Sir Martin Rees: Brains & Post-Human Evolution
Sir Martin Rees:
Our brains are limited. It may take a posthuman species to work out the big questions.
“Einstein averred that “the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible”. He was right to be astonished. Our minds evolved to cope with life on the African savannah, but can comprehend a great deal about the counterintuitive microworld of atoms, and about the vastness of the cosmos.
Indeed, Einstein would have been specially gratified at how our cosmic horizons have expanded. Our Sun is one of a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is itself one of many billion of galaxies in range of our telescopes. And there is firm evidence that these all emerged from a hot dense “beginning” nearly 14 billion years ago. (…)
Science is a global culture. Its universality is specially compelling in my own subject of astronomy. The dark night sky is an inheritance we’ve shared with all humanity, throughout history. All have gazed up in wonder at the same vault of heaven, but interpreted it in diverse ways.
It’s a cultural deprivation not to appreciate the panorama offered by modern cosmology and Darwinian evolution — the chain of emergent complexity leading from some still-mysterious beginning to atoms, stars and planets. And how, on our planet, life emerged and evolved into a biosphere containing creatures with brains able to ponder their origins. This common understanding should transcend all national differences — and all faiths too.
As science’s frontiers expand, their periphery lengthens; new questions come into focus. But a fundamental issue then arises: are there some questions that will for ever flummox us? Are there intrinsic limits to our understanding?
Ever since Darwin, we’ve been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past — the billions of years of evolution that led to our emergence. We are more than just another primate species. We are special: self-awareness and language were a qualitative leap, allowing cultural evolution and the cumulative diversified expertise that led to science and technology.
That’s because we humans need not be the culmination of the evolutionary tree: indeed it seems implausible that we are, because astronomy makes us aware that immense time-horizons extend into the future as well as into the past. Our Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it’s got six billion more before the fuel runs out. And the expanding Universe will continue, perhaps for ever, becoming ever colder, ever emptier.
As Woody Allen said: “Eternity is very long, especially towards the end.” So there is time enough for dramatic posthuman evolution, whether organic or silicon-based, on the Earth or far beyond. And for those species that come after us, even the most baffling problems that we can pose may be as straightforward as simple arithmetic is to us.”
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Our brains are limited. It may take a posthuman species to work out the big questions.
“Einstein averred that “the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible”. He was right to be astonished. Our minds evolved to cope with life on the African savannah, but can comprehend a great deal about the counterintuitive microworld of atoms, and about the vastness of the cosmos.
Indeed, Einstein would have been specially gratified at how our cosmic horizons have expanded. Our Sun is one of a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is itself one of many billion of galaxies in range of our telescopes. And there is firm evidence that these all emerged from a hot dense “beginning” nearly 14 billion years ago. (…)
Science is a global culture. Its universality is specially compelling in my own subject of astronomy. The dark night sky is an inheritance we’ve shared with all humanity, throughout history. All have gazed up in wonder at the same vault of heaven, but interpreted it in diverse ways.
It’s a cultural deprivation not to appreciate the panorama offered by modern cosmology and Darwinian evolution — the chain of emergent complexity leading from some still-mysterious beginning to atoms, stars and planets. And how, on our planet, life emerged and evolved into a biosphere containing creatures with brains able to ponder their origins. This common understanding should transcend all national differences — and all faiths too.
As science’s frontiers expand, their periphery lengthens; new questions come into focus. But a fundamental issue then arises: are there some questions that will for ever flummox us? Are there intrinsic limits to our understanding?
Ever since Darwin, we’ve been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past — the billions of years of evolution that led to our emergence. We are more than just another primate species. We are special: self-awareness and language were a qualitative leap, allowing cultural evolution and the cumulative diversified expertise that led to science and technology.
That’s because we humans need not be the culmination of the evolutionary tree: indeed it seems implausible that we are, because astronomy makes us aware that immense time-horizons extend into the future as well as into the past. Our Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it’s got six billion more before the fuel runs out. And the expanding Universe will continue, perhaps for ever, becoming ever colder, ever emptier.
As Woody Allen said: “Eternity is very long, especially towards the end.” So there is time enough for dramatic posthuman evolution, whether organic or silicon-based, on the Earth or far beyond. And for those species that come after us, even the most baffling problems that we can pose may be as straightforward as simple arithmetic is to us.”
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