The universe surrounds us. It is something we observe, analyze, and explore. It is out there. Always. So much so that we may forget a key empirical fact—we are part of the universe, not detached from it.

That is why the universe is us. As much as black holes and galaxies and spacetime, we are part of the physical reality of the universe. It is us, and we are it.

I do not mean that the universe is like us or that humans are the purpose of the universe. I do not mean to imply species pride or anything else anthropocentric or anthropomorphic. I mean something more prosaic—that we are not separate from the universe, but included in it. We are participants, not external observers.

The universe is not only us, but it is us

The universe is bigger than us, of course, but it encompasses us. Whatever we have, the universe has. That includes the physical structures that comprise the subatomic and cellular components of our tangible matter, but it also includes the qualitative and intangible properties associated with conscious matter, such as knowledge, ideas and desires, creative impulses and output. The universe has all these things—because it has conscious entities within it.

Our theories of reality must comprehend all that is part of the universe, both tangible and intangible. So when we explore the microcosmic world or the vast reaches of space, looking to answer questions about the universe, we should remember that to know the universe, we must search ourselves, too.

Nothing human is alien to the cosmos

It is an empirical reality that the universe contains all that we have, a fact that suggests answers to some recurring human questions.

Is the universe alive? Yes, the universe is alive because it generates life within it. Viewed as a complete system, it is a system that produces life, so it is a living system.

Does the universe learn? Yes, for the same reason. We are part of the system that is the universe, so everything we learn the universe also learns. The same is true for every other organism or entity in the universe with the capacity to learn. The universe is a knowledge ecosystem.[1]

Can the universe imagine? Whatever we imagine, the universe imagines. We imagine for the universe, because we are part of it. Therefore imagination is a property of the universe.

Does the universe have meaning? The universe has a search for meaning, because we search for meaning. Whether we or any part of the universe finds meaning is a different question. But if conscious entities search for meaning, and even create meaning, then the universe has whatever meaning we give it. It has the meaning that any part of the universe finds or creates.

Am I imputing human experience to an otherwise unaware and mechanistic universe? Perhaps, but even the question assumes an external reference point—that it is possible to observe the universe from the outside and impute qualities to it that it does not possess. It assumes that a mechanistic universe does not possess the qualities of the mechanisms within it. How can either of these things be true? It is indisputable that we are inside the universe, not outside of it, i.e., that we are organic mechanisms created within and as part of a mechanistic universe. So how is it possible to impute to the universe qualities that it does not have, when it has all that we have and more?

Does the universe care about what we contribute?

We know that part of the universe cares—our part. But what does that mean? What does it mean that the universe as a system produces us and therefore produces and cares about intangible things such as life, consciousness, love, art, concepts? Does it mean that the universe as a whole cares about these things and is structured in some way to produce them?

Alternatively, have we come to exist randomly and accidentally, unique as the only part of the universe that cares about random intangibles? Perhaps everything the universe knows of life and consciousness results solely from a one-off coincidence on one planet in one solar system among billions of galaxies.

If so, perhaps we truly are uniquely enshrined as spectators of the universe, removed from meaningful participation, self-appointed observers at the center of a new pre-Copernican universe revolving around our observations, our senses, our awareness of the universe as the only entities even conscious of its existence. Such a conception is almost solipsistically anthropocentric, based on an assumption that the cosmos can have no meaning and no knowledge of itself except by virtue of our observation.

Is the universe as neutral and unaware as we think it is?

Whether the mechanistic universe “cares” or not, if the earth and everything human were to disappear tomorrow, we would exist in the experience of the universe. It would continue to contain the specific information necessary to determine our existence. The universe could create life again. Life is something the universe can do. Is it something that the universe does?

Perhaps the universe is not so unaware and passive as we imagine. Some part of it may always care about us, if only the part that is us. The same may be true for every other living or conscious entity. Perhaps our existence, our thoughts, our desires, our wish to live—all belong in the universe. Perhaps we are integral components in ways that we do not comprehend.

Does the cosmos have some engineering and biological selection process that tends to produce life and consciousness? Are evolution and natural selection inherent in its physical structure, whether organic or inorganic? Are there other places where the cosmos nurtures subsystems like ours, experiencing itself through these many worlds according to some deep evolutionary structure inherent in the physics of the universe?

Is that what it means that the universe is a system that produces life and consciousness? Does the universe—as a system generating conscious entities as appendages of itself—have some built-in preference for existence over non-existence?

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[1] This is true, perhaps more so, if we think of “information” in the technical sense that physicists often describe it. See Rovelli (2020), pp. 100-102; Carroll (2016), p. 34, “…each moment contains precisely the right amount of information to determine every other moment.”