Why do we explore space and the universe? Perhaps the answer to this complicated both theological and scientific question can be found in the words offered by a poet.
T.S. Elliot in his work entitled Little Gidding (1942) wrote:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1948 “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry”. He probably did not have space exploration in mind in 1942. His sentiment, however, poetically captures one of the most important reasons we explore space.
Little Gidding is the fourth and final poem of Eliot’s “Four Quartets”. Four Quartets is series of four poems by Eliot, published individually from 1936 to 1942. The book form compilation is considered Eliot’s masterpiece. Each of the quartets has five “movements.” Each is titled by a place name as follows.
Burnt Norton (1936), East Coker (1940), The Dry, Salvages (1941), Little Gidding” (1942).
Little Gidding is a series of poems that discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. It focuses on the unity of past, present, and future. It claims that understanding this unity is necessary for salvation.1
Little Gidding refers to 
a small Anglican community in Little Gidding of Huntingdonshire, England. It was first established by Nicholas Ferrar in the 17th century.
According to Elliot, humanity’s flawed understanding of life and turning away from God leads to a cycle of warfare. This, however, can be overcome by recognizing the lessons of the past.
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, of an old New England family.
Eliot was first educated at Harvard University. He did graduate work in philosophy at the Sorbonne College, Harvard, and Merton College, Oxford.
Eliot settled in England, where he was for a time a schoolmaster and a bank clerk. He eventually became the literary editor for the publishing house Faber & Faber. Eliot later became their director.
Eliot founded and edited the exclusive and influential literary journal Criterion (1922-1939). In 1927 he became a British citizen and about the same time entered the Anglican Church.
Eliot’s insights into the cyclical nature of life are expressed through themes and images creatively woven throughout the Four Quartet poems. The work addresses connections and the very nature of the human experience. It is considered Eliot’s clearest exposition of his Christian beliefs.2
NASA’s exploration of the universe reveals humanity’s place in nature in the broadest possible sense. That view of ourselves has changed dramatically over the centuries.
The ancients thought the earth was the center of the cosmos. Everything out there revolved around our earth.
Then we figured out that our known universe, our solar system, revolves around our sun. After that, we came to believe that our solar system is part of a galaxy (Milky Way), which we believed to revolve around our solar system. Then that understanding changed again based on new discoveries.
One hundred years ago, most astronomers considered the universe to be about 3600 light years in extent, less than a billion years old, and with our solar system near its center.
This is an incredible historic repetition of thought process with respect to our need to think it all revolves around us at some level. It is the height of arrogance. Today science now believes that this is not the case.
Astronomers today have seen objects 13 billion light years away in a universe 13.7 billion years old containing hundreds of billions of galaxies.
Nothing has been more revolutionary than the idea that the entire universe is in a state of constant and random evolution. This chronology of the life of the universe, and our place within it, is known as cosmic evolution.
Cosmic evolution is the study of the many varied developmental and generational changes in the universe. Changes in the assembly and composition of radiation, matter, and life throughout all space and across all time.
These changes have produced our galaxy, our sun, our earth, and us. The result is a grand evolutionary synthesis bridging a wide variety of scientific specialties. It is a genuine narrative of epic proportions extending from the very beginning of time to the present, from the Big Bang to the birth humankind. 3
The cosmic evolutionary story has evoked a wide range of responses in the Christian religious domain. Its cosmic narrative of growth and change, its apparent fine-tuning for living beings, and possibilities for abundant life. These things raise long-standing religious questions of Divine Creation.
On the one hand, cosmic evolution has clearly presented a deep challenge for some conservative Christians.
The apparent absence of a divine creator is not consistent with the literal readings of Genesis.
This perceived conflict mobilized some creationists into political action in the arena of public education. This is a cause more recently and aggressively pursued by the Intelligent Design movement.
On the other hand, many in the religious community view cosmic evolution as compatible with belief in a God. God who created it all and still acts in the universe. They hold positions which range from the more conservative “progressive creationism” to the more liberal “theistic evolution”.
