Star Larvae : Nature's Plan for Humankind : Beyond Darwin and Intelligent Design : About & Contact

When that question surfaced in my mind I already had concluded that the sun is burning itself out on our account. The obvious question was, "Why?" And then nature yielded its secret: It is because biological life constitutes the larval phase of the stellar life cycle. We are star larvae.

"Still, it has been a bruising battle. I've devoted most of my working life to Gaia. Most of my research has been self-funded. I could never get a grant. No surprise, though. If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it generally takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around."

— James Lovelock
Salon interview, 8.17.00

That conclusion, formalized as the star larvae hypothesis, might look like it lands out of bounds, violating categorical distinctions as it does between nature's animate and (seemingly) inanimate processes. But this is what new paradigms do. They violate assumptions and reconstitute categories. The redescribe the universe.

In elaborating the hypothesis, I've been grateful for accommodations that the scientific community provides. At every turn it feeds me discoveries that fill in pieces of the puzzle: complex organic chemistry in interstellar space, nuclear catalysis inside stars, neuroplasticity in developing brains, and, in 2010, the publication of "Evolution, the Extended Synthesis." This sourcebook from MIT Press includes papers from experts across various fields of evolutionary research. Their findings not only marginalize natural selection as a causal factor in shaping phenotypes but also unintentionally recast evolution as an instance of development, an implication that challenges the current paradigm.

The star larvae hypothesis introduces a paradigm shift that, in Kuhnian fashion, gathers into a new understanding of nature anomalies that have grown up around normal science. It removes their anomalous qualities. In doing so it also overspills science's usual boundaries. It drags in religion, politics, and philosophy. Anyone interested in interdisciplinary studies perhaps owes it at least some small attention.

Insofar as it includes in its account of evolution an ascendance of terrestrial organisms to a realm in which they enjoy weightlessness and in which they become transfigured, the star larvae hypothesis incorporates religious mythemes. It interprets these as harbingers of future development. Cherubs are another example. Rendered as putti, or flying babies, they portend extraterrestrial phenotypes, which the hypothesis expects to be rendered neotenous by lack of gravity.

"Creative people are occupied not so much with creativity as they are fascinated with an opus."

— James Hillman
The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology

The page on conspiracy theories illustrates some of the hypothesis' political concerns, "conspiracy" being a convenient gloss for the power dynamics that keep the hypothesis’ prescriptions from being filled. The global elites that exploit degenerate political and monetary systems to extract private fortune from public risk, while with the other hand militarizing diplomatic and domestic policies, undermine the project of creative evolution, which is nature's ongoing ontogenetic development, which is the historical instantiation of God's will. Politics on the grandest scale?

The ontogenetic, teleological, aspect of the hypothesis entails that history have a preferred direction and that biology be no special case of metabolic development. It is for historians to sort out whether these and other assertions of the hypothesis deserve to be called true. As a philosophical pragmatist I have no dog in that fight.

If the predictions of the hypothesis come to pass, then the future skeptic will be free to ascribe the fulfilling events to contingencies and coincidences. No one will be compelled to ascribe the events to any kind of teleology that inheres in nature, though the hypothesis proffers such. And if events play out in much the same way predictably across the universe, then that's just how things happen to happen, as directed by directionless physical laws, the skeptic will be free to claim. If outcomes in nature routinely concur with the predictions of the hypothesis in detail, then all one can say is that the hypothesis outperforms its competitors. No settling of accounts is to be had in terms of Truth, beyond agreements regarding best fit to the data. The merits of the hypothesis, from a pragmatic point of view, involve whatever efficacies it provides as a conceptual and practical framework within which to minimize the suffering and maximize the well being of our descendants. Pragmatism tells us that we can pursue such goals perfectly well without debating Truth.

In the meantime, the hypothesis strives to deliver stellar caliber infotainment value.

Stars constitute a genus of organism. The stellar life cycle includes a larval phase. Biological life constitutes the larval phase of the stellar life cycle.

Elaboration: The hypothesis presents a teleological model of nature, in which

Stellar nebulae manufacture bacteria and viruses in their interiors as they cool.
Biology evolves within an ontogenetic program that in its entirety, on- and off-planet, constitutes a generational life cycle of the stellar organism.
Technology plays a necessary role in evolution. It enables biological life to emigrate from planets to weightless space.
Postplanetary life manufactures the protons needed to create, then metamorphoses into, new stars.
A prescient complex of celestial religious motifs expresses humankind’s stellar calling. The star is the human imago.
Nature's metabolism encompasses the organic and the inorganic in a continuum of anabolic and catabolic processes.

The Star Larvae Hypothesis Nature’s Plan for Humankind Part 1. Metabolic Metaphysics

The Star Larvae Hypothesis
Nature’s Plan for Humankind
Part 1. Metabolic Metaphysics