Understanding The Universal Story in Yuri Milner’s Eureka Manifesto
In Yuri Milner’s short book Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilization, he proposes a plan to help humanity embrace its mission of investigating the Universe. A major part of this plan is to educate children on the Universal Story, especially through artistic mediums. This way, children will, later in life, have fundamental knowledge that they then can build on in their education and careers. But what is the Universal Story, and why is it so important?
Understanding The Universal Story
In Eureka Manifesto, Yuri Milner describes the Universal Story as the story of everything we know about the cosmos. We can imagine our world and the wider Universe, from Tokyo to Jupiter. There are a billion trillion suns out there for us to imagine. However, there is so much more than this waiting to be uncovered.
These parts of the Universe, both known and unknown, have been forming for billions of years in a series of “phase transitions.” Milner thinks of these transitions as story beats. Each represents a critical change of state that has led us to where we are now.
The Universe’s First Phase Transitions
Milner makes phase transitions easy to understand in Eureka Manifesto, explaining that the first phase transition played out when matter cooled enough to form atoms and free light to flow through space. The Universe became visible, although nobody was around to see it.
Next, gas pooled in wells of gravity, “whirling into the forms of galaxies and stars.” When these stars burnt out and exploded, they filled the Universe with complex elements like carbon, iron, nitrogen, and oxygen. Elements that are essential to life.
Nine billion years later, one cloud of gas — “enriched with… embers of dead stars” — swirled into our Sun. The debris formed planets. Magma became rock. Steam became water. And a phase transition on the third planet, Earth, began.
On this planet, spiral-shaped ribbons of molecules sealed within bubbles began to copy themselves. These cells moved through the environment and reacted to the surrounding conditions. They existed for over a billion years before the next phase of transition.
In this transition, one cell moved inside another, joining forces and creating complex life. Colonies of cells came together, forming sensory organs and nervous systems, each belonging to the Universe’s first organisms.
As time moved on, another phase transition followed. Intelligent animals created communication methods that expanded well beyond the individual brain. They shared knowledge not only between themselves but across generations and time too.
Humanity Paints a Richer Image of the World Than Ever Before
Milner reminds readers that humans have since accelerated this pooling of knowledge through language and writing. We now paint a richer image of the world than ever on Earth. The mind has formed from matter, but there is still much growth potential.
Despite our progress, we are still in the dark. We don’t fully understand the nature of the Universe, the origins of life, and why our species exists. As Milner explains, “Our brains are modern, but our understanding is still primitive.”
The Scientific Revolution has got us off to a good start on our mission. Scientific and mathematical discoveries have “cross-pollinated” with concepts in fields like literature, philosophy, art, music, and architecture. As such, there are plenty of ways to explore possibilities in the Universe and get inspired.
This blend of concepts opened the door to another phase transition; one where scientists like Galileo could build competing models. These scientists could “compare [the models], critique them, and test them on the world,” Milner explains. They could move forward with the models that worked, using them to develop new technologies.
Milner asserts that having barely scraped the surface of the Universe, we now need to continue this work. “We are the Universe waking up… after a fourteen-billion-year sleep,” he writes. As we continue our work, we can unfold the Universe’s past and future.
Humanity may or may not have been specifically chosen for this mission. Either way, we have found ourselves in a strong position to embrace it in the “dance of chance and time.” Milner believes the Universe has not just given us existence. It has given us a message, encoded in all of our cells, to explore and understand our surroundings as far as we can.
Yuri Milner’s Ventures Supporting Eureka Manifesto
To get us started on the next wave of this mission, Milner has created a series of ventures that help us examine and understand the Universe. In 2012, he signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate sizable funds to scientific fields through his ventures. These include the science award the Breakthrough Prize, the space science programmes the Breakthrough Initiatives, and the international science competition the Breakthrough Junior Challenge.
Read Yuri Milner’s Eureka Manifesto to learn more about the mission for our civilisation.