The chase is better than the catch

 Credit: bladerunner8u

Originally posted on July 12, 2021. 

Some stray reflections in the middle of a long hot summer...

It just struck me that the cyclical worldview would, in a sense, "prove" materialism or naturalism. It´s therefore quite ironic that the materialists don´t believe in cyclical history, preferring instead a more linear view, with humans (the only intelligent species) emerging quite late...and then on to the stars. The point, presumably, is that this strongly suggests that humanity is the result of a blind fluke. However, it also sounds an awful lot like teleology! 

A cyclical worldview, in which intelligent species appear, disappear and reappear, wouldn´t be what modern materialism expects to find, since it suggests that intelligence is part of the deep structures of the universe. However, it would be *more* compatible than linear crypto-progressive evolution with the denial of teleology. In such a cyclical world, intelligence doesn´t look like a mysterious and very meaningful insertion from without (in other words, dualism and theism), but like just another property of the cosmos, a cosmos that is fundamentally meaningless, with "intelligence" pointing nowhere. 

Science would have to become panpsychist to adopt such a perspective, but they could keep the rest - the denial of teleology, of any deeper meaning to existence, and so on. So why haven´t science made this? "Because that´s not where the evidence is pointing". Maybe. Or maybe scientists secretly want evolution to be progressive and teleological, with Homo deus as the endpoint...

Does anyone *really* think scientists take any of that crap about humans just being a bunch of robotic gene complexes, no better than cyanobacteria, seriously? LOL.

Instead, the cyclical scenario is associated with the alternative milieu, where it is part of a worldview often based on spirituality, meaningfulness and even teleology (!). But what would actually happen if somebody finds Atlantis? Nothing much, spiritually speaking, since "Atlantis" would just be another ruin submerged under the Irish Sea. Soon, the alternative crowd would get sick and tired of it, and start chasing after something else. Lemuria, perhaps. Or the man in the Moon. I sometimes suspect that for many of these people, the chase is better than the catch. Am I just wrong, or has the interest in UFOs actually *gone down* after `Oumuamua and the recent USAF disclosure? Mysteries on the verge of getting solved just aren´t that exciting... 

Personally, I´m not sure whether the cosmos is cyclical or contingent. Maybe it´s both? However, this is true only on the "horizontal" plane. On the "vertical" plane...well, that´s another story!