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Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:32 pm
by Chris OConnor
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective
Please use this thread to discuss this chapter.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 4:47 pm
by LevV
Given the ethnocentric superiority complex that so many people have, it is no wonder that so many of our fellow humans still believe that the universe revolves around them. A cosmic perspective would bring us to the realization that we are only here on this planet because of a series of fortunate coincidences. A cosmic perspective would also provide insights enabling us to feel at one with the rest of the planet and perhaps get past the cultural and political differences that so divide us today.

If I'm sounding a little mushy, it's likely because Tyson's message overlaps so naturally with the book I just finished reading, Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.

I'll be making a case for this book as our next non-fiction choice. And thanks, geo for mentioning it last September.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:27 pm
by ant
LevV wrote:Given the ethnocentric superiority complex that so many people have, it is no wonder that so many of our fellow humans still believe that the universe revolves around them. A cosmic perspective would bring us to the realization that we are only here on this planet because of a series of fortunate coincidences. A cosmic perspective would also provide insights enabling us to feel at one with the rest of the planet and perhaps get past the cultural and political differences that so divide us today.

If I'm sounding a little mushy, it's likely because Tyson's message overlaps so naturally with the book I just finished reading, Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.

I'll be making a case for this book as our next non-fiction choice. And thanks, geo for mentioning it last September.

You cannot go beyond what evolution has granted you. Your conceptual and perceptual abilities are inextricably tied to your immediate environment. As such, your behavior is governed accordingly.

Your "cosmic perspective" is poetic language, but in essence just wishful thinking.

Tyson get's way over his head when he attempts philosophy, which, I might add, he too believe is dead.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 11:03 am
by Harry Marks
ant wrote:Tyson get's way over his head when he attempts philosophy, which, I might add, he too believe is dead.
I agree that Tyson is over his head, and spouts much drivel here. This is just John Lennon's "Imagine" (or T.H. White's lessons from Merlin to Arthur, in "Sword in the Stone") spun out in a hope for science to fill some role that religion doesn't anymore (if it ever did).

I am all for a universalistic moral perspective, and certainly getting people over their desperately self-centered natural perspective is a key part of that. It has not been my experience that "science buffs" have managed the trick - much more common is to find people claiming that science backs their selfish perspective and so they are right and everyone else is wrong.
ant wrote:Your "cosmic perspective" is poetic language, but in essence just wishful thinking.
I think it is actually a real thing. Going back at least to "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds" science has provided many people with a sense of some meaning larger than themselves, and independent of power plays by the clever and the ruthless.

But I think NDT is overly optimistic, in promoting his perspective, apparently hoping that everyone who sees this displacement from being the center of the universe will then become humanist benefactors of humanity. There is no obvious reason why it would not lead just as easily to their becoming Harley-Davidson fans or taking up ice fishing.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:59 am
by Robert Tulip
Harry Marks wrote:I am all for a universalistic moral perspective, and certainly getting people over their desperately self-centered natural perspective is a key part of that. It has not been my experience that "science buffs" have managed the trick - much more common is to find people claiming that science backs their selfish perspective and so they are right and everyone else is wrong.
The problem of perspective in science arises from a philosophical issue termed the the subject-object split. Rational empirical method requires objective distancing from matters under investigation, whereas the religious attitude of connection to the world relies more on intuition. One philosophy paper exploring these themes is at https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContCuce.htm

Kant investigated this problem for philosophy with his so-called ‘reverse Copernican Revolution’, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/#KanCopRev demanding that objects conform to cognition, that experience conform to laws of necessary truth. The Newtonian shift from the Ptolemaic geocentric model had displaced humanity from the centre of scientific concern. Kant put man right back in the middle, by making mind the measure of meaning. But in modern science there has been a rejection of Kant, with British Empiricism based on Hume largely accepting the logical positivist argument that there is no meaning outside science.

Modern astronomy, typified by Carl Sagan’s observation of human insignificance against the immensity of space and time, has humbled man through Sagan’s image of the pale blue dot, the Voyager 1 photo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot of our planet from past Saturn, a symbolic framework accepted by Tyson.

