O despertar do universo consciente: Um manifesto para o futuro da humanidade

by Marcelo Gleiser

Convocando sociedade e comunidade científica a uma nova compreensão do universo, O despertar do universo consciente, de Marcelo Gleiser, é um notável manifesto pela sobrevivência da humanidade e de nosso raro planeta

 

Desde que Copérnico tirou a Terra do centro do universo, a humanidade passou a se ver cada vez mais à deriva, um pontinho insignificante em uma imensidão fria. Hoje consideramos que quanto mais aprendemos sobre o universo, menos relevantes somos, quando deveria ser justamente o contrário.

Em O despertar do universo consciente, Marcelo Gleiser, físico e astrônomo renomado internacionalmente, vencedor do Prêmio Templeton 2019, argumenta que, se queremos salvar o nosso projeto de civilização, precisamos reinventar nossa relação com a vida e com o planeta.

Examinando a história da vida na Terra e a possibilidade de vida em outros planetas com clareza e autoridade, o autor argumenta que estamos usando o paradigma errado em relação ao lugar que ocupamos. Devemos abraçar uma perspectiva biocêntrica – que tem a vida como centro, que reconhece a raridade do nosso planeta num universo hostil à vida.

Este novo paradigma repensa os ideais iluministas e propõe um novo compasso moral para a humanidade, unida na mesma missã a preservação da Terra, o planeta onde, através da voz humana, o universo conta a sua própria história.

Ao propor um "Manifesto para a futuro da humanidade", Gleiser sugere um plano de ação que inclui passos para assegurar a sobrevivência do nosso projeto de civilização num planeta com recursos limitados. Se esses passos serão suficientes para reorientar a nossa trajetória atual dependerá de cada um de nós.

 

"Marcelo Gleiser argumenta que a única esperança que temos de abordar a crise ambiental vigente é repensar nossa relação com a história e com todo o cosmos. O despertar do universo consciente é um trabalho ousado e sincero. Sua mensagem é alarmante, mas, afinal, otimista." Elizabeth Kolbert, vencedora do Pulitzer e autora de A sexta extinção

"Em seu mais novo livro, O despertar do universo consciente, o renomado e premiado físico brasileiro Marcelo Gleiser faz um verdadeiro tratado sobre a vida e a maneira como nos relacionamos com ela. A descoberta de novos mundos, a busca pela vida no universo, os mistérios da vida e as lições que aprendemos com a única vida que conhecemos, todas essas discussões podem nos mostrar a maneira com a qual nos relacionamos com o universo? Será que estamos nos relacionando da melhor forma? É o que você vai descobrir nas páginas da mais nova obra de um dos maiores físicos da história." Sérgio Sacani Sancevero, geofísico e fundador do canal SpaceToday

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Philosophy

255 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 11, 2024

Reviews

[Roy Van Den Brande · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just an astrophysics introduction.

[Twirlsquirrel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Basic thoughts

Decent introductory overview of many astrobiological concepts, along with some relevant history and related philosophical ideas. Writing is mostly functional: There are some really beautiful passages, but also a similar number that try so hard for profundity they end up muddying whatever point the author is trying to make. Overall, it's pretty easy to read, and requires no background knowledge.

I listened to the audiobook. The narrator was mostly fine, except for a string of mispronounced astronomical terms in the first half of the book, plus an amusing moment near the end where he speaks of the "slow drift of tectonic planets" while discussing the protective mechanisms of Earth.

The Cartesian species view: A flawed major component of the central thesis

This book's main problem lies with the author's borderline solipsism about human-centric definitions of intelligence, cognition, thought, etc. An example: "The dawn of humanity marked the dawn of a mindful universe." Or: "Through our existence the universe begot a mind." At one point Gleiser expounds on his meaning: That only with our genus, Homo, did life become capable of acquiring "knowledge and understanding through thought, sensorial experience, and memory."

Such a claim is profoundly false. All living creatures do these things. Hominins are not unique in this. To think otherwise is incredibly ignorant.

As a trivial example, anything with a neuron is using those neurons to think. That is not something humans invented. Less trivially, all life is responding to sensorial experience, whether light, pressure, electricity, gravity, magnetism, or whatever. In all cases, information obtained through senses cumulatively comprises knowledge acquired by the sensing organism, which in turn provides understanding of various kinds. (See An immense world by Ed Yong for a fantastic introduction to some of this.) Moreover we are only just beginning to understand the cognitive abilities of plants (see The light eaters by Zoe Schlanger), so how in the world could anyone pretend to comprehend the nature of cognition among, say, bacterial colonies?

It's absurd on its face. Gleiser tries a few times to wave it away with comments about how other creatures may "react" but only humans have "strategy", and things along these lines - but he just throws undefined terminology out there like he's the first one to attempt these philosophical musings, and his half-hearted arguments wouldn't be convincing even if he were the first. It's clear Marcelo Gleiser is no Frans de Waal or Peter Godfrey-Smith. To be fair, neither am I, but I'm also not writing books with a corrupted self-defeating central premise because I was too lazy to see what my pop-science contemporaries in the relevant fields have already written on the topic. Other minds, this book is not.

What we get here instead is the same standard poison that has polluted the main lineages of colonial European thought ever since Descartes bravely decided all nonhuman animals are soulless mechanical puppets while humans, by contrast, are special because we have souls and can truly think and even write books about the fact that we think. It's such a base, ugly form of blatant xenophobia, impossible to subscribe to if you've ever interacted with any animal in a nonviolent manner.

Over and over this bizarrely dismissive, grossly narcissistic Cartesian viewpoint pops up wherever European colonists have settled, so I generally expect to encounter it and filter it out like the harmful noise it is. The particularly frustrating thing here is that this is supposed to be a book specifically (if superficially) about rejecting colonial European patterns of thought regarding life in the universe - yet in doing so, it somehow jumps straight to the most quintessentially colonial European line of thought regarding life on this planet!

