The Psychology of the Cosmos

Source: DALL-E/OpenAI

My dad is a chemist and physicist. I’m a psychologist. Over the years, our conversations have inspired me to think about the cosmos and consciousness. I’ve concluded the mind is a manifestation of the universe—not separate from it. As Carl Sagan said, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars.” The brain is no different: it’s made of star stuff.

Interestingly, Nietzsche made this point about “the will to power.” He said the search for power extends beyond a psychological phenomenon to the cosmos itself—that the entire universe is driven by the will to power. The mind was generated out of nature, the universe, and the cosmos, and it follows the same dynamics found everywhere else. Wherever you look, on Earth, in the stars, in the galaxies, inside the mind, you will find the will to power.

I agree with Nietzsche regarding the relationship between the cosmos and consciousness. Our psychology is in a universe predisposed to the emergence of conscious life, capable of marveling at its own existence. In line, the anthropic principle observes how the laws and constants of the universe are perfectly calibrated and so remarkably precise that consciousness is not just feasible—it’s an inevitable cosmic outcome. Our psychology emerges not as a serendipitous anomaly but as a mirror to the universe that gave rise to it.

So, what is this psychology that the universe made? Psychology has found four high-level dimensions of mental life: harmony, power, chaos, and order. See Slalom Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Values, Quinn’s Competing Values Framework, Hogan’s Motives Values and Preferences Inventory, and many other taxonomies. All these frameworks, through empirical research, statistically break down to four principles that are also found in the broader universe.

Harmony

Harmonic principles guide nature's fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces. They’re perfectly balanced to sustain life, often referred to by physicists as the “fine-tuning” of the universe. For instance, if gravity were slightly stronger or weaker, planetary formations would be drastically different, and life wouldn’t exist. If nuclear force were slightly weaker, hydrogen would be the only stable element in the periodic table—no oxygen for us to breathe or water to drink. But the universe as we know it is just right for oxygen to form in the cores of stars, making life possible on Earth.

In organizations, harmony is unity, cohesiveness, and cooperation. This is also our internal search for inner peace. It is the equilibrium between different elements of life, whereby they complement each other rather than conflict. It’s not going too far in one direction. In relationships, harmony is essential for healthy interactions, and it involves things like empathy, sensitive communication, navigating differences, and mutual respect. It is the peaceful coexistence of diverse groups and balance between individual freedoms and commitment to collective responsibilities. It is a healthy organizational culture.

Power

Power is the capacity to influence and transform. Celestial bodies demonstrate this through gravity. The sun’s pull keeps planets in orbit, while a black hole’s immense gravitational pull can significantly impact nearby stars. The natural tendