Disclaimer: I know that many (especially Southie and Queer) are very vocal when it comes to having religiously painted arguments in the Science forum, but I cant help it, because even physicist like Neil Tyson and Lawrence Krauss bring it up in every other debate of theirs.
Anyhoo, Neil Tyson in several of his interviews touched upon the topic that I mentioned in the title of this thread. His answer to this question is a plain and simple NO. His major argument is this.
Humans are made of the same top 5 elements that universe is consist of (except Helium, as Helium is inert in nature, so cant form molecules with any other element). According to him, the fact that humans are made out of the same elements that are abundant in Universe, shows that we are not special. If (he says, and I am paraphrasing) we were made out of some exotic material, only then it would be an acceptable belief that we are special (and result of a grand design, and not result of a random formation aka evolution/beginning of life).
His explanation is logical, but as Aristotle’s saying goes - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Humans are not just 65% Oxygen, 18% carbon etc. Humans have awareness, intelligence, feelings, memories …etc. Unlike a bagful of chemical compound - humans grow, fall sick, and die. Many of these concepts cannot be captured by the simplistic argument that Tyson put forward, or even by the theory of evolution (that does not mean that the theory is wrong, but then its definitely incomplete).
I believe that we are special. I also believe that this specialty is not scarce but is in abundance in this infinite universe.
we are not special in the sense that god created this universe for us and designed us a certain way.
all other animals die, breathe, fall sick, and have some sort of intelligence. language is what is truly rare in us. not even just communication....but our ability to create meaning out of our thoughts.
i dont know what isn't special. a ball of pure hydrogen collapsing under its own mass until it heats up and the heat balances the gravitational pull as long as it lasts. so simpal. so speshal.
Ok we are not special in a way that God created this universe for us, but just the fact that we even ask the question that is the universe created for us, makes us a curious and intelligent being - no? When you look at our closest cousins, Chimpanzees - you will find about 1% difference in DNAs, but look at the difference in the intelligence of a fully grown chimp and a fully grown human. That difference is mind boggling, and 1% of the difference in DNA does not explain the huge difference in intelligence. Dont you think that the difference in intelligence alone is a very special trait, one that science cannot explain?
i dont know what isn't special. a ball of pure hydrogen collapsing under its own mass until it heats up and the heat balances the gravitational pull as long as it lasts. so simpal. so speshal.
yes, but you can write a scientific equation to show that balance. What equation can you write to explain the fact that I love you?
1% difference explains it well pal. it is not 1% of 10 genes, it is about 2 million genes. you can have 99.99% shared DNA with Einstein and still be less competent than a chimp if one crucial gene is missing. every switch matters.
Well it depends on your definition of special. For me limited edition or scarcity or out of ordinary is special. But can we have 7billion of special? So I'd agree with Tyson that we are not special. But his argument that special is derived from krypton or any other exotic matter, I don't agree with that. Throughout history humans have thought they were special, believed in geocentric model, and made sacrifices to please gods; all depiction that everything happening in this universe had something to do with us humans.
Whatever advances we as humans have made, that make us proud and think that we are special have infinitesimally small effect on the grand order of things.
To support my argument consider history of the universe, from 14 billion years ago to today and beyond. Humans have existed for less than a million years, from single cellular organisms that breathed in methane to humongous dinosaurs responsible for depleting oxygen down to 21%, we are just passing nobodies in the big picture. There has been not a single human or race that has changed or at the very least altered any planetary motion or affected the ecological system in the grandness of this universe like the single cell or dinosaur did. One day when human population peaks, we are gonna sustain for a short time and then go extinct like every other specie. A new better one will evolve thinking they are THE SH*T.
For me limited edition or scarcity or out of ordinary is special.
Scarcity is just our perception. Just because we dont know if intelligent life form exists elsewhere or not, does not mean that we are a unique life form. In fact as I implied in my opening post, in an infinite system (our universe i.e), if an occurrence can happen once (creation of intelligent life form on our planet), then it can and will happen infinite times per the theory of probability. Even from the religious pov, it seems pretty pointless to create such a vast space to create one intelligent life form. I mean, just for us, an planet (or a solar system) in an incubated setup would be just fine. There would absolutely no need to have a universe that is 28 billion light years wide.
in an infinite system (our universe i.e), if an occurrence can happen once (creation of intelligent life form on our planet), then it can and will happen infinite times per the theory of probability. There would absolutely no need to have a universe that is 28 billion light years wide.
There is nothing that is infinite in this physical world. The number may be unfathomably large but infinity is just a theoretical concept, universe is indeed 28 billion light years wide not infinite, therefore intelligent life form will also appear a limited number of times. But regardless of this argument, every specie serves its limited purpose alters the habitat in a way that seemed impossible without it and passes paving way for something new(maybe better maybe worse).
So what exactly do you think makes us special, if not scarcity? and assuming we may have extraterrestrial company that by probability and paranoia may be of equal or more intelligence....
By us, I did not mean the humans only. I think that life form all over the universe is special, but more special is the one which has developed consciousness and intelligence.
Your question made me look up the net and kind of surprised that it’s not 28 billion light years, but 28 billion parsecs which is about 93 billion light years. Hola. And yes that is observable universe only. Unobservable part if any, is unaccounted for.