Yes, humans are special. And so is every other kind of organism. Our genus certainly didn't invent things like thought, strategy, cognition and so on - for heaven's sake, Gleiser just needs to step outside his writing room and go meet literally any dog or octopus, it's not hard, they're all over the damn place. Even a day watching online footage of these animals would do him some serious good. For extra credit he should read the perfectly titled modern masterpiece Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

With all that our species already knows about the non-uniqueness of human intelligence, it is harmful to bring up solipsistic, long-disproved talking points about how humans are the only true intelligent life. Cushioning such solipsism with statements about the sacredness of all that supposedly non-cognitive life doesn't cut it either. After all, some of the most virulent and violent forms of patriarchy contain the explicit premise that women are somehow more sacred than men. In both cases a similarly baseless hierarchy is created. Such thinking belongs in the incinerator.

Liberal ahistoricism: A stupid foundation for a stupid final chapter

My next big problem with this book is the way it uncritically dispenses nonsensical liberal platitudes disguised as cosmic wisdom, in a concluding chapter hilariously titled "A manifesto for humanity's future" that essentially reads as 'be a progressive liberal, but also more spiritual, but also spirits aren't real'. Let's just dive into the problems with this horrid chapter.

In more than 20 minutes of discussion on humanity's exponential resource consumption, capitalism is not mentioned a single time. The closest we get are a couple of mentions of "consumerism" and "consumer choice", as if this book's average readers and listeners are the ones making logistical decisions for strip mines, clearcutting, oil extraction, and so on.

To be very clear, this is stupid. "Consumers" do not have power to make industrial decisions under capitalism. We are told endlessly that we do, but as functioning adults - let alone, as Gleiser might put it, as the minds of the universe itself - we need to hold our conceptual probing of the world to a much higher standard than repeating what we're told. Liberalism always has been and forever will be a knowing fantasy propagated to justify capitalism by cloaking its depredations in the language of freedom, just like the depredations of patriarchy are so often cloaked in the language of love and protection. If you can manage to see past the latter, you are equally capable of seeing past the former.

The power of "consumer choice" lies in picking between a dozen brands owned by the same parent corporation, and most certainly not in changing the direction of capitalism. To publish a book in 2021 without this awareness really puts the lie to the conceit of so many scientists like Gleiser that they are always the smartest people in the room.

Because he is unable to conceptualize realistic mechanisms of economic cause and effect, Gleiser repeatedly engages the popular liberal two-step of, firstly, generalizing capitalism-specific economic practices to a vague notion of greed in general, and then, secondly, blaming that greed on "humanity" and a nebulous "we" rather than on its actual drivers: The capitalists who direct the processes of capitalism. It's the logic of an untutored child, and it contaminates everything else Gleiser says with a lingering sense of distrust in his grasp of the subject matter.

Here's a direct quote to illustrate: "We tend to our gardens as small temples, but cut down forests with complete negligence." This is an insultingly illogical platitude that smears conceptual boundaries as readily as it smears the reader and listener. Brief examination reveals the problem: The general "we" Gleiser employs here obliterates the fact that in the vast majority of cases, the people tending gardens and the people cutting down forests are not the same people. This is true at more than one level.

At the child's level: Is the average gardener a lumberjack?

Obviously not.

Now let's try the adult level: Is the average gardener a capitalist dictating the behavior of lumberjacks - who after all are nothing more than workers performing the only available work that will provide them a living wage under the artificially maintained economic deprivations and professional confines of capitalism?

The answer is the same as before.

That Gleiser didn't think through these most basic implications at either level before publishing his thoughts to the world speaks volumes about his conceptual limitations as a liberal, trapped in the fantasy logic of an eternally poisoned dream called capitalism. These limitations plague every paragraph in this entire chapter. It is not a manifesto for humanity so much as an obstinate wish for peace by a child who does not comprehend the mechanisms of violence.

"History tells us that great transformations come from doers, from those who feel the need for change, those who have the courage to fight for the greater good," Gleiser tells us. He then goes on to list the following examples:

1. "Religious leaders" like Jesus and "the countless martyrs who fell for their ideals". Since Gleiser gets no more specific than this, the reader is forced to infer people like the Crusaders, who certainly told others they were fighting for "the greater good" but knew full well in their private recollections that they were fighting for land, wealth, and personal status.

2. The standard colonially sanitized list of pacifists who fought for "racial freedom and equality" - specifically MLK Jr, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. Gleiser does not mention - presumably because as a liberal he is unaware - that these three people were in fact fighting primarily for economic freedom and, in the case of Gandhi, decolonial freedom as well. As a brief example, MLK Jr's famous march on Washington was called the march "for jobs and freedom" in that order. That first word, "jobs", is omitted from all liberal retellings of the tale because liberalism is the sociopolitical arm of capitalism, and capitalism would rather toss a racial bone to quell demand for an economic one. As for Gandhi, do yourself a thought experiment and imagine if he would've been happy with an India still controlled by Britain but with racial equality. Gleiser's juvenile analysis never goes anywhere near this far.

3. A list of Greek philosophers who Gleiser neglects to mention did not actually have to "fight" for anything at all, because they were wealthy slaveowners.

4. The standard list of famous salaried and landowning men from the Scientific Revolution.

This is the incoherent mess that passes for historical understanding in the mind of a committed liberal - which is extremely funny because shortly before this passage Gleiser patronizingly refers to the bulk of humanity (most of whom are victims of capitalism, not its drivers) as an "incoherent mass of dissenting tribes, most embracing value systems based on short-term thinking, devoid of any deeper reflection of the mid- to long-term consequences of our choices".

Or just maybe, most people are making choices to survive under a system that gives them no meaningful alternatives?

