Biocosmology: Biology from a cosmological perspective

TL;DR

This paper explores how cosmology and physics intersect with biology, proposing that understanding life in the universe requires combining reductionist and functional explanations due to the universe's non-ergodic nature.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of biocosmology, analyzing how physical laws and cosmological principles influence biological phenomena and the necessity of mixed explanatory approaches.

Findings

The universe containing Earth-like life is radically non-ergodic.

Complete cosmological explanations of biology need both reductionist and functional approaches.

Most possible organisms will never be realized in the universe.

Abstract

The Universe contains everything that exists, including life. And all that exists, including life, obeys universal physical laws. Do those laws then give adequate foundations for a complete explanation of biological phenomena? We discuss whether and how cosmology and physics must be modified to be able to address certain questions which arise at their intersection with biology. We show that a universe that contains life, in the form it has on Earth, is in a certain sense radically non-ergodic, in that the vast majority of possible organisms will never be realized. We argue from this that complete explanations in cosmology require a mixture of reductionist and functional explanations.