The Cosmos Considered as a Moral Institution

Abstract

Science has created a new cosmogony. In ancient origin myths and in pre-modern natural philosophy the cosmos had meaning that was instructive for human morality. Since the nineteenth century, however, these views have been largely considered irrelevant or even detrimental to the scientific quest. In the twentieth century scientists discovered how much older and larger the universe is compared to the age and domain of humanity. We have come to realize that there is a large gap in time and space between the age and size of the universe and human existence. At the same time ethics is tied to the emergence of humans and through it to the evolutionary history of the cosmos. An appreciation of morality as aspect of the cosmos as understood today has to be different from its historic predecessors. First, it has to start from the acknowledgment that humans are part of the universe and the result of evolutionary processes within it. Second, moral principles have to be publicly stateable and capable of being debated in a pluralistic society. Third, the theory of emergent properties provides us with a new understanding of how natural and moral law are related and are tied to the morality of the individual actor. Fourth, how these aspects are stated must allow us to identify when and how things go wrong in a moral sense. These requirements can be fulfilled by starting from a theist viewpoint of the ‘goodness of creation,’ but only if the resulting precepts do not claim a privileged insight into the mind of God. Alternatively, a non-theist version of ‘natural goodness’ can arrive at similar moral conclusions.