While Gleiser is busy boosting slaveowners and medieval crusaders, he repeatedly denounces "revolutionaries" for being too "bloody" - nevermind that it has only ever been revolutionaries who freed the third world from settler colonial bondage, who freed slaves from eugenicists, who freed workers from the chains of capitalism. Gleiser should read Red star over the third world by Vijay Prashad to reflect on the actual nature of revolution, and The Jakarta method by Vincent Bevins to comprehend the stupidity he is promulgating because he has bought into the genocidally bloody lies of capitalists.

"There are two major obstacles to change," Gleiser writes at one point, and then doesn't mention capitalism. "The point here is not to abolish land ownership," he says, after spending an entire book superficially referencing the need to follow vague "Indigenous cultures" that, in actuality, reject concepts of land ownership.

Gleiser makes a brief mention of "the economic system we have adopted" without naming capitalism explicitly, and without acknowledging that, again, "we" did not adopt this, it was violently forced upon us over centuries by the concerted action of capitalists. How can you hope to fix a problem if you are too cowardly to even name the problem? This is particularly galling given his earlier digression regarding "those with the courage to" blah blah blah.

"We have prospered greatly as a result" of the Enlightenment, Gleiser writes, ignoring the horrors of colonialism, eugenics, slavery, and war, all aided, accelerated, and justified by Enlightenment concepts of rationality and science. He makes a statement much later on about science being used to "expand our control over the natural environment, without any moral concern", but because he chose to separate these sentences so far apart from each other, the reader must struggle to infer a connection that Gleiser could easily have made explicit.

"At this juncture in human history, we must take responsibility for how our business investments reflect our values." This stirring neoliberal battlecry is an actual sentence from this book, presumably written without irony.

"Individuals should critically examine what they eat, how they use energy and water, how much garbage they produce, and how they dispose of it", Gleiser tells us, as if individual consumption habits were the primary driver of climate change or capitalist priorities. Moreover, "individuals should engage more with nature" - good enough health advice, but hardly a "sacrifice" and certainly not a means to end capitalism, considering billions of humans have been engaging with nature since capitalism's beginning yet its depredations have only intensified.

Then we get the really good stuff: "The mindful approach to consumerism." According to Gleiser, "Consumers have the power to shape corporations and their policies. The logic is simple: If consumers don't buy, corporations don't sell, and are forced to change their practices. United, consumers have great power to make changes. Individuals should be mindful of the companies they buy products from. Do these companies align with biocentric values? Do they strive to minimize their carbon footprint? Do they promote best practices with high ethical environmental values? Do they promote inclusivity and gender equality in their hiring practices? Do they have a philanthropic practice, giving back to society and the planet? Are they mindful of their production chain, and do they respect their workers? Do they create a partnership with their clients, or do they see clients as targets for their marketing campaigns? As more people buy products from companies that embrace a sustainable and forward-thinking environmental ethic, the prices of those products will go down and become affordable for more consumers. Consumers of the world unite, so nature can win!"

It would take an entire separate review to really break down the stupidity of this single passage, so instead I'll just briefly answer his questions in order: Biocentrism is antithetical to capitalism because capitalism is a system of endless exponential material growth incompatible with life. Same with carbon footprint reduction and environmental values. Diversity is only pursued when mandated and it's usually a trap for the people who are included. There's no need for capitalists to give back wealth if they aren't allowed to steal it in the first place. It is known that corporations outsource production chains specifically to avoid ethical considerations, and if they respected their workers we'd have communism not capitalism. Obviously clients are marketing targets, that's the point of marketing. You're welcome, Marcelo Gleiser. Now go read What's left by Malcom Harris for a thorough answer to your intro-level questions about the intersection of capitalism and climate change. Then read some Wikipedia entries on monopoly capitalism to correct your simplistic misconceptions about market logic, and stop mutating socialist slogans to use in your incoherent liberal ideology.

The masterful denouement to this chapter's litany of stupidity: "Independently of political or religious affiliation, all schools should add the history of the cosmos and of life on earth to their curricula at all levels.... This science and humanities based cosmic narrative should never be part of a liberal vs conservative rhetoric." Leaving aside the quintessentially U.S.-centric political binary nonsense, education about the history of the cosmos and life is inherently a political and religious project, which is precisely why there are political battles over evolution, vaccination, etc. Gleiser would understand this if he were anything but a liberal. To reiterate, liberalism is the fantasyland invented for a select few to feel good about themselves while capitalism runs wild killing everyone else. On that note, Gleiser should read Liberalism by Domenico Losurdo.

Final thoughts

This book is deeply disappointing, with some solid factual basics and even moments of beautiful insight that are completely overwhelmed by ugly nonsense. I've focused on that ugly nonsense because it comprises Gleiser's central premise in this book and his concluding chapter, and thus brings down everything else. For all the positive aspects of this book's messaging about the sacredness of life, it is a terrible thing to wrap these messages around a central pillar that echoes, wittingly or not, the ecocidal paranoia of Descartes - not to mention capping that pillar with a "manifesto" embedded in the blundering, blandly mass-destructive logic of blithe liberal ignorance.

For a much better starter text on astrobiology I'd recommend Astrobiology by Plaxco and Gross, which will give you a lot more meat and pursue many more interesting conceptual threads in depth without sacrificing readability for naive nonsense. If you really want Gleiser's main contribution in the mix, you can blend in some Descartes, a hint of Book of Genesis, any of Obama's memoirs, and a Wikipedia article summary's worth of non-Western epistemologies (for that superficial sheen of philosophical balance) - but why would you want to ruin a perfectly good astrobiology book like that?

[Ramna Palma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perspicaz, sensível, honesto e corajoso. Marcelo Gleiser constrói um argumento de que precisamos mudar a forma como contamos a história da humanidade e do universo, e nossa relação com a biosfera e o planeta. Não apenas para nosso próprio bem, mas como moralmente necessário.

Os capítulos são bem organizados. O autor analisa visões de mundo desde os pré socráticos até os dias atuais e de culturas indígenas. Contanto a história de descobertas científicas, e alguns enganos, analisando questões do surgimento do universo, da vida, exploração espacial e busca por vida em outros planetas.

