A Rationale for Love in the Cosmos
(Revised Jan., 2011)
John A. Gowan

email:
jag8@cornell.edu 
johngowan@earthlink.net

It is a remarkable fact that the four principles of the "Tetrahedron Model" exist not only in our thoughts and physical theories, but also find an active expression in human life and social order.

Conservation itself we seek through our families and posterity, through fame and social recognition, through enduring monuments, and most notably through our intuitive spirituality and religions: "salvation" of the soul and the life everlasting. Symmetry finds expression through our aesthetic sense of beauty, through the arts, and through political, legal, and community expressions of equality, fraternity, fair play, and the "golden rule". Entropy (including negentropy) we see in evolution, "progress", and continual historic change, both constructive and destructive, of every kind. We are keenly aware of the passage of time and its three causally connected modes: past, present, and future. We remember, we act, and we plan. We have taken the natural evolutionary force into our own hands, creating the various forms of domestic plants and animals. Through the biological sciences, we are becoming genetic engineers. Finally, with respect to Causality and Information, we have (in addition to an innate sociality and conscience) our laws, courts, legal and justice systems to address the former, and (in addition to our hands, brains, and language), science and technology to address the latter.

The human being, including his social life and order, seems to be a biological expression or embodiment of the principles of the Tetrahedron Model - self-aware and self-referent. We represent a complete iteration or expression of the universal fractal, the cosmos becoming aware of itself through a living form that mimics and actually participates in the fundamental processes of the fractal algorithm. In other words, the operation of the universal fractal has produced a co-creator in its own image, the ultimate example of a fractal iteration. Nature can do no more with us; from now on, our future evolutionary path is in our own hands.

Just as we love our children, so the Cosmos loves us, for no other life form so fully reflects its own nature, its foundation in natural law, its activity and creativity. The animals make do without our institutions; only humans reproduce the conservation principles of the Tetrahedron in their social lives - religion, government, the arts, the sciences, the advance of technology, the control of evolution, the recording of history, among other examples. We are a completed iteration of the universal fractal, the measure and meaning of the universe and its long evolutionary journey, the "image and likeness" of God. Through this likeness we are heir to a certain autonomy and resonant power, becoming a self-determining co-creator with the Cosmic Energy. This is the special meaning of humanity, above all other forms of (Earth) life, and also the source of our special responsibility, as caretakers of Earth-life in all its variety.

The Universe loves us with a resonant and parental concern. More than this, the Universe is (of course) in love with itself, and through the evolution and accumulation of biological information, explores its potential to know, experience, and appreciate itself, including developing new modes of creativity and beauty. This self-exploration through biological information-building culminates in Homo sapiens. The Grand Canyon requires nature to create it but humanity to appreciate it. Our sensitivity to the beauty of nature is nothing less than the narcissism of the Cosmos. Our natural function is to love, appreciate, explore, and understand the Cosmos, including ourselves and our creativity, for in a sense (as the ancients understood), we are a miniature version of the Universe. The Cosmos has created us for itself, as a means to know and extend itself. It is therefore our natural role to love and to be loved by the Cosmos. This is the rationale for love in the Universe.

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