scientific standpoint.  I’d love to have biologists weigh in on this issue and see where the cracks are in the argument from their perspective.

[Stephan Martin]

Hi Orla,

What terrific courses you are teaching and involved with!  Since I teach college astronomy primarily, it’s relatively easy to organize the course around an evolutionary cosmic perspective, and I often show “Journey of the Universe” early on to give the students the context and direction we’re moving. With your environment course, a big picture perspective seems natural as you zoom out to show that all environmental discussions take place in an interrelated global or cosmic context. A course on values brings to mind Thomas Berry’s writings on the ecozoic vision for education and also Joanna Macy and John Seed’s work on the Council of All Beings, showing that value systems are also embedded in an ecological and global context with the views and values of many of the non-human stakeholders not usually being represented in values discussions.  All of these sources have “proper” academic credentials and should be no problem passing standards for academic courses. Thanks for your work in bringing a much needed perspective to these academic fields!

Steve Martin

[Author]

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