Me questionei bastante durante a leitura, mas creio que ele está certo. Ele defende que com o copernicanismo e visões decorrentes do iluminismo, passamos a desvalorizar a vida: 1 planeta entre trilhões, insignificantes.

"Ter poder sobre a natureza nada nos ensina sobre como usar esse poder". A vida é extremamente rara, mas não cuidamos dela. Através de uma visão materialista e arrogante, nos consideramos superiores aos animais e donos de tudo. Não somos donos da natureza. Não estamos acima dos animais. A ciência não é ilimitada e não é só do que precisamos. Estamos em um oceano de maravilhas e mistérios.

Infelizmente, quanto mais imersos em artificialidades e concreto, mais fácil é ser e pensar mecanizado, e objetificar a natureza.

Conheço pouco do Marcelo Gleiser, mas minha admiração por ele cresce. É confortante um físico desse nível, membro da academia americana de física, professor de física e astronomia na universidade de Dartmouth, com histórico no Fermilab e NASA, evidenciar a espiritualidade. Achei brilhante a forma como ele explicou sua importância nesse livro, através de seu ponto de vista de cientista e de ser humano. "Menos sobre dominar, mais sobre pertencer".

[Emil (reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring. You can tell he writes with passion.

[Larry Massaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtitle of this little book is “A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future,” but the explicit manifesto in the final chapter—which is a kind of policy to-do list for mankind if it wants to save itself from disaster—is the least original and impressive part of The Dawn of a Mindful Universe. (I’m not sure humanity is ready for, or inclined to accept, a physicist’s assigned to-do list.) What makes this book remarkable and worth reading is the elegance with which it summarizes modern physics, cosmology, and the science of the origin of life, and puts it all into a meaningful cultural context. For me, it was eye-opening.

I picked this book up because I heard Marcelo Gleiser interviewed in a podcast; he was very engaging, and I was intrigued. Gleiser was born in Brazil, is currently professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth, has worked at NASA and Fermilab, and, in addition to his academic research, has written a lot for a general audience about the history and theory of science.

Modern physics has always both interested and frustrated me. As a layman—I admit it—I don’t get it. And I’ve tried. Quantum theory and Einstein’s general theory of relativity are both presumably central to our overall understanding of the world, but they’re also mostly incomprehensible. I’ve read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and it made no sense whatsoever to me; I may as well have been reading a book in Tagalog.

Gravity, for example: I’ve read it explained many times as the curvature of spacetime, but I still can’t imagine it, grasp it. I know physicists can demonstrate these things mathematically to each other, but without the math it just doesn’t compute. Trying to envision it breaks my brain. For most modern people, gravity as the curvature of spacetime is just like the Virgin Birth or the Trinity: just another impenetrable article of faith handed down from above.

Bottom line: after reading The Dawn of a Mindful Universe, and despite Marcelo Gleiser’s lovely, lucid prose, I still can’t imagine gravity as the curvature of spacetime. No matter. I learned a lot of other illuminating things.

Gleiser takes issue with our “post-Copernican” view of the cosmos. He has nothing at all against Copernicus, but he regrets that when mankind realized that the earth was not the center of the universe we lost some of our moral footing. For both medieval man and indigenous peoples, according to Gleiser, the heavens revolved around us, and we, surrounded by Nature, were center-stage, living a momentous moral drama that included our fellow earthly creatures. How we lived, with each other and with the other living beings on this planet, mattered.

But when Capernicus and Galileo and Keppler told us that earth was just one of many planets, revolving a sun that was just one of trillions of stars, we lost significance. Earth, and life on earth, became relatively unimportant—possibly duplicated elsewhere, possibly merely typical, probably mediocre, and also exploitable, discardable. Surely, with billions of other earthlike planets out there, there must be other living, dynamic worlds, other forms of intelligent life, other understandings of the great drama that is the cosmos. Today our culture, fiction, and movies are filled with extraterrestrials, most of them a lot smarter, stronger, more advanced, more capable than we are. We have come to assume our own mediocrity as a species. Thus no big deal if we end up failing on this insignificant little world.

Not so fast, is Gleiser’s warning.

He tells us, from the perspective of an astronomer and astrophysicist, that we have no reason to assume that we’re not unique. We have no reason to assume that life exists anywhere else at all, and certainly not intelligent life, capable of telling a story about existence. We have absolutely zero evidence of extraterrestrial life, and given the vast distances of space, we shouldn’t ever expect to have any. As far as we know, life exists only on earth, and we should behave as if, without us, the entire cosmos is merely mechanical, unconscious, unaware, dumb. If we fail, the universe would keep on humming, but it might thus be totally lifeless, unobserved, and meaningless. As far as we know, we’re it. As far as we know, or are likely to know, we, on this world, are the only observers and only source of meaning. More likely than not, without us the universe has no eyes, no ears, no experiences, no explanations, no understanding, no meaning.

That’s somewhat chilling to consider. Imagine, as just one tiny example, the storms that we now know are always raging on Jupiter. No one has ever seen them, experienced them. Until humans sent probes to Jupiter, those storms raged completely unobserved, unknown.

Gleiser is very good at explaining what science does not know and may never know, such as the origin of life on earth, which he declares is not only unknown but “unknowable”:

Life, ubiquitous as it is, remains a profound scientific mystery. Perhaps surprisingly to many, at present scientists share no agreed-upon definition of life or, for that matter, an understanding, even at a primitive level, of how life originated on Earth. To rephrase, we don't know what life is or how it began. . . . We can't travel back four billion years to primal Earth to learn how a soup of inorganic compounds became, after a few steps, a soup of organic compounds—the stuff of living things. And then, more enigmatic still, this soup of organic compounds ended up trapped inside a membrane and found a way to eat and to self-reproduce. Somehow, somewhere on primal Earth, inanimate matter became living matter and the first single-celled organisms emerged. . . .