But rather than overcoming the conceits of selfish assumptions, the astronomy of Sagan and Tyson itself generates its own mythology. Modern astronomy offers no way for humanity to connect to the cosmos except observation. The old geocentric idea of as above so below saw humans as meaningful parts of a coherent whole, whereas the timeframes of the Big Bang and the distances of cosmic expansion are too big for human connection.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 8:08 am
by DWill
ant wrote:
LevV wrote:Given the ethnocentric superiority complex that so many people have, it is no wonder that so many of our fellow humans still believe that the universe revolves around them. A cosmic perspective would bring us to the realization that we are only here on this planet because of a series of fortunate coincidences. A cosmic perspective would also provide insights enabling us to feel at one with the rest of the planet and perhaps get past the cultural and political differences that so divide us today.

If I'm sounding a little mushy, it's likely because Tyson's message overlaps so naturally with the book I just finished reading, Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.

I'll be making a case for this book as our next non-fiction choice. And thanks, geo for mentioning it last September.

You cannot go beyond what evolution has granted you. Your conceptual and perceptual abilities are inextricably tied to your immediate environment. As such, your behavior is governed accordingly.

Your "cosmic perspective" is poetic language, but in essence just wishful thinking.

Tyson get's way over his head when he attempts philosophy, which, I might add, he too believe is dead.
Can we not "go beyond what evolution has granted" us? Just what has evolution granted us? Maybe to some degree the ability to go beyond our survival needs, as paradoxical as that may sound? I grant that the whole question is profound and difficult. Perhaps faith institutions, in their many forms, are the only way we've devised to escape the confines of ego (not that these institutions don't seem to sometimes create their own problems--maddening!).

When I hear people talk about universal perspective in regard to saving the earth, I sometimes want to call "bullshit" (and then I feel bad for thinking it). I do doubt our ability, because of natural selection, to act for the greater welfare in that sense. We think we can have it both ways, meet our own needs and desires while saving resources and species and preserving the climate, but this could be a big delusion, a sop to our conscience. The problem seems to be that in large part, the things we want are good in themselves--ability to travel where we want, give everyone a good standard of living, conquer our diseases, etc. But all of this is, after all, only for us and inevitably impinges on the rest of the environment. So I'm conflicted on the problem you raised, as I often am.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2017 7:16 pm
by Penelope
Is the term ‘Cosmic Perspective’ the same in meaning as ‘cosmic consciousness ‘ ? Elizabethan cosmic consciousness was explained as a pyramid with God at the top and then humans, animals, etc to the base which sort of held the whole thing up. Then gradually, after the Victorians, the concept changed to humans at the apex and God sort of permeating the whole. I seem to be a bit stuck with this concept. Once you lose the idea that God is a kindly old gent who answers our supplications like The genie in the lamp, and think of God being a state to work towards, it becomes quite a seductive mind set, even if, like me, you have a bit of a crush on Richard Dawkins.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2017 11:28 pm
by LanDroid
Mr. Tulip has stated that until science and non-religious people come up with a myth or story with the power to counteract the force of religious or supernatural paradigms, they will never make significant progress in that arena. Toward that end, NDT is on to something with The Cosmic Perspective. As a cosmologist, he focuses on astronomical scales. This could be improved by increasing the human connection to this perspective.

If the astronomical scale is too cold and brings feelings of insignificance, NDT also attempts to provide a human connection. Yes, the molecules in our bodies come from star dust. "We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us." But he also mentions "No way around it: some of the water you just drank passed through the kidneys of Socrates, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Arc." This is one aspect of The Cosmic Perspective that should receive more emphasis. Perhaps making the time frame current would help. Consider the water in your morning coffee may have, for example, been aerated in the waterfalls of Iguazu on the day you were born and may become part of a cloud floating past Annapurna this spring.

