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A recent reformulation of the second law of thermodynamics in terms of the "maximum entropy production principle" allows a novel view of cosmic evolution. The Earth is but one of many "white holes' of the Cosmos, in which life arises as a specific arrangement for fast dissipation of energy gradients by generating self-organized structures. The structures function in their environment as subjects: the energy gradients are used to build up epistemic gradients that enable the subjects to mirror some properties of the environment. Biological evolution is a creative process of increasing complexity as a Bayesian ratchet of knowledge accumulation, advancing in an evolutionary maze with a myriad of blind alleys and continuously placing the newly emerged subjects ever farther from equilibrium with their environment. Creation, as pictured by traditional religions, is in reverse: In the beginning matter, dull, fumbling by trial and error, no superior intelligence in order to create life and human culture. From the primordial Chaos, from the Cosmic Emptiness, continual creation: metaphorically, God slowly and steadily arising, enriching matter with form, consciousness, and mind. The attractor of the cosmic evolutionary advancement is the Epistemic Singularity, a point at which two variables of the dynamics, the knowledge embodied in the ultimately emerged subject, and the thermodynamic distance between the final subject and its environment, converge to infinity. At the Epistemic Singularity, the Cosmos, facing the ultimate knowledge faithfully mirrored by the subject, recognizes oneself. However, at the very same time point, all the energy gradients in the universe become exhausted, the evolutionary dynamics comes to a halt, and cosmic thermodynamic equilibrium, the state of universal indifference, sets in. Accordingly, the self-recognition of the Cosmos occurs for an infinitesimally short time and then vanishes. What is the meaning of this cosmic drama? We, human observers, do not know, we are just actors caught in the middle of the piece.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-20660-8_1

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