Chapter 10: Life, Mind, and Culture as Fundamental Properties of the Universe

Traditionally, living systems have been regarded as a trivial and incidental embellishment to the physical world, of no particular significance in the over-all cosmic scheme of things. In this essay I shall argue that the orthodox view is profoundly wrong. Not only do I believe that life is a key part of the evolution of the universe, I maintain that mind and culture, too, will turn out to be of fundamental significance in the grand story of the cosmos.My argument has to appeal to indirect evidence, in view of the fact that Earth provides the only samples we currently know of life, mind, and culture. It is certainly possible that we are alone in the universe. If so, it does not necessarily mean that life is insignificant, even if it is confined at the moment to one planet. In principle, life and intelligence have the potential to spread across the cosmos from Earth, and given the immense duration of time available before the universe become depleted of useful sources of energy, there seems to be plenty of opportunity for our descendants to play a literally cosmic role.