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And it may be rare, or I guess I should say relatively rare (because of the ENORMOUS factors of time and distance).
Think, for a moment, of all that goes into the development of life, and then conscious life. I suspect that life is "relatively" common in the Universe but the conditions needed for the development of consciousness--for creatures who can build telescopes and Hubble satellites, and gape in wonder at what they see--may not be that "relatively" frequent. The level of complication in the development of the human brain and other capabilities would seem to reduce the number of instances of it happening. (But then there is the possibility of unusual forms of life and consciousness, that we are just beginning to glimpse, with the discovery of "extremophiles"--critters who thrive in extremely cold or hot environments, and other conditions that we previously thought would be impossible.)
In any case, I am often conscious of our capacity for wonder and of our extraordinary curiosity. It FEELS unique. Don't know if it is, on earth or elsewhere. Can't know until..well, we find out. But if you think of us in evolutionary terms, evolution has produced a creature who can contemplate the Universe--who can LOOK at it, admire it, study it, have its mind blown at its magnitude, beauty and mystery; and can venture off its own little planet, can look back and admire, can learn from this experience (if we do), can apply knowledge gained of the macrocosm to the microcosm, and is in the process of figuring out how life is made and how galaxies are made and possibly how the Universe is made (how it began, how it evolved, how it works, where it is going).
Dolphins, elephants and other complicated beings don't have this interest, in so far as we know--or, if they do, haven't developed the tools to pursue it (or have built-in tools that we don't understand, by which they do their own studies of the Universe.)
As far as we know, we are the only ones who do it--who seek the Big Picture, have the ability to do so, and look at it in wonder, and want to know more--and we hope there are others like us and we are beginning to understand that there probably are.
The ability to ENJOY the whole Universe. That's what I'm getting it. With our teensy little but very complicated brains (and dexterity).
I am a Galaxy Zoo participant--a massive study project by which ordinary people (not trained astronomers) are needed to pick out shapes of astronomical objects from the Hubble and other photos. Computers can't do this well, they tell us. Human eyes and brains are needed. And as I help with this project, looking at these astounding photos, I sometimes just sit back and stare at the screen in sheer, gaping wonder--at what I'm seeing and at us--at our ability to perceive what this is, how old it is, where it is--objects and events that are billions and billions of years old, in the past, near to the beginning of it all (if the Big Bang holds up, as the theory)--things that no generation before us knew, or could see.
My feeling is that there is some impulse in the Universe to contemplate itself. Why would our evolution go there? What use is it to our survival? How does it help us, as evolving critters, to "select for" characteristics that produce people who wile hours away gaping at proto-galaxies at the beginning of time?
Yes, we are very, VERY small, in relation to it all. But we have the ability to SEE it all, and to advance our understanding of it all, dramatically and exponentially, from generation to generation. Why?
Well, this may be a "significant" question to us and of complete unimportance to those fabulous masses of energy roiling around "out there" to the end of time. It's true, we are something like a little ant colony on a leaf in a gigantic sea, with telescopes. But think about THAT--ants with telescopes. Telescopes that they aren't using to navigate or to spot a shore. Telescopes pointed upward, for the fun of it, out of insatiable curiosity.
That would not be "insignificant" if we discovered it here, on earth. Thinking ants. Ants who look upward for no good reason. No food up there. No reachable shore.
Could very large complex objects--spiral galaxies--have some kind of macro-consciousness that has an impulse to see itself? And this impulse gets infused all the way down to the micro level (for a galaxy)--planets or other objects that develop life, which evolves to produce consciousness? If we are made of "stardust"--as Carl Sagan was fond of saying--that is, we are the products of all that "out there"--why do we have consciousness and curiosity if those qualities are not, also, part of the "star dust"?
The matter in the universe clearly--markedly--tends toward organization. Can't look at thousands of spiral galaxies and S-shaped proto-spiral galaxies and not realize that. Matter folds in, swirls and twirls and forms distinct, complex, organized, swirling shapes, that pull in any stray matter wandering by, shapes in which masses of energy are concentrated, and set in motion--a particular pattern of motion--that generates suns with planets, and thus life. Does it also tend toward consciousness? Is our consciousness a tiny replication of something that is happening on the marco-level whereby a spiral galaxy generates the eyes to see itself?
Your post stresses our tiny-ness and insignificance. But there is truth in something else, as well--that, in our tiny-ness--with particular abilities of our tiny brains (and our tiny hands), on our tiny planet, we perceive it ALL, we make instruments to study it ALL, we want to understand it ALL, we have tried for our entire history to grasp it ALL, to map it ALL, to photograph it ALL, to penetrate to the furthest reaches of it ALL. Why? What use is this to us? Does this distinctively collective effort of many human minds over millennia hold some key to our survival, that is not yet apparent, that we haven't yet figured out? (I'm thinking: species too successful; over-population; need to find/terraform new planets?) Or is it that we feel COMPELLED to do it, because it is inherent in matter to organize itself and think about itself--and we are a highly organized, tiny product of what "matter" tends to do?
Wow, I feel like I've gone way out on the limb here. Ain't it fun? We are the Universe contemplating itself! Tiny as we are. Not insignificant.
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