To reiterate:
aspects exist within minds;
minds and aspects exist within nodes;
nodes exist within the galactic brain;
organic brains and the galactic brain exist within the universe.
What will happen next?
The galaxy must have developed, or at least be developing, self-consciousness. Otherwise, it would not be described as having a brain. In fact:
"...the nodes were in continuous communication over the light-years, communication on tremendous bandwiths of every possible medium. This was the galactic brain. That unity, that selfhood that was slowly coalescing, might spend millions of years contemplating a thought; but the thought would be as vast as the thinker, in whose sight an eon was as a day and a day was as an eon.
"Already now, in its nascence, it affected the course of the universe."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, I, p. 103)
We are not told how one galaxy affects the universe.
Far from being absorbed into a single self, the nodes, or individual inorganic intelligences, are more unique than is possible for organisms:
chaos and quantum fluctuation prevent complete resemblance;
environment shapes personality;
environments are diverse and not just planetary surfaces;
each node can divide into multiple bodies and minds.
Something else is happening:
"The stars were also evolving." (Part One, IX, p. 97)
We are not told how. And:
"'If awareness is to survive the mortality of the stars, it must make the universe over. That work of billions or trillions of years will begin with some small, experimental undertaking.'" (Part Two, I, pp. 107-108.
Like maybe saving post-human Terrestrial life from extinction?
Also:
"Gaia lacked both the data and the capability necessary to model the entire universe, or even the entire Earth. Likewise did any other node, and the galactic brain. Powers of that order lay immensely far in the future, if they would ever be realized." (Part Two, V, p. 145)
So which will come first: modeling the universe or surviving it?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
To answer the question at the end of your piece here about whether it would be possible for any kind of inorganic brain to "model" the entire universe: the answer Anderson seems to favor is "perhaps not." Note that "...IF [my caps] they would ever be realized." I sense some doubt or skepticism on Anderson's part!
Sean
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