"...I learned in biology class that more bacteria live and work in one centimeter of my colon than the number of people who have ever existed in the world."
NDT is very impressed with numbers. Yes there are more non-human cells in the body than human, but he missed a chance to discuss how the human body includes a life sustaining symbiosis between human systems and non-human bacteria.
From that day on, I began to think of people not as the masters of space and time but as participants in a great cosmic chain of being, with a direct genetic link across species both living and extinct, extending back nearly four billion years to the earliest single-celled organisms on Earth.
This unbroken tree of life is another aspect of The Cosmic Perspective that should be emphasized. Again, more detail could be added and the timeline could be made more current. Any break in your ancestry - someone killed 100 years ago (or 50,000 years ago) prior to procreation - you would not exist. Similarly, consider the millions of descendents of victims of recent mass shootings who will never exist.

Once thought to be a higher level function, humans and animals are not the only life forms that communicate. Bacteria communicate on a global scale as we discussed in The Global Brain many years ago. Trees in a forest communicate through fungi and root systems.

The molecular water cycle, bacterial symbiosis, the unbroken chain of the tree of life, and communication networks all the way down to the bacterial level are some examples of radical interdependence that is rarely perceived in daily life. (Buddhists expand this concept to one of inter-being, where humans are so dependent on deep time and global processes that the concept of a discrete self becomes an illusion, but we don't need to go there. Yet.) These add a warmer human connection to stark considerations of 100 billion galaxies in a 14 billion year old visible universe.

The Cosmic Perspective is not a philosophy. It is a recitation of non-controversial facts providing an expanded perspective on how humans relate to deep space, deep time, and critical interdependence from molecular to cellular to global levels. As Mr. Tulip and NDT imply, if a compelling human-centric myth or story arises from all this, it may inspire improved human thought and behavior. This will take time; changing to a cosmic perspective, let's check progress in say 300 years.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 3:06 am
by Robert Tulip
Penelope wrote:Is the term ‘Cosmic Perspective’ the same in meaning as ‘cosmic consciousness ‘ ? Elizabethan cosmic consciousness was explained as a pyramid with God at the top and then humans, animals, etc to the base which sort of held the whole thing up. Then gradually, after the Victorians, the concept changed to humans at the apex and God sort of permeating the whole. I seem to be a bit stuck with this concept. Once you lose the idea that God is a kindly old gent who answers our supplications like The genie in the lamp, and think of God being a state to work towards, it becomes quite a seductive mind set, even if, like me, you have a bit of a crush on Richard Dawkins.
Hi Penelope, Happy New Year.

The Great Chain of Being by Lovejoy explores this idea of cosmic consciousness, which is quite controversial in scientific circles due to its perceived conflict with the theory of evolution, and politically due to its historic racism and support for existing hierarchies.

A cosmic perspective is quite different, as for astronomy it involves the mind experiment of seeking to think from the perspective of the universe, recognising the immensity of space and time compared to human perspectives.

Re: Ch. 12: Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective

Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 8:54 am
by Penelope
Happy New Year Robert Tulip and all!!

It does seem a naive sort of question, Cosmic Consciousness as opposed to Cosmic Perspective. I suppose Cosmic Consciousness is/was just a belief and Cosmic Perspective is proven science. I really can't get my head around the numbers involved, which doesn't really depress me, it just leads me to feel slight disinterest. I'm thinking what a kind man Tyson sounds. I like him, and I wish I could get more involved emotionally. It's science Penelope, I tell myself, it isn't about emotions, you twit.

The trouble is, computers are so much better at numbers and science......they are rubbish, however, at empathy.

I have nearly finished the book but I don't feel I have brought much to it intellectually. I mean I have done a lot of mental exclamation marks.......like.....Corr!!! and Blimey!!!

I am reading a couple by D Z Phillips - One called Recovering Religious Concepts and and second one is called Can Religion be Explained Away? They are studies in Philosophy and I find I can get absorbed, although neither book belongs to me. They are ones which my boss sent for me to put on the Internet for sale, and they are quite pricey for modern books, so I'm reading them very gingerly.

It's good to try to balance out Philosophy with Science, I think.