How To Be An Agnostic
by-laws, or state laws, rather than national or federal laws.
And of this pot-pourri of cosmic regions, very few indeed
would be suitable for life.The second result of quantum cosmology that chimes with the
emergence view is the possibility that observers are required to
settle the laws which exist in one particular form or another, in
one particular part of the universe or another. As the ever pro-
vocative Eugene Wigner put it: ‘The very study of the external
world led to the conclusion that the content of the conscious-
ness is an ultimate reality.’ From this, Davies sets up a causal
loop: observers are necessary for the universe, as the universe
does in fact obey laws, even if they vary. In short, the existence
of the universe, the laws of nature and conscious observers are
all interconnected. They emerge together.
Another cosmologist, John Wheeler, called this law without law,
or order from disorder. Of the co-emergence of the universe, law
and observers, he wrote: ‘[The cosmos] has not really happened, it
is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen.’ The
Buddhist astronomer Trinh Xuan Thuan warms to such ideas. He
explains the concept of emergence as the organisation of elemen-
tary particles into ever more complex states, until the building
blocks of life appear, and then life itself – capable of reproducing
itself. ‘This form of organization doesn’t require outside interven-
tion or mysterious forces,’ he continues. ‘Rather, order ‘emerges’
as soon as the complexity reaches a critical threshold.’ In terms
of meaning, Thuan believes this makes sense within a Buddhist
framework that stresses interdependence – which Matthieu Ricard,
in a conversation with Thuan, put like this:
Consciousness fashions reality and reality fashions conscious-
ness, like the blades of two knives sharpening each other.
A proper understanding of interdependence thus implies
transcending the conventional notions of levels of existence
or of dualism between ‘self’ and ‘the world’, or between
‘ conscious’ and ‘inanimate’.