Nope not plants and microbes - it has to be able to interpret its observation.
There is an intriguing possibility that past events can be caused by future behaviour - in the photon and two slit experiment photons either act as waves (creating inteference patterns) when unobserved but particles when observed. The act of observation collapses the behaviour. Now if you observe the photon after it has passed through the slits the duality still collapses which means that the photon is affected in the past by current observation. Stretch this into the trillions of light years across the universe and we begin to collapse photon behaviour billions of years in the past.
We can imagine a scenario where conscious life spreads out across the universe and collapsing all potentialities into the observed one - the one where conscious life exists.
(New Testament | Revelation 22:13)
13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Is life a fundamental law - or does the universe need observers
by Qcmbr 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Qcmbr
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Narkissos
Very interesting post Qcmbr...
There is imho quite a leap from the evidence that the universe has a potential for developing (human-like) consciousness to the speculation that it has a need for it.
And, embarrassingly enough, reflexive consciousness implies both the possibility to think of such a hypothesis (or, the impossibility not to think of it) and the impossibility to conclude that it is correct.
Iow, consciousness structurally involves uncertainty in self-understanding -- undecidability. By "structurally" I mean that no amount of data will change it. As a "conscious" (and "self-conscious") subject I may understand myself as an "accident" or as a "necessity" but I cannot ultimately choose between the two options without jumping out of the particular state which makes consciousness -- and freedom -- possible.
From this perspective, no "truth" will ever make us "free" because freedom is distinct from, and in excess over, truth. If there is some kind of meta-teleology embracing my freedom/consciousness I must ignore it to be free/conscious -- if only to play my role.
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Qcmbr
Since the physical body and mind is a product of the system I believe it is too crude a tool to fully understand any truth that might exist outside of the system or ultimately the system itself.
If there is any mileage - and of course there may well not be - in suggestion that we need to observe the system then it argues that there must be the ability to transcend this mortality OR that something else transcends it - it is possible to posit a self replicating universe (just as a time traveller could travel back in time and hypothetically save his mother so ensuring his future ability to travel back in time etc) or we can imagine a universe with hard defined boundaries existing within another essential framework (whatever that may be) - in which traditional christinaity would recognise the omniscient and uncreated God - but in that framework an observer would be sufficient to collapse any universe out of potentialities (but then we get stuck with infinite regression problems that bedevil religion itself.)
Scientists rightly distruct teleology IMO but we should keep it in the back of our minds - if only to keep our sense of awe. -
gaiagirl
I would say that life is a fundamental property of matter, an extension of the natural property in which matter naturally assembles itself into more complex forms. Atoms spontaneously link together to form compounds, arrange themselves to form crystal lattices, react to other compounds and the presence or absence of heat, etc.
Life appeared on Earth very shortly after the planet cooled enough to allow liquid water, implying that life occurs everywhere that conditions permit.
That we are not alone in the Universe has been a widely held view since the ancient Greeks, they had an expression "To claim this is the only inhabited world is as unwise as saying there is only one blade of grass growing in a meadow".
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Narkissos
Scientists rightly distruct teleology IMO but we should keep it in the back of our minds - if only to keep our sense of awe.
Good point. We can't help it, anyway, can we?
The problem with teleology is when it moves from the back to the front stage -- and becomes the rationale for totalism and, sometimes, totalitarianism.