Cosmological Forecast and Its Practical Significance

Cosmology seems extremely remote from everyday human practice and experience. It is usually taken for granted that cosmological data cannot rationally influence our beliefs about the fate of humanity except perhaps in the extremely distant future, when the question of heat death (in an ever-expanding universe) becomes actual. In this note, an attempt is made to show that it may become a practical issue much sooner, if humanity wishes to maximize its creative potential. Newer developments in fields of anthropic self-selection and physical eschatology give solid foundations to such a conclusion. This may open some new (and possibly urgent) issues in areas of future policy making and transhumanist studies generally. The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible. Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1626)