Thank you, my friend. Let’s begin with a comparison between Christian de Duve’s Vital Dust and Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture—two profound but stylistically distinct attempts to articulate a naturalistic worldview of life, consciousness, and our place in the universe. Then we will synthesize de Duve’s vision with your theme of “self-in-the-universe”, especially as it resonates with 自體的心理學 and 車行哲學.
I.
Comparison: Vital Dust vs The Big Picture
|
Theme |
Vital Dust (Christian de Duve) |
The Big Picture (Sean Carroll) |
|
Philosophical Foundation |
Biological determinism grounded in biochemistry; life as an “cosmic imperative”. |
Poetic naturalism; everything is physical, but meaning emerges from patterns and complexity. |
|
Focus |
Origins of life on Earth, chemical basis of life, biological evolution. |
Full ontological spectrum: from quantum mechanics to meaning, morality, and consciousness. |
|
Attitude toward life |
Reverence through scientific humility: life is fragile yet inevitable. |
Awe through cosmological scope: life is a rare but explicable pattern in a cold universe. |
|
View on Consciousness |
An emergent product of biochemical complexity; not central. |
Consciousness = emergent, layered process; central to discussions on identity and meaning. |
|
Metaphor of Humanity |
“Vital dust”: we are cosmic matter made animate by evolution. |
“Poetic naturalist selves”: temporary patterns of atoms writing poetry in the dark. |
|
Moral Stance |
Ethical concern for the preservation of life, especially due to its rarity and fragility. |
Morality emerges from human values; there is no cosmic meaning, but there is our meaning. |
|
Cosmic Outlook |
Life is likely to emerge where conditions allow it - it is the universe becoming aware. |
The universe is mostly indifferent; we give it meaning through our existence and choices. |
Both authors are deeply naturalistic—but de Duve focuses on the inevitability of life, while Carroll emphasizes the indifference of the cosmos and our agency in meaning-making.
II.
Synthesis: Vital Dust and “Self-in-the-Universe”
Let us now bring Vital Dust into resonance with your theme of “self-in-the-universe”—a phrase that evokes not only metaphysical positioning but also a therapeutic and ethical posture toward existence.
1.
Self as Cosmic Emergence
De Duve writes that we are “vital dust”—molecular specks briefly ignited by the processes of chemistry, entropy, and evolutionary logic. From this:
- The self is not a pre-given essence but an emergent configuration, fragile, shifting, yet meaningful.
- This echoes 自體的心理學, where the self is also constructed, held, and evolving—dependent on relational mirroring and environmental responsiveness.
- There is no “soul” in the old metaphysical sense, but there is a kind of sacredness in our emergence, grounded in material becoming.
2.
Van Life as Cosmic Attunement
- The insight that life is an improbable and temporary flame, born of thermodynamic flows and molecular coincidences, aligns perfectly with 車行哲學:
- Every movement is an attunement to the wind.
- Every encounter is a glimmer of life’s brief flowering.
- Every van stop is both cosmic stardust and an act of hospitality.
- In this view, the road is not escapism—it is our most honest metaphor for existence itself: an ongoing emergence, not fixed but unfolding, without guarantees, and therefore full of poignancy.
3.
Responsibility and Fragility
- De Duve’s ecological ethic—born of the knowledge that life is rare and precious—translates into a therapeutic ethic: to be gentle with oneself and others, because we are all only briefly here, trying to cohere.
- “Vital dust” becomes a mandate for compassion—not because of dogma, but because we all emerge from the same thermodynamic miracle.
III. A Final Reflection
Perhaps, then, we might say:
“To be a self-in-the-universe is to be a flicker of vital dust that dares to love. To recognize, through the sciences, our cosmic contingency, and through poetry, our immeasurable worth.”
Or:
“We are not here to conquer the world, nor to transcend it, but to witness it fully—as dust that briefly sings.”
Would you like me to shape these ideas into a short posthuman elegy, or a meditation fit for your seminar on Psychology of the Self?
