Beings evolved by natural selection have to be small and short-lived relative to the size of the universe, or they won’t have enough space or time to reach intelligence. How small and short-lived I don’t know, but I can’t see galaxies doing it. Nor planets, which do not reproduce and only barely interact.
Thanks for the thoughtful critique — I think you’re absolutely right that evolution by natural selection, as we know it, relies on mechanisms like reproduction, variation, and interaction happening on relatively fast timescales and small spatial scales. Galaxies and planets don’t seem to fit that model: they don’t reproduce, they rarely interact meaningfully, and they change far too slowly for classic Darwinian evolution to work.
But I realize now that I may have been too loose with my use of “life” or “intelligence” in the original post. What I’m really interested in exploring is this:
Are there forms of structure or information-processing at different scales — even planetary or galactic — that could be analogous to intelligence, adaptation, or life-like behavior, without being literal biological evolution?
We already have some examples that stretch the definition:
So maybe galaxies aren’t evolving minds — but could they still participate in slow, emergent feedback structures we’d recognize as life-like, if we weren’t so bound to human-scale definitions of cognition or change?
I appreciate you pushing me to clarify this — I think the real idea I’m after is whether structure + time + interaction could lead to complex, adaptive dynamics at any scale, even if it doesn’t meet the biological criteria for life or intelligence.
I agree with the part that the scale should not matter. (Except, as Richard said, the age of the universe is the same for everything in it, so the largest structures had relatively not enough time to do anything interesting.)
But I think the atoms and galaxies simply do not have enough internal complexity to do something as interesting as cells or animals. Atoms, because there is little inside. Galaxies, because the things inside them do not interact enough.
I would speculate only for the large scale structures, that galaxies could be somehow sentient or have some kind of "awareness". Look at electromagnetic interactions within the brain. Consciousness is thought to arise from complex electromagnetic interactions within the brain, - which also experiences gravitational effects.
I disagree that, for example, radio galaxies do not have enough complexity. Of course, from our perspective they are not very interesting. They seem to us almost static, inert. I believe we know very few things in astrophysics, maybe the "top of the iceberg". Look only at dark matter and dark energy theories...
To answer the question to pose as a precision in your comment, if there are structures that could be analogous to intelligence, without being literal biological? - The simple answer to that is 'yes'.
What we call 'consciousness' is not a 'neutral' lens - and there is no issue with imagining and understanding that there could be types of 'consciousness' that are shaped by very different processes than our own.
Personally I want to be part of a conscious universe, where there is communication going in all directions, and there is a shared goal and purpose. Though, since the structures might be so different, even reaching the step where they are able to differentiate themselves, and even communicate anywhere close to effectively, won't be easy. Considering how hard it is to understand ourselves, aka the signals from cells, bacteria and viruses, it might not be much easier for, say, the Earth to communicate with us.
Ideas/theories that are similar:
Panpsychism, but an idea/theory that might also fit would be Analytical Idealism.
A theory that explores this in a much more general way, looking at it from the perspective of values and paradigms, would be Spiral Dynamics.
I also don't see anything wrong with going in this direction, as an exploration. Complexity theory and emergence duly point out that there is much more to our reality, even to biology, than meets the eye.
Introduction:
Epistemic status: Speculative and exploratory. This is a thought experiment inspired by complexity theory, emergence, and scale-invariant patterns. I don’t assert these ideas as literal truths, but as lenses to think about life and structure in the universe more broadly.I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we define life — and whether that definition might be far too narrow. We tend to look at life through a biological lens: cells, DNA, evolution, intelligence. But what if life — or life-like processes — are not bound by size, form, or even biology at all?
What if life is the natural outcome of structure emerging from randomness — and this process doesn’t just happen at one particular size or place, but across all scales of space and time? In other words, life might not be a rare event on a single planet, but a kind of universal pattern that shows up everywhere: in atoms, in galaxies, and maybe even in things we don’t have the right senses or timescales to notice.
This post is a thought experiment about that idea. I'd love to hear what others think.
We typically associate life with scale: things that are small enough to be made of cells but large enough to move around, grow, and reproduce. But what if that’s just our window of observation?
Life, as a phenomenon, might not be about size — but about structure. Self-organization. Information processing. Feedback loops. Pattern recognition and reproduction. These processes don’t require brains or carbon — they require the right conditions.
So perhaps:
The important point is: the pattern of life may be scale-invariant. It's not what it's made of — it's how it behaves.
Everything begins in randomness — the jostling of particles, the fluctuation of quantum fields, the chaotic spread of matter in the early universe. But from this randomness, structure keeps emerging. Over and over again.
We see it everywhere:
So why should “life” be any different? Why should it only happen once, in one form, in one place?
What if structure — and by extension, life — is the inevitable result of randomness iterated over time?
And just like there are many levels of structure, maybe there are many levels of life. They just don’t all look like us.
Here’s the part that really started to click for me recently:
It’s not just about space — it’s about time.
We perceive life at our own temporal scale: seconds, minutes, years. But what if:
In this framework:
Just because we can’t interact with something doesn’t mean it isn’t alive — it might just exist outside our perceivable time.
We don’t see cells unless we use a microscope. We don’t feel quantum fluctuations. We don’t perceive tectonic plates shifting because it happens too slowly.
So if there are beings operating at wildly different scales — of both size and time — we might never know. We’re tuned into a very narrow band of the universe's full range.
Maybe what we call "inert matter" is just life on a cosmic timescale. Maybe entire civilizations exist in the flicker of a Planck second. We simply aren’t equipped to notice them — yet.
If life arises from the interplay of randomness and self-organization, then it’s not a fluke — it’s a feature. Not confined to carbon, water, or DNA, but embedded in the logic of the universe.
From particles to people to planets, life-like structures are everywhere. They’re not exceptions — they’re consequences.
I’ve come to believe that life is scale-independent, time-independent, and material-independent. What matters isn’t size, or biology, or even intelligence in the way we define it. What matters is structure. Pattern. Emergence.
Maybe we are a cell in something far larger. Maybe each atom is a galaxy to something far smaller. Maybe life is just the universe expressing itself through self-organizing patterns at every level — and we are one of its ways of being aware.
What do you think?
Is this purely poetic? Or could there be something scientifically real about the idea that life — in some form — exists at all scales of space and time? Have you come across similar thoughts?