The Meaning of Human Existence Read Online Free PDF Page B

light up during conscious thought. In time, likely no more than several decades, we will be able to explain the dark matter of the Universe, the origin of life on Earth, and the physical basis of human consciousness during changes of mood and thought. The invisible is seen, the vanishingly small weighed.
    So, what has this explosive growth of scientific knowledge to do with the humanities? Everything . Science and technology reveal with increasing precision the place of humanity, here on Earth and beyond in the cosmos as a whole. We occupy a microscopic space in each of the relevant continua that might have produced a species of human-grade intelligence anywhere, here and on other planets. Our ancestral species, traced further and further back through a series of ever more primitive life-forms, are all lucky lottery winners that stumbled their way through the labyrinth of evolution.
    We are a very special species, perhaps the chosen species if you prefer, but the humanities by themselves cannot explain why this is the case. They don’t even pose the question in a manner that can be answered. Confined to a small box of awareness, they celebrate the tiny segments of the continua they know, in minute detail and over and over again in endless permutations. These segments alone do not address the origins of the traits we fundamentally possess—our overbearing instincts, our moderate intelligence, our dangerously limited wisdom, even, critics will insist, the hubris of our science.
    The first Enlightenment was undertaken more than four centuries ago when science and the humanities both were elementary enough to make their symbiosis look feasible. It became possible with the opening of theglobal sea routes by Western Europe from the late fifteenth century onward. The circumnavigation of Africa and the discovery of the New World led to new, global trade routes and expanded military conquest. The new, global reach was a turning point in history that placed a premium on knowledge and invention. Now we are launched into a new cycle of exploration—infinitely richer, correspondingly more challenging, and not by coincidence increasingly humanitarian. It is within the power of the humanities and the serious creative arts within them to express our existence in ways that begin at last to realize the dreams of the Enlightenment.

5
    The All-Importance of the Humanities
     
    Y ou might think this odd coming from a data-driven biologist, but I believe that the extraterrestrials created by the confabulations of science fiction serve us in an important way: they improve reflection on our own condition. When made as fully plausible as science allows, they help us to predict the future. Real aliens would tell us, I believe, that our species possesses one vital possession worthy of their attention. It is not our science and technology, as you might think. It is the humanities.
    These imagined yet plausible aliens have no desire to please or elevate our species. Their relation to us is benevolent, the same as our own toward wildlife grazing and stalking in the Serengeti. Their mission is to learn all they can from the singular species that achieved civilization on this planet. Wouldn’t that have to be the secrets of our science? No, not at all. We have nothing to teach them. Keep in mind that nearly everythingthat can be called science is less than five centuries old. Because scientific knowledge has been more or less doubling according to discipline (such as physical chemistry and cell biology) every one or two decades for the past two centuries, it follows that what we know is by geological standards brand-new. Technological applications are also in an early stage of evolution. Humanity entered our present global, hyperconnected technoscientific era only two decades ago—less than an eyeblink in the starry message of the cosmos. By chance alone, and given the multibillion-year age of the galaxy, the aliens reached our present-day,