The Auto-Cosmology of Brian Swimme

What are the implications of the story of the universe for education in the 21st century?

This is a big, big question, and it will take me several posts to work my way through it.

In this first approach, I focus just on cosmologist Briane Swimme’s new book Cosmogenesis, which he calls an “auto-cosmology”—I believe it’s the founding instance of this new genre of memoir!  

Cosmogenesis is both an intellectual autobiography and a spiritual memoir, a record of Swimme’s early years in academia and how his unconventional questions and intuitions led him to give up his tenure-track position and move, with his young family, to the other side of the US continent to study with Father Thomas Berry.

The rest is history, as they say—one opens this book already knowing that Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry would collaborate on retelling “the story of the universe” in a boldly original vision that marries spiritual and scientific wisdom, seeing human beings as integral members of the Earth Community, which is itself, as Gaia, an integral member of the Cosmic Community.

I found Swimme’s humility very moving, as he tells his remarkable personal story of awakening to his own place in the grand cosmogenetic story of the universe. His auto-cosmology centers relationship—with self and with others—as the key driver of human experience.

As Swimme recounts his adventures as a brilliant young mathematician stepping away from the beaten path of using his skills for the benefit of industry or commerce, he bows to his wife, Denise, and his teacher, Thomas, as the powerful “attractors” who gave him the courage and the permission to give his heart and soul to this seemingly risky, unknown path.

It is, in fact, risky to pledge oneself to the service of Gaia, rather than obediently donning the harness of capitalism, and accepting its rewards. Swimme recounts how he had an opportunity to put his mathematical skills to work for Boeing, which would have guaranteed him a handsome, secure salary, a beautiful house on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and the prospect of early retirement in his 50s.

Instead, he listened to the “still, small voice within” that urged him to look more deeply into the mysteries of quantum and astrophysics, and to keep questioning how human beings fit into the larger story of the unfolding universe.

In Thomas Berry he found a mentor and guide, who had already spent a lifetime exploring cultural history, philosophy, theology and the history of science, and pondering the place of the human being in this moment of Gaian transition. Berry was one of the first Christians to sound the alarm on the environmental crisis, calling on human beings to awaken to our power as the only species able to use our intelligence and our imagination to shift how the story of the 14-billion-year developing universe would unfold on Earth.

Despite the best efforts of many people, things have only gotten worse in the years since Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry worked together to interweave the stories of Spirit and Science. Science remains the servant of industry, and Spirit is too often either institutionalized beyond recognition in religions or invoked as a means to self-improvement.

Brian Swimme’s Cosmogenesis ends with a stirring call for humans to “establish a time-developmental imagination,” by which he means to “experience our existence as taking place within the whole, complex, intelligent, living universe.”

Of course, as a purposeful memoirist it delights me that Swimme calls for us to recognize our place in the universe story through parsing our memories, looking for “a common experience of who we are and of how we are to live together in this fourteen-billion-year enterprise.”

This is akin to what I proposed in my own purposeful memoir and subsequent writers’ guides, “aligning the personal, political and planetary” in one’s life story—but it goes even further, out into the cosmos from which all physical aspects of our existence came.

Here is Swimme’s list of “candidates for inclusion in a core set of experiences in a time-developmental universe,” lightly excerpted:

·      We humans come forth from the universe the ways acorns come forth from the oak tree….A form of cosmological intelligence drew star dust together and laid down pathways to human intelligence….

·      Rooted in the birth of the universe, humans are cosmic persons drawn toward the future by their fascinations….In the first instants of the universe’s existence, the unborn stars were calling to the protons and electrons through gravitational attraction. That is what we feel too. The unborn future calls to us in our experience of fascination. Fascination is how the future speaks. Awakening to, and pursuing, our deepest fascinations is to participate in the joyful difficulty of creating the future.

·      The universe rests on relationships….The first elementary particles…deepened their relationships and gave birth to a trillion galaxies….Tiny, tiny individual cells deepened their relationships, united, evolved through time, then flew through the moonless night as great horned owls….

·      The universe offers an endless source of energy for our challenge of becoming cosmological beings….Though floating in space on a tiny planet, we are also the universe as a whole that has achieved its self-awareness….

--Cosmogenesis, pp 313-315

How can becoming aware of these “core experiences” deepen our educational practices and create the conditions for better human relationships with each other and with the physical world in which we are embedded?

How could a Cosmogenetic education help us thrive as individuals and as a unified Earth Community?

I will continue this exploration in my next post. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts!

Southern Ring Nebula, James Webb Space Telescope image.