Nansen's Philosophy

Starfarers, 9.

The voyage of Envoy begins. 

Nansen quotes Borges who appears as an emulated (consciously simulated) literary and historical figure in Poul Anderson's Harvest The Fire.  

The Milky Way is described as "...the cold galactic river." (p. 74)

Nansen says:

"'I am a philosophical realist.'" (ibid.)

The context implies that, by "realism," he means the philosophical view that reality is independent of human consciousness. I agree and would add that it is independent of any consciousness.

Nansen:

"'It doesn't seem reasonable to me that [this material universe] so superbly organized, its law reaching down beneath the atom, out beyond the quasars, through all of time, that it should throw up something as rich as life and intelligence by chance.'" (p. 75)

But it does not happen just by chance! Physical laws explain how a simple cosmos became complex. Energized, complex molecules changed randomly until one became self-replicating. Then natural selection operated. Naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation. Central nervous systems reorganized immediate sensations into perceptions of discrete objects - the transformation from feeling hot to seeing a source of heat. Opposable thumbs, developed for grasping, can be used to write poetry, fiction and philosophy and to play musical instruments. Why should laws not apply to atoms and quasars through all of time? Limited lawfulness would be more complicated.

Nansen continues:

"'I think that reality must be better integrated than that, and we are somehow as much a part of it and its course as the galaxies are.'" (ibid.)

But reality is integrated and we are as much a part of it as the galaxies. We and they are transient.