Are We Planetary Sensors?

I had a rather unsettling experience one night when I'd first moved to Atlanta. Sharing an apartment with an old friend, I'd gone out to the pool to have a cup of coffee and contemplate the infinite. As is often the case with meditation, I found myself slipping into a less focused state of mind as I tried to wrap my head around it all.

Somewhere between waking consciousness and a dream state, my perspective suddenly shifted dramatically. No longer thinking through the body of a human sitting on a cheap chaise lounge next to a very average looking pool, I was suddenly the Earth itself, floating in the black void of space. Other planets were no longer little dots in the night sky but rather my siblings, my peers.

Had I actually merged with the consciousness of the planet it might have been a profound experience, but I saw it all through the eyes of a tiny and unimportant human. It felt cold, disorienting, and very lonely. Perhaps the celestial bodies gather in the wee small hours of the night to play poker and gamble on the fates of mere mortals. If so, I had no idea where the party was. I was just floating in space, my only company a bunch of other planets and moons who probably didn't understand English. It was both awe inspiring and uncomfortable at the same time.

Though it felt like the moment lasted forever, I'm sure it was only a few seconds, after which I returned to my normal perspective and quickly reached for my coffee cup. I don't attach too much significance to the event. It was just one of those things that everyone bumps into if you gaze at your naval long enough. I didn't gain any new and exciting insights, and eventually I just finished my coffee and went to bed.

Even so, that night stayed with me in ways that I wouldn't have expected. Looking at things through new eyes tends to offer a fresh perspective, and things observed are often hard to un-see. It certainly wasn't the first time that I'd thought of the Earth as an entity in its own right rather than just a convenient patch of ground for developers to build skyscrapers on, but this was different.

I'm guessing the sensation of actually being Earth instead of just being on it worked its way into my subconscious, as ever since it's been hard to shake the perception of it as a living and sentient being. Not that my little human brain could have an intelligent conversation with a brain the size of a planet, but it does make you think about things in new ways.

At this point my mind starts playing one of its favorite games, “what if?” This may have something to do with my having the emotional maturity of a five year old, those pesky and persistent creatures who respond to every answer with yet another question. The flip side of that coin is an unrestrained imagination. Grownups have to play by the practical rules required of those who want to pay the bills and eat on a regular basis. Five year olds have no such constraints.

What if I looked at the Earth as a living body, larger and different in general composition but with a few conceptual traits in common with our favorite species of land mammals? Sure, there's microscopic life in abundance. However, more complex biological life forms such as a fish, a raccoon or your standard issue human tend to be a collection of smaller subsystems. At least that's how the geek in me sees it. We have lots of individual cells, but they group together to form organs, blood vessels, nerves and other bits of functionality, each specialized to accomplish a specific set of tasks. If the Earth was a body, would it have something like organs?

In reality our biosphere, that thin layer of life on the surface of the planet, is only a tiny part of the whole, roughly the thickness of an apple peel in relation to the apple. That leaves a whole lot of the Earth unaccounted for, but I'll leave that to future generations of geologists. For now we'll just stick to the biosphere. Thin though it may be, it would be easy to look at it as an organ. It is, in fact, the entire collection of life on our planet. I can see that as a group of specific functionality. The biosphere lives. The rocks under our feet do not.

Why would a perfectly respectable planet have an organ whose job was to be alive? Einstein once said something to the effect that “God does not play dice,” meaning he assumed there was an order of some sort behind everything. That would certainly be a useful starting point for exploration. Giving that point of view its moment in the sun, one train of thought to consider would be that there was a purpose of some kind to which a motley collection of biological life could contribute. Naturally, this doesn't satisfy my inner five year old, so I have to dig deeper.

I honestly don't know why cows exist. I live in the country and drive past a herd of them whenever I go to the grocery store, and they're always the same. They just stand there. Sometimes they eat grass. Then they go back to standing there. Occasionally they moo. I just don't get it. And yet, cows are a time honored tradition in the pantheon of land mammals, so there must be some value to them beyond providing a good cheeseburger.

I also don't know if there's such a thing as a cow soul, but maybe there is. Perhaps there's something about the bovine experience that gets integrated back into the biosphere when they go to cow heaven. Could the biosphere be a sensory organ, taking in all those things that a living organism encounters and somehow digesting it into a form that benefits the planet as a whole?

If a cow can make such a contribution, what could a human do? In all of the animal kingdom, we're that one peculiar relative who goes off on adventures and comes back with strange stories and unusual trinkets. Animals, birds and fish seem content to just go on about their business. Eat, survive, reproduce. For whatever reason, that's just not good enough for a bunch of moderately evolved monkeys like us. We explore just to see something new, we seek knowledge for its own sake, we sing and dance even when it makes absolutely no contribution to our ability to eat. Trust me on that last one. I'm a musician.

In many ways, we're not at all different from every other land mammal on the planet. Skin and bones, hair and claws, put us in a police lineup without our fancy clothes and we'd fit right in with the rest of the crowd. And yet, there's clearly something different about humanity. We reach out beyond the constraints of our bodies, projecting images and audio across the world. Our creations become more complex and capable with each new generation. We're even able to leave the planet, both humans and our probes.

If the successful life of a cow is to somehow transmit to the biosphere the wisdom gained from a lifetime of grazing, how much more do we contribute? We have stepped off the surface of the planet, that being of which we are a part, and walked on the surface of the moon. It is only in my lifetime that Earth has been able to take a selfie, seeing itself as a little blue dot in space. Our robotic explorers crawl on the surface of Mars and our technology listens for signals in every wavelength we can think of.

As I ponder the meaning of our species I'm no longer able to do it out of context. Floating in the blackness of space will do that to you. Without a doubt, this is a modern perspective. Go back a few thousand years and humans didn't even perceive a planet. The world was flat, heaven was above, rock below. The stars were mysterious twinkling things that were probably related to the gods.

Nonetheless, I am a product of my times. Not only is the Earth not flat, by now it probably has more satellites in orbit than cars on a busy New York City street. Our tentacles, from the physical nature of space probes to ethereal communications with giant satellite dishes, reach into the rest of the solar system. If I step back from my vantage point as a land mammal and think of the Earth as a whole, it's almost like watching any other biological organism evolve and develop new capabilities.

Why would the Earth want to evolve and reach out to the solar system? Beats me. I still don't understand cows. But whatever the reason, humanity is front and center in the effort. It's been a long time coming, of course, as we were once content to hide in our caves as we stared in fear and wonder at the thunderstorm tearing through the night sky. Nonetheless, we've been on a slow and steady path to becoming ever more complex creatures, in a manner different from all other life in the biosphere. Perhaps there's a reason for it.

Is it possible that our biosphere serves as an organ for the planetary body? Is the evolution of humanity just the slow and inevitable destiny of a species that exists to serve as a planetary sensor, the fingertip of a planet who wants to reach out and explore its environment just as we do? Or am I just barking at the moon?