Excerpt
The Calm Before the Storm
A great many internal and external portents (political and social upheaval, moral and
religious unease) have caused us all to feel, more or less confusedly, that something
tremendous is at present taking place in the world. But what is it?
-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg once ended a book on this note: "The more the
universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." Far be it from me
to argue with a great physicist about how depressing physics is. For all I know,
Weinberg's realm of expertise, the realm of inanimate matter, really does offer no
evidence of higher purpose. But when we move into the realm of animate matter
bacteria, cellular slime molds, and, most notably, human beings the situation
strikes me as different. The more closely we examine the drift of biological
evolution and, esp ... read full excerpt from Nonzero ebook