The problem, in a nutshell, is that the world of human interest, the world of values, seems to have little connection to the world of facts as revealed by the natural sciences. As a result we live bifurcated lives. We accept the world described by science -- purposeless matter in mindless motion -- as the "real" world, while confining the world of meaning and purpose to the subjective psychological realm. The result is a debilitating tension between the subjective and the objective, between the inner world and the outer world. We are aware that how we think of the world, our knowledge of it, shapes our actions, and, hence, influences our social and political orders. But we also sense that we can only be at home in a world when the "facts" reflect and reinforce our "values" -- when, in other words, we no longer feel like aliens on Earth. ...
But what if the cosmic optimists are right? What if we really do belong here, part of a still unknown -- and perhaps humanly unknowable -- cosmic purpose? As Toolan says, "What if the evolution of mind is what this universe has been about since the first three seconds?" What if, to borrow Kauffman's poetic phrase, "life spattered across megaparsecs, galaxies, galactic clusters" to make us "members of a creative, mysteriously unfolding universe?"