Still, the puzzle of how life emerges from nonlife remains as mysterious as ever. How does an agglomeration of an inanimate matter, beyond an unknown level of biochemical complexity, become a living creature? We don't yet know how to think about the transition from nonliving to living, or how a bundle of inanimate chemicals turns into an entity with a sense of purpose.

Post-Copernican man, according to Gleiser, is guilty of a teleological fallacy—the unfounded assumption that the universe has a purpose, an evolutionary direction in favor of life and intelligence, and that these things are inevitable and ubiquitous. Rather, Gleiser argues, life and intelligence may be the purely accidental results of the precise nature of earth as a planet—its non-duplicable features, the unique events that it has undergone: its specific mass and gravity; its chemical composition and atmosphere; its distance from the sun; the asteroids and meteors that have and haven’t hit it; its single moon with its own specific distance, mass, and gravity; not to mention the sun’s precise size and nature and level of radiation, etc. All the other planets in our solar system are dead, dead, dead: they are either too close to the sun or too far away; they are either too small, with too little gravity, or too big, with too much gravity; they have either too little atmosphere and pressure or too much. Seven of the 8 planets in our solar system are environments completely hostile, in diverse ways, to the development of life, and we should expect that diversity and hostility in exoplanets as well. Gleiser argues that, rather than assume that the cosmos has evolved life as an inevitable development, we should consider that life may exist here entirely by chance, the function of a complex series of exact variables that exist here and possibly nowhere else: “The existence of many worlds, even many Earthlike worlds, does not mean the existence of many living worlds.” Don’t be fooled, he argues, by the huge numbers—by the billions of planets roughly like earth that are likely to exist in the universe. Since we don’t actually know how life began on earth, roughly may not cut it.

The same with intelligence. Have we just assumed, teleologically, that complex organisms evolve intelligence everywhere given a certain amount of time? Then consider dinosaurs, which dominated our world for 150 million years until they were wiped out when a monstrous asteroid hit. In all that time, the dinosaurs never, to our knowledge, developed intelligence, consciousness, or civilization. Hominids, on the other hand, have been around for only about 3 million years, our own species for only about 300,000 years, and civilization only for a handful of millennia. Were we inevitable, or just the chance development of a precise set of conditions? Are we conscious only by the skin of our teeth? We may never know, but we certainly shouldn’t assume that our species is mediocre.

At Christmas, my sister noticed my book on the table and expressed surprise that I was reading it, since it looked so New Agey. She’s right: the title sounds like something you’d find in a store selling incense, crystals, tarot, and spiritual paraphernalia. But Gleiser is not claiming that the earth or the cosmos have a primal spirit that we need to get back in touch with. Quite the contrary, he’s claiming that we might be the only mindfulness in the universe, and that without us the world might be mindless. Like every environmentalist—like everyone who fears climate change and the environmental degradation that we’ve wrought on this planet—Gleiser wants us to take better care of the earth, of other living things, and of ourselves. This book is his explanation why he believes that’s so important.

. . . it is hard (if not plain wrong) to justify naive optimism that life, and in particular complex intelligent life, is ubiquitous in the Cosmos. There is nothing trivial, common, or mediocre about what has transpired on our home planet. Quite the opposite: the more we learn about other worlds, the more precious our world becomes. From what we have learned of life on Earth, the many steps needed from simple amino acids to self-aware multicellular creatures capable of pondering the meaning of existence, coupled with the "eerie silence" from extraterrestrial civilizations, point forcibly toward our cosmic loneliness and not to a Star Wars universe populated with all sorts of smart creatures on distant worlds.

Of course, given the absence of evidence, we cannot conclude with confidence for or against the existence of alien life of any kind. Finding other life either directly through contact or indirectly through biosignatures on distant exoplanets is the only possible path forward toward clarity. To rephrase this point: not finding other life isn't proof of absence, only of rarity or of our inability to comprehend what this other life is. The Universe is vast, and our reach is limited. Still, we are the ones who know this. As we ponder the existence of life elsewhere, we enrich the Cosmos with our presence. The Universe has a history only because we are here to tell it.

[Suellen Rubira · Rating 4 out of 5]

um livro muito bacana para quem tem curiosidade sobre o assunto. acessível, didático sem simplificar demais as coisas. gleiser aposta na retomada da sacralização do planeta terra a partir da nossa solidão cósmica: mesmo que haja vida em alguma outra parte da galáxia, com as evidências que se tem hoje a terra é o único planeta habitado e habitável por seres humanos. sendo assim, devemos cuidar desse planeta em toda a sua raridade e beleza.

concordo com tudo o que é dito, mas a parte final, sobre biocentrismo, apesar de também ser relevante e fazer todo o sentido, é meio ingênua de achar que "independente de posições políticas" "independente de crenças" se pode simplesmente fazer mudanças no mundo. acreditar que as pessoas um dia vão acordar e ter essa noção dentro de si desconsiderando todas as outras implicações: governos, guerra, CAPITALISMO SELVAGEM, é muita ingenuidade.

esse é um problema muito comum em ciências de um modo geral: tentar explicar com palavras/soluções simples assuntos de extrema complexidade.

o livro não precisa de um debate político, se assim preferir o autor. porém, tudo o que foi abordado nessa obra possui relação direta com as ideologias capitalistas do nosso tempo, possui relação direta com o crescimento do ideal neoliberal. não é possível aproveitar natureza e parques, como o autor sugere, se o governo de direita na minha cidade destrói áreas verdes para ceder terreno para empreiteiras.

o que foi apontado no livro deve ser ponto de partida para pensar como o biocentrismo pode se tornar algo mais prevalente no cotidiano.

[Edie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And of all the planets that may hold life in this galaxy and others, ours is a beacon of hope for being home to a species of storytellers."

Gleiser writes with the intellect of a scientist and the soul of a poet. I devoured The Dawn of a Mindful Universe slowly and deliberately, stopping to chew on each bite. I know I'm not supposed to, but I took countless screenshots and sent them to my friends. We have had coffee just to discuss the ideas in this book. And it isn't even published yet! We are all planning to buy it when it comes out and read it with highlighters and tabs in hand. Thank you to Marcelo Gleiser, HarperOne, and NetGalley for an eARC.

