Introducing: The Wonders of Science

Eric Rasmussen contemplates the flow of color on an orb. “Ever since awareness of self and awe at the miracle of life first burned in the human mind, people have sought to peel back the curtain of reality and unveil answers to their existence.”

The universe made conscious

by Eric Rasmussen

Gaze at images of prehistoric cave art, and chances are you’ll sense a connectedness with our long-gone hominid ancestors, a link of one mind to another across the millennia of space, time, and culture.

Ever since awareness of self and awe at the miracle of life first burned in the human mind, people have sought to peel back the curtain of reality and unveil answers to their existence.

This inner drive for explanations gave rise to origin myth as depicted in the etchings of cave art, and this ability to pass knowledge through generations is considered unique to Homo sapiens.

Generations have lived and died in the great cycle of life, demonstrating that existence is fleeting. But eons of survival as hunter-gatherers and adapting to change served to shape both our unity and our diversity of thought. This cumulative knowledge, once passed along, takes on an immortal quality.

Gaze at images of prehistoric cave art, and chances are you’ll sense a connectedness with our long-gone hominid ancestors, a link of one mind to another across the millennia of space, time, and culture. Photo credit: Christian Science Monitor

It stretches through time and connects us to ourselves, to our ancestors and the cosmos. In this sense, knowledge represents the ultimate human inheritance, the purest form of individual and collective transcendence. The experiences of different cultures—expressed in language, customs, and religions—serve to create understanding, and this in turn creates us.

What a wondrous a product of evolution: We are the universe made conscious.

This column will seek to continue the human inheritance in celebrating scientific knowledge in its exquisite grandeur. We will explore scientific concepts ranging from parasitic wasps smaller than the thickness of a piece of paper to galactic structures stretching trillions of miles. To quote the legendary astronomer Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

Find it here in Stockbridge Community News.

Eric Rasmussen, BS, M.Ed., obtained his bachelor of science degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He majored in ecology and evolutionary biology, minored in physical anthropology and specialized in disease dynamics. Eric now serves as a Learning Technology Coach at Erie High School and Erie Middle School in the St. Vrain Valley School District, CO.