THE DAWN OF A MINDFUL UNIVERSE
Gleiser, a professor of natural philosophy, physics, and astronomy at Dartmouth, has written multiple books exploring philosophical questions that arise from our knowledge of the universe. Unhappy with humans’ continued plunder of Earth, the author searches for an explanation and finds it in the Copernican revolution. Rewinding the clock, he notes that ancient cultures lived in harmony with nature. Eventually, however, humans looked around and concluded that they lived at the center of the universe and that all of Earth’s resources were subservient to their needs. Furthermore, creation myths and religions gave humans a superior position. Although early Greek philosophers were the first to explain the natural world without the necessity of divine intervention, this didn’t catch on until well after 1543, when Copernicus revealed that “the Earth was not the center of everything, but a mere planet orbiting the Sun, like all the others.” The view that there is nothing special about the Earth led to a “profound identity crisis that threatens the future of our species and of many of the creatures with which we share this planet.” While Gleiser never explains how this disappointment connects to the ongoing abuse of our planet, few readers will object to his plea to stop viewing Earth as an ordinary planet and celebrate its uniqueness. As far as we know right now, it is the only place in the universe that shelters life. Humans are the only species capable of understanding this, and “our emergence on this rare planet marked the dawn of a new cosmic age: the cognitive age, the age of a mindful Universe.” The author offers a fine lesson in cosmology, including the spectacular 21st-century discovery of billions of sunlike stars with planets, details about the search for alien life, and a history of the “rare and precious” life on Earth.