By the end of this very readable book, you will have a good grasp on the history of scientific thought, current understandings of cosmology, and a new appreciation for life and our particular planet. It is a lot to cram into a few short pages but the writing never feels rushed. Ideas are introduced and expanded on. The writing itself is beautiful. A few favorite phrases:

"Our narratives are the tales this dancing light tells..."
"...we should celebrate our remarkable achievements without trying to transform science into the oracle of final truths about reality."
"When awe colors what we see, reality becomes more magical."
"Life is a collective."
"But the longing for awe as a path for self-growth and transformation is universal, a shared need to connect with the mystery of who we are."

While I am hesitant to say this is precisely what the author intended to say, what I, personally, got out of it is the need to reintroduce awe and wonder as a corrective to the idea that we can science our way out of our current situation. Highly recommend.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I had to sum up my thoughts on this book, it would be “Capitalism is missing from this analysis.” Do I think a cultural shift towards thinking of our planet as sacred and valuable would benefit us all as a whole? Yes. Do I think we will get there focusing on individual actions like reducing food waste, recycling, and trying to make ethical purchases, as Gleiser suggests? No.

I appreciate that Gleiser repeatedly references Indigenous stewardship practices as what should be our standard for Earthcare, BUT it’s never more than vague, general hand-waving towards what is actually a very diverse and complex web of ideas and practices that are never one-size-fits-all. He doesn’t give any examples, name a single region, person or Indigenous group. He does spend many many pages talking about specific Ancient Greek astronomers, which I certainly found interesting (mostly because my American education neglected them), but I guess that makes sense, as the author is in fact an astrophysicist.

Overall, I don’t disagree with Gleiser’s “manifesto”, and I even appreciate that someone with his background has come to this conclusion, but I do think many other authors have dug deeper and written better arguments for what we need to do to shift our industries and culture to a more sustainable future. But perhaps this book is for people who haven’t read those other books. Hopefully this one serves as a stepping stone for them.

[Ryan Boissonneault · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s amazing how our conception of the universe has changed. Whereas we once thought that the earth was the center of all creation, we now know that it is only one among possibly trillions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and that the Milky Way itself is only one of an estimated two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. To say that our collective sense of cosmic significance took a hit as a result of these discoveries is an understatement.

But maybe there’s a different story to tell. Rather than lament our cosmic triviality, maybe we can learn to better appreciate our role as caretaker of all (known) life in the universe. That’s the idea, anyway, behind astronomer and physicist Marcelo Gleiser’s latest book, The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity's Future.

As a physicist and astronomer, Gleiser is not disputing our current scientific understanding of the world; rather, he’s disputing the moral significance (or insignificance) we typically assign to it. He does so by telling the story of the universe, the earth, and the evolution of life in a way that highlights its uniqueness, rather than its potential mediocrity as inhabitants of one among billions of other “typical” planets.

In fact, Gleiser has a big problem with the idea that earth is “typical” in the first place. Noting how the eight planets of our own solar system are all unique, and extrapolating this out to the universe at large, he wonders whether or not the word “typical” can be justifiably used at all. The problem is, of course, that he’s up against very large numbers—including the trillions of planets that exist. Surely, some of them orbit the habitable zones of their own stars in ways conducive to life, right?

Well, there’s a difference between probabilities and actual evidence, which I think Gleiser is correct to point out. While the sheer number of planets suggests that there may be life in the universe, the intricate steps involved toward the development of intelligent life make it anything but inevitable. And the fact remains, despite how intensely we’ve looked, it’s still just us lonely humans gazing out into the silence of an impossibly large cosmos.

But why should this be discouraging? It means that, as far as we know, we—and we alone—are capable of telling the story of the universe; in other words, the universe has achieved a mind and a history solely through us. When we view ourselves as unique in the sense that we are the most intelligent beings, at least in our corner of the universe, then we place ourselves in a unique position that should be revered and protected, not bemoaned or ignored.

And he’s right; unless and until we learn otherwise, life is unique on planet earth, and therefore should be cherished and protected. The earth itself, capable of nourishing the only life we know about, should likewise be respected and safeguarded, and not thought of simply as a mechanical vessel that exists solely to feed our endless and ultimately unsatisfying materialistic pursuits.

So what does this mean in practical terms? Well, this is the weakest part of the book, because Gleiser wants to place the responsibility solely on individuals, rather than on institutions and governments. But we can see why this is a problem: it is very difficult to convince people to make sacrifices in the name of the planet, animals, or future generations when it is abundantly clear that most people will not. You alone cannot save the planet, or even take meaningful steps toward preserving the environment, when there are about 8 billion other people, along with multinational corporations, engaged in continuous polluting and the over-consumption of resources. Global warming, for example, is a global problem, which means it's a political problem, if that even needs to be said.

The other issue is that Gleiser hesitates to call out his real enemies. I don’t think I’m saying anything ground-breaking or controversial by stating the obvious fact that conservatives, in general, represent the political and public relations arm of the business class. And we know what business is after—profits from overconsumption. If this kills the environment, so be it. And so business, and its political representatives, are never going to get behind the idea that the earth and all of life is special and that we should all cut down on or be more “mindful” of our spending habits. To assume this is politically naive.

Additionally, while he calls for secular spirituality, which is a good suggestion, he doesn’t mention the dangers of certain religious inclinations. It is the Bible, after all, that tells us we have “dominion” over the animals, not that we are their interconnected cohabitants that all evolved from the same common ancestor. And let’s not forget that Christianity largely teaches us that this world is a “fallen” world, and that we should all embrace and look forward to its destruction as signs that the second coming is near, where we can all escape and ascend to something better.