Most mainstream and liberal theologians and laypersons, fall into the latter category. Typically, they endeavor to explore common ground with science by examining traditional religious concepts of divine action. The concepts of natural theology, design, cosmic purpose and God’s relation to the world in the light of the new cosmology. [4]
The cosmic evolution idea has roots in the 19th century. It was occasionally invoked in the first half of the 20th century by astronomers such as George Ellery Hale. It really came into its own only in the modern Space Age.
In 1958, in his classic book Of Stars and Men, Harvard College Observatory Director Harlow Shapley wrote that the Earth is “on the outer fringe of one galaxy in a universe of millions of galaxies. Man becomes peripheral among the billions of stars in his own Milky Way. According to the revelations of paleontology and geochemistry he is also exposed as a recent, and perhaps an ephemeral manifestation in the unrolling of cosmic time.“
In his 1967 essays Beyond the Observatory, Shapley wrote, “Nothing seems to be more important philosophically than the revelation that the evolutionary drive, which has in recent years swept over the whole field of biology, also includes in its sweep the evolution of galaxies and stars, and comets and atoms, and indeed all things material.”
Cosmic evolution has become the guiding principle for modern astronomy. The science programs of the world’s space agencies may be seen as filling in the details in this story of the history of the universe.
The very idea was spread during the 1970s and 1980s by NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program. It was also spread by NASA’s broader Astro biological seek and find efforts.
For the last decade, NASA’s Origins program has had cosmic evolution as its focus. When the program began in 1996, it was viewed as “Following a 15-billion-year long chain of events.” A chain that begins with the Big Bang and travels through the mysterious formation of all of the elements and energy that cradles life on Earth.”
Cosmic evolution has several possible outcomes. Its endpoint may be planets, stars and galaxies. We observe these and know they exist, and the result is what we might call the “physical universe,” magnificent in and of itself.
Alternately, cosmic evolution may result in a profusion of life, either microbial or intelligent, throughout the universe. This outcome, the Holy Grail of SETI and astrobiology programs around the world, would constitute a “biological universe.”
A third possible outcome, rarely discussed, is a universe in which cultural evolution is taken into account.
If intelligent life is millions or billions of years old, then cultural evolution may have resulted in a “post-biological universe.” A universe in which flesh and blood intelligence has been superseded by artificial intelligence (IA). We can see that happening here on earth today. It is dangerous territory, and we must proceed with great wisdom and caution with IA development.
Carnegie Mellon AI pioneer Hans Moravec has famously postulated a post-biological earth in the next few generations. Given the time scales of the universe, it seems much more likely to have already happened in outer space.
All of these outcomes have implications for our human destiny. It may be our destiny to populate the universe, or to interact with its flesh-and-blood intelligence in many forms. In the post-biological universe, we may have to interact with IA.
There are more immediate implications as well. Sir Arthur Peacocke, a British biochemist and Anglican priest, has called cosmic evolution “Genesis for the Third Millennium.” He suggested that it must be incorporated into religious doctrines.
Reverend Michael Dowd has taken that sentiment to heart in a DVD called “Evolutionary Christianity.” In it he incorporates “the entire history of the universe and the emergent complexity of matter, life, consciousness, culture and technology.”
Space programs can get bogged down in technical details, politics, theological concerns, and funding controversies. We should not lose sight of the longer-term implications. Although its practical benefits are many, space exploration has no higher calling than this search for our place in the universe. [5]
In both space and time, the study of cosmic evolution allows us to see the universe as it really is, to reflect on our place in it, and to “know the place for the first time.” At the end of the day, this is what we seek and why we explore the universe.
[1] Wikipedia, Little Gidding Poem.
[2] Britannica, Four Quartets
[3] Cosmic Evolution, State of the Science, Eric J. Chaisson, 2009
[4] Omnilogos, Cosmic Evolution: Christian Perspectives, Kate Grayson Boisvert, Greenwood Press, 2008
[5] NASA, Beyond Earth, Expanding Human Presence into the Solar System, July 21, 2005, Steven J. Dick- NASA Chief Historian
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