The Anomaly that is Man

[Dolorian]

Was having an exchange with someone recently about my de-conversion and among the things he asked was...

What do you make of the strange coincidence that man stands apart from creation, encompassing it and acting as a sub-creator? The idea that man can seemingly explain everything but will never fully explain himself and the bizarre correspondence between reality and his mind? ...what Walker Percy describes as being Lost in the Cosmos?

Aside from there being a bit of an argument from ignorance mixed up in there. Personally, I don't see man as standing apart from "creation" but rather continuous with and fully encompassed by nature. The bizarre correspondence between reality and his mind, I see as being sensibly explained by evolution both as a product of our adaptation to the environment in one sense (our brains accurately interpreting what we perceive) and also as a by product of our more developed brains (our capacity for beliefs, advanced abstraction and concept formation). The same goes for our acting as "sub-creator". Is it an strange coincidence that we are very much the only ones that ended up like this? Sure, but it hardly amounts to anything more than that.

Would be interested in other perspectives on this question.

[Mudhammam]

The only relevant tidbit I have to add, as I agree with your general summary, is this oft-quoted gem from Einstein: "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." Somewhere in there I suppose man holds a privileged position.

[paulpablo]

Was having an exchange with someone recently about my de-conversion and among the things he asked was...

What do you make of the strange coincidence that man stands apart from creation, encompassing it and acting as a sub-creator? The idea that man can seemingly explain everything but will never fully explain himself and the bizarre correspondence between reality and his mind? ...what Walker Percy describes as being Lost in the Cosmos?

Aside from there being a bit of an argument from ignorance mixed up in there. Personally, I don't see man as standing apart from "creation" but rather continuous with and fully encompassed by nature. The bizarre correspondence between reality and his mind, I see as being sensibly explained by evolution both as a product of our adaptation to the environment in one sense (our brains accurately interpreting what we perceive) and also as a by product of our more developed brains (our capacity for beliefs, advanced abstraction and concept formation). The same goes for our acting as "sub-creator". Is it an strange coincidence that we are very much the only ones that ended up like this? Sure, but it hardly amounts to anything more than that.

Would be interested in other perspectives on this question.

We have more intelligence resulting in better and better technology as time moves on.

The question "Is it a coincidence than man stands apart from creation" Straight away assumes two things, that there has been a creation, and that man does stand apart from whatever the creation is.
I would say, look at it from another perspective.
Is it a coincidence that man behaves EXACTLY and precisely how you would expect any other ape to act if over time natural selection resulted in less physical strength and more intelligence and tool using abilities ?

[Anomalocaris]

The only relevant tidbit I have to add, as I agree with your general summary, is this oft-quoted gem from Einstein: "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." Somewhere in there I suppose man holds a privileged position.

Perhaps that shows we don't have a privileged position. If we did, it would be comprehensible that the universe should be comprehensible.

But really, not everything gnomish utterances of Einstein reflect wisdom rather than ignorance or mental fart.

[Jenny A]

Was having an exchange with someone recently about my de-conversion and among the things he asked was...

What do you make of the strange coincidence that man stands apart from creation, encompassing it and acting as a sub-creator? The idea that man can seemingly explain everything but will never fully explain himself and the bizarre correspondence between reality and his mind? ...what Walker Percy describes as being Lost in the Cosmos?

Aside from there being a bit of an argument from ignorance mixed up in there. Personally, I don't see man as standing apart from "creation" but rather continuous with and fully encompassed by nature. The bizarre correspondence between reality and his mind, I see as being sensibly explained by evolution both as a product of our adaptation to the environment in one sense (our brains accurately interpreting what we perceive) and also as a by product of our more developed brains (our capacity for beliefs, advanced abstraction and concept formation). The same goes for our acting as "sub-creator". Is it an strange coincidence that we are very much the only ones that ended up like this? Sure, but it hardly amounts to anything more than that.

Would be interested in other perspectives on this question.

I think the person quoted doesn't know what the word coincidence means. But setting that aside, I think what he or she meant is that humans are singular in that we can explain everything. But that's not right either. We do seek to explain everything, but we sure haven't managed to do it yet.

Religions sometimes purport to have explained everything, but since the explanations have no predictive power, it's obvious they have not. During the Age of Reason people thought they were close to putting together an encyclopedia explaining everything, but it's over 300 years later and the goal looks farther rather than closer.

I'd say the thing that really sets us apart from the rest of the animal world is how busy we are looking trying to nail down just what it is that sets us apart from the animal world. We may indeed be "lost in the cosmos" but I don't think it's a sign of anything other than having a highly developed brain. And there's no particular reason for thinking we are the singular owners of such a brain. It's a big universe.

[Esquilax]

"Unique" is not the same thing as "separate." Everything was once the first of its kind; the fact that we are the first species at this specific level of cognition does not mean we must be magic. It just means that we're the first... or maybe not even that; perhaps just the first that we know of.

And besides, we're not even that unique: all this talk about "sub-creators" seems to ignore that animals create stuff too. Beavers build dams, termites build nests, hell, there are species of birds that decorate. Just because they don't do it to the same level of complexity that we do doesn't mean that they somehow aren't. It's a bizarrely anthropocentric argument.

[Dolorian]

Additionally, I would disagree with the claim that man is "lost in the cosmos", rather I'd say with Bill Nye that man is "in a sense, one of the ways that the cosmos has come to know itself".

[*Deidre*]

Mankind will never ''know'' everything, when it comes to the mysteries of the universe. Why is that so hard for people to accept? Why are we so restless, and we can't just accept that we don't know everything and that it's ok to say...''I don't know.'' (for right now)

Perhaps, we are part of the cosmos. Perhaps not. Perhaps we'll never fully know. There's an odd beauty in not knowing everything.

[Exian]

Is it an strange coincidence that we are very much the only ones that ended up like this?

Technically, it's a single incident (even that's debatable), and it may not be very strange at all. The competitive exclusion principle may explain why humans ended up being the only animals like us.

[Thumpalumpacus]

"We are the Universe, pondering itself." -- Freeman Dyson