In their book The View from the Center of the Universe, Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams discuss humanity’s special moment in the history of the universe. We are living in “the midpoint of time for our solar system” when our sun and planets are about five billion years old. Around six billion years from now, our sun will expand and burn Earth to a crisp.
Our times are special because accelerating expansion is carrying the most distant galaxies away ever faster, and they are disappearing over the cosmic horizon….Our distant descendants, no matter how advanced their telescopes may be, will never be able to see as many galaxies as we can see now. In this sense, our era is the midpoint of cosmic time.
One begins to sense why a creation-centered spirituality is the proper spirituality at this moment in cosmic as well as human history.
Joel and Nancy tell us that today represents a special window of time that can only happen during a relatively brief epoch in the entire history of the universe: late enough that intelligent beings have evolved who have instruments to observe the distant galaxies, but not so late that the galaxies have begun to disappear. Without this period of overlap it might have been impossible for intelligent beings ever to get the chance to figure out the nature of the universe.
How happy, how grateful, how aware are we that our species is living at this special moment in cosmic time? Should this reality not permeate all our education and religion and politics and economics and art and work and worship and ritual? Are we creating a civilization worthy of this moment in cosmic history? Is that a way to give thanks for all this?
Primack and Abrams argue that the size of a human being matters, and we are just the right size. The size of a thing “is not arbitrary but crucial to its nature,” they remind us.
Why does size matter? Because our size is “the only size that conscious beings like us could be.” Smaller creatures would not have enough atoms to be sufficiently complex, while larger ones would suffer from slow communication. Humans are “at the center of all the possible sizes in the universe.” Human beings are midway between the size of a living cell and the size of Earth.
Primack and Abrams talk about the “Goldilocks Principle”:
Creatures much smaller than we are could not have sufficient complexity for our kind of intelligence, because they would not be made of a large enough number of atoms. But the intelligent creatures could not be much larger than we are, either, because the speed of nerve impulses—and ultimately the speed of light—becomes a serious internal limitation. We are just the right size.
How does that feel—to be just the right size to be intelligent creatures seeking out the questions of where we come from and where we are, and what the universe is?
Contrary to such pessimistic theologians as John Calvin and scientists such as Bertrand Russell and Stephen Jay Gould, Primack and Abrams conclude that humans are significant to the universe. We are special. Special for our size, for our intelligence and creativity, for the time in which we live in this solar system at this moment of the universe’s expansion over its 14 billion-year history.
By the “interplay of the complexity of our brains and the age of the universe,” and in ways that modern cosmology never could have known, we can now say that “humans are at the center of the universe.”
Banner Image: “Pale Blue Dot” – photographed by Voyager from about 3.7 billion miles, Earth appears as the bluish-white speck roughly halfway down the thin brown band to the right. Wikipedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
How does the playing out of the “Goldilocks principle”—this is too small, this is too large, this is just right—affect your understanding of relating to the whole? To creation itself? How deeply and often do we recognize and remember and celebrate the original blessing of the universe and creation and how it holds and nurtures our existence and our gratitude for existence?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 10-18
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
5 thoughts on “More Gifts From Science that Awaken Awe & Gratitude & Expand the Soul”
The more I awaken the more I discover the marvel and divinity of all things. Nothing is by chance; all is held in perfection by “God”. One might even say, despite perceptions otherwise, that we exist within a Creation of God, by God, for God. February 20, 2026 brought a planetary alignment not seen in 9000 years. It is affecting everything just as it did nine thousand years when we shifted from hunter-gatherers to the development of agriculture. Once again, cosmic forces are directing humanity to change and evolve. It is all Divine Movement and we are all a part of it.
I love the whale story!! Yes, the universe is overwhelmingly, crushingly awesome. But for me, what moves me to tears are the other astonishing, beautiful creatures on this planet who are our brothers and sisters in creation. Wow. I hope that whale is safe, God bless him and that lovely scientist. The fact is that whale has a better moral compass and is far more spiritual than a large percentage of humans. A whale saves a human, and humans slaughter whales. Think about it. Who’s more evolved in wisdom?
I am truly and humbly grateful for the Uniqueness of All ongoing Beautiful Creation, including my own Eternal Soul, and Our Loving Diverse Oneness by Our Loving Source Co-Creator in the Sacred Process/Divine Flow of the Eternal Present Moment….
One could wish that earlier theologians understood that humans stood at the center of the universe in a uniquely time/distance-managing-communication manner, but not at the ‘pinnacle’ of the center. Alas, our hubris has overcome our uniqueness. May we find our humility in the current dissolution of empire currently transpiring in D.C. Blessed be, and so it is.
Aquinas wrote (I think) that the universe is the greatest thing ever created. From it humans evolved. The laws of creation/nature govern people no less than oceans. People have a role in this sphere, to tend it and keep it healthy for the sake of cosmic justice, order and flourishing (peace). Possibly in other spheres similar beings or different beings have similar or different roles to play. Our countless questions about reality can and will be answered when the “new” heaven and earth come to be, and we will understand because we will be evolved in the Universal Christ’s likeness. At our present stage of providential development (evolution) both humility and desire with love for our fellow creatures keep us in creative tension from which art, beauty, progress and wisdom are born.