ESSAY: ANTHROPIC INSIGNIFICANCE AND ANTHROPIC SIGNIFICANCE

Man and his littleness perish, erased like an error and cancelled;

Man and his greatness survive, lost in the greatness of God. William Watson

We sometimes wonder about our relevance in the Universe. The importance of the human species is not obvious in terms of physical dimensions. No star or galaxy, if it could judge, would attribute to puny earthlings greater weight than to mountains, icebergs and volcanoes. The relative smallness of our frame is beyond question, even to very tall and strong observers. Our earth itself is, compared to the sun, like a grain of sand in relation to the Pacific Ocean.

As to physical power, our bodies are flimsy structures, susceptible to easy decimation by nature’s fury. A lightning electrocutes a human in a flash, earthquakes ruin cities without a moment’s warning. Microbes and viruses spell disaster and can wipe out civilizations.

When we reckon the age of our species, and reflect on the ephemeral nature of our lives, our insignificance shrinks even further. What is human longevity compared to the age of rocks, let alone stars and galaxies? What are a few million years of human culture compared to the ten billion plus during which our universe has survived? If one evaluates significance in terms of size and superior strength, of longevity and persistence, Homo sapiens is all too frail, a very recent and vulnerable sprout in the grand arena of space in the endless tick of time. Bluntly said, at the physical level humans don’t mean a jot in the universe.

It would be but a partial vision of the significance if we fail to recognize that we also play a role in this silent eruption in a vast vacuum. Let us imagine the universe without anything like the human brain.  It would be dark, dreary, and dismal. All the light and beauty of the universe are unraveled only in the tiny retinas of human beings (and their equivalents), in other creatures here below, or yonder on another planet. But for probing human brains, there would be no formulas for elliptical orbits, no reckoning of space or time or their intertwining, no inverse square law or indeterminacy principle.

Neither the golden sunset nor the patterned wings of butterflies, neither the fragrance of flowers nor the taste of honey can emerge as aspects of reality without complex neurons firing away. We may imagine a universe that subsisted tirelessly since the first big blast from which it all emerged per current scientific reckoning. But pre-life universe was insipid and inert, with no music or melody, no poetry or philosophy, no humor, holiness or humming.

Anthropic entities compute age and speed, measure temperature and density. They conceptualize symmetry and gravitation. The emergence of all these aspects of reality is somewhat like the tracks of an invisible beast in a vast wilderness: for before the evolution of rods in the retina, there was no green grass, red rose or blueberry. Only the responsive affirmations of noumenal states give meaning to the universe.   

Nor have we been just passive observers. Consider nuclear fusion, which occurs nowhere in the universe save in the core of stars. But it has been brought about here on earth, instigated by human ingenuity. All through the eons, Mars and Jupiter and Venus had never been spied upon, nor their images captured until the advent of human science and technology. The same is true of the stupendous galaxies receding indifferently every which way. Without human devices they would be like encyclopedias buried under the sea, away from the reach of anything that can decipher. All the stories of stellar birth and death, of galaxies and expansion, remained untold and unknown until humans verbalized them in words and equations. None of the glory and splendor of the universe would have become apparent if there had been only mute matter and no measuring mind in the cosmos.

Thus, the emergence of awareness was not an insignificant event in cosmic history. No one can deny that the Big Bang was an enormously significant occurrence. But the bursting forth of consciousness was not exactly insignificant. We may call it a Secondary Big Bang; indeed, there could be others like it elsewhere in the universe. Awareness, the outcome of Secondary Big Bangs, injects meaning into a mechanical world. It may be but a passing flicker or a miniature replica of what caused it all, but it brightens the entire cosmic darkness. Thanks to it, the Cosmos is lit up, which, until its emergence, was in stark and silent stillness, devoid of love or laughter, music, or meaning.