Now, if I had to think of an antithesis to the theme of this book, I couldn’t do better than Christian eschatology, with its degradation and active wish for the world’s destruction for entry into some supernatural realm.

At this point, you may be wondering if I simply have some deep antipathy toward traditional religious and conservative thinking. Well, the answer is basically yes, but that’s besides the point. The fact of the matter is, if Gleiser wants his vision executed on a large enough scale to matter, these are the precise barriers standing in his way, in addition to the global political systems that hold tight to the status quo—a status quo that places profit over planet. Until we start penalizing politicians and businesses for these types of behaviors, and until we reinstate proper environmental regulations, nothing is going to change.

At any rate, this is an interesting retelling of the history of the universe and humanity; a fascinating exploration of astrophysics and the search for extraterrestrial life; and a moving manifesto for humans to better appreciate the uniqueness and interconnectedness of the only life we know for sure exists in the entire cosmos.

[Gabriel Soares · Rating 4 out of 5]

O despertar do universo consciente - Gleiser abre as alas para a luta contra o triunfalismo científico

Já há algum tempo acompanho de maneira empolgada o que o astrofísico brasileiro Marcelo Gleiser tem a dizer. Não me recordo bem da primeira vez que o escutei falar, mas tenho a suspeita de que se tratava de um vídeo comparativo sobre os planetas alcançáveis por nossas tecnologias e a Terra - esse vídeo tinha o objetivo de mostrar o quão hipócrita é gastar bilhões e bilhões de dólares anualmente em expedições para análise da possibilidade de colonização de outros planetas enquanto o nosso é destruído e ações que visam amenizar o impacto ambiental recebem tão pouca verba. Ademais, Gleiser entrou de vez no meu hall de admirações após um episódio do podcast TripFM (sempre fora da curva), onde ele discutiu sobre variados assuntos, muitos dos quais ele não tinha a oportunidade de falar em outras entrevistas; nesse episódio, descobri que eu e Gleiser compartilhamos alguns interesses mútuos, como as corridas nas montanhas, maratonas, ciência pós-reducionismo e muitas outras coisas: it was admiration at first podcast (modern age e suas curiosidades, não é?!). Desde então, Gleiser se tornou uma presença contínua nos meus questionamentos – ler seus livros e artigos era o próximo passo. Minha escolha foi começar por ‘O despertar do universo consciente: um manifesto para o futuro da humanidade’, um livro que trata exatamente do assunto daquele primeiro vídeo que vi de Gleiser: a questão da urgência climática e megalomanias científicas.
Neste livro, Gleiser esboça e aprofunda o debate em torno da raridade da vida e da necessidade de uma visão pós-copernicana do planeta Terra; para tal tarefa, Marcelo tem seus esteios extremamente bem firmados em seus profundos conhecimentos astrofísicos e astrobiológicos. O livro foi dividido em 4 partes: na primeira, intitulada “Mundos imaginários”, Gleiser começa a preparar o terreno discorrendo sobre os mitos fundadores da origem do universo, bem como sobre a revolução copernicana, suas limitações e implicações; na segunda e terceira parte, “Mundos descobertos” e “O despertar do universo”, o foco são os dados atuais que temos sobre a origem do universo, dos planetas, da matéria e, principalmente, da raridade que é o estabelecimento de um planeta vivo, isto é, onde a vida possa se estabelecer a ponto de gerar consciência e inteligência - Gleiser divide o despertar do universo em 4 fases: a era da física, a era da química, a era da biologia e a era cognitiva; por fim, na quarta parte, “O Universo Consciente”, Gleiser esboça a parte prática de seu manifesto: o que deve mudar em nós, o que podemos e devemos fazer para uma revolução em prol da sacralidade da Terra e da vida perseverar ao copernicanismo. Com a perspicácia que apenas os generalistas (no ótimo sentido da palavra) possuem.
Gleiser honrosamente busca a retomada da sacralidade da Terra e da vida, mas não no sentido estritamente religioso, afinal, o sagrado não advém da religião, mas sim de uma crença que pode muito bem ser agnóstica: a vida é sagrada por sua raridade e impossibilidade probabilística. Imagine um cálculo contendo todas as contingências e acidentes necessários para que chegássemos aqui, seria um cálculo imenso, senão infinito. Um planeta como a Terra não existe, e não está sob o nosso poder determinar isso, o que sim está é a decisão de lidar com as crises que estão se apresentando e alongar o máximo possível a existência deste milagroso (novamente, não-religioso) acidente cósmico que chamamos de vida. Um planeta doente não pode abrigar uma vida saudável, como bem disse o autor.
Lendo esse livro, o que Gleiser prega pareceu casar imensamente com o que ele compartilha de sua vida pessoal – as ultramaratonas nas montanhas são exatamente uma experiência de reconexão profunda com a natureza e sua sacralidade, majestade. Quando a ciência se alia a um propósito nobre como este, todos ganhamos. A ciência precisa parar de ser o cavalinho de pau e fiadora da destruição do nosso planeta e retomar seu rumo natural, aquele que alguns pesquisadores comprometidos ainda ousam traçar, apesar do opressor vento contrário.
“É justamente essa visão do nosso planeta como um mundo ordinário que devemos refutar, restaurando a Terra ao seu lugar essencial no universo. Não por ser o centro do cosmo - o que obviamente não é - mas por ser um oásis para a evolução da vida complexa. Nossa relação com a Terra só irá mudar quando reinterpretarmos a sua história e sua importância dentre os incontáveis mundos que existem.” (pág 55)
Leiam, todos ganhamos meditando sobre os assuntos aqui tratados. As consequências do copernicanismo exacerbado vão muito além do que imaginamos, e infectam inúmeras áreas da nossa vida e do conhecimento.

[G Flores · Rating 2 out of 5]

I almost gave this book three stars, but ultimately, I just don't feel that it earned it. Gleiser is clearly both knowledgeable and passionate, but these virtues do not translate to anything more than a book that at its best is well-meaning and at its worst is painfully naive.

As others have noted, I don't particularly disagree with Gleiser's thesis, nor do I disagree with his reasoning; if anything, I think the one thing above all else that I feel Western society needs to do is find a new unifying credo beyond religion - nature abhors a vacuum and science which requires considerable effort to understand is a poor substitute for religion which demands very little but blind obeisance. I am not steeped in the scientific community, so I can't speak to how prevalent the Copernican principle that we are not special is used to curtail awe and spirituality actually is, but as an outside observer I've never heard anything of the sort, so it feels like "Old man yells at cloud" level whinging.

Gleiser supports his philosophy well enough, but when it comes to actionable suggestions, he does little more than the fictional song in Forgetting Sarah Marshall: "We've gotta do something." Perhaps it might have been best to leave suggestions for bringing about the world he envisions out of the work entirely if he didn't have more concrete solutions to proffer.

Still, if my review feels too harsh, I agree with you. While I stand by all my statements, I still believe that this book has a certain amount of merit as a philosophy to guide humanity's future. I believe that even simply advocating for a secular spirituality is incredibly important. Awe is an important aspect of the human condition and we ignore it at our peril. And yet, it is hard to come away from this book without the feeling that there is a better manifesto to be written that incorporates some of Gleiser's ideas and develops them a bit more fully.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

OK, the gist of this book is that it took fuck all to get this universe up and running, it's bigger than we can possibly imagine, but even in that immensity we are, for all we know, the only creatures out of a magnificent menagerie capable of sussing out how it happened, and commenting on the fact, so we really ought to quite messing around and take care of what we can - and that would be our Mother Earth.

Now, that lack of gravity (no pun intended - oh, yes it was) aside, this book is another in a burgeoning industry of cosmology launched by Max Erhmann's Desiderata. You remember - "You are a child of the universe..., etc." I've read a few in the past year, up until now the most interesting by Thomas Berry who is the spiritual father of the discussions. Mr. Gleiser puts the science and philosophy together in clear, and sometimes poetic prose, without baffling us with blackboard physics, and leads us to the only possible conclusions to the age old "how did we get here, and why," questions. The how is the science and its fascinating history, the why is the secular spirituality of finding our own reasons, a couple of which are to maintain and add to the wonder, and tell the story. Mr. Gleiser, by telling his story, prompts us to discover our own.

A book well worth reading.

[Tracey]

Not sure who the intended audience for this book is but I can tell you that the author maybe thinks that it's everybody? But then he leans in too far in some areas and overdevelops the information and then skims other areas where perhaps more development would have been called for. This is kind of reads like a high school senior's research paper that was written in one night and they copy-pasted a bunch of sources into ChatGPT and told it to sound compassionate about the Earth and marginalized people, but because they forgot to feed it sources from those marginalized people it could only write from the perspective of Western colonizers for the most part. And his "manifesto" sounds like he plagiarized it from Greta Thunberg, but without her thoughtfulness. Not a book I would recommended.

[Terry Cooke-Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book that could be great with more careful editing.

As someone with a long-standing interest in both science and spirituality, I found the author’s primary argument to be utterly convincing. What I found irritating, however, was the frequent repetition of key points, coupled with the feeling of being “preached” to. A tougher editorial stance could have reduced both of these irritants.

Despite this criticism, this was one of the most thought-provoking books I have read for years, from someone who clearly knows what they are writing about.

[Jeffrey Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book set my brain on fire. It has me reimagining how I think of time and if it actually exists. I couldn't sleep the other night I had so many thoughts racing through my head...it's essentially a history of physics/astronomy/biology contrasted with religion (maybe?) In conjunction the way we humans have fought to master all that we can but it left me asking at what cost and what for.

[Kirstin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking start to the year. A manifesto that combines cosmology, astrophysics, Greek philosophy, biology, and spiritualism in a desperate plea for a new type of humanity. I learned a lot about things I thought were undoubtedly true, my inner self stirred and shifted and yet I still wish there was more to be done to save us from global warming.

[Matheus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essencial relembrar da relação entre homem e natureza, não como duas entidades distintas, mas como a inter-relação que de fato é. Somos parte da natureza e sendo a parte consciente do universo, precisamos prezar pela raridade da vida e a raridade do planeta, com todas as suas particularidades que o tornam único. Que nos tornam únicos, cada um de nós. E interdependentes.

[Duncan Swann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than that Avi Loeb book, not quite the same, but basically the antithesis of what Avi thinks. Last chapter (the actual manifesto) was a lot of hand wringing sappiness but the overview of philosophy and science (and where science has gone wrong) was good and humbling.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short and concise book examines life in the universe, both out there and here on earth peppered with scorn history and social commentary.

[anarcho-lesbian · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75, rounding up to 4.

[Roy Kenagy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entanglement with nature

Human-like intelligence is probably very rare in the universe & a reason for taking care.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does the history of our universe tell us about what's important and how we should/could live? This book meanders a bit in trying to answer that question, but it comes together well.

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every human should read this book.

[David Agranoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ideally this a book that would get a wider audience. As an activist and a vegan, I have been working to combat climate change and the holocaust of animals for decades now. I understand the depths of the crisis, I understand the lengths required to get people to care, I mean they say they care but will they act?

Enter Marcelo Gleiser, an award-winning astronomer and physicist who is trying to make the argument that science is an argument for an enlightened treatment of our only planet. There is some interesting history going back to Copernicus that is meant to establish the journey science has taken us on in our understanding of the universe.

So the message which I am not sure should take an entire book is something to say that we need to embrace a new life-centric perspective, one which recognizes just how rare and precious life is and why it should be our mission to preserve and nurture it. As a person who doesn’t eat honey and has been vegan for thirty years, I think our mileage may vary on what is a life-centric perspective. This was a well intentioned book, but I felt like this could’ve been an essay. I was going to say 3/5 stars but the message as such it gets higher marks. 4/5.

[Renata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um encanto de ciência e filosofia!