A Cosmological Theory of Knowing Complementing the Scientific Description of Reality

Abstract

Existential cosmology consists of a complementarity between subjective and objective aspects of existence – broadly expressed as mind and brain, or self and world. These appear to be irreducible complements because all our access to the world is via subjective consciousness while we also know that, as biological organisms we depend on our organismic integrity for conscious survival. These are in turn reflected in other complementarities in the physical description of the quantum universe, including continuous and discrete wave and particle aspects, the complementation of bosons and fermions manifesting force and radiation on the one hand and matter on the other, and symmetry-broken manifestations of biology, in the forms of ovum and sperm and female and male organisms. Human emergence has likewise been characterized by two complementary descriptions of reality, reflecting practical survival in the natural world on the one hand, which ultimately leads to science and technology, and the existential dilemma of conscious existence on the other, which ultimately leads to the major world religions and their diverse ethnic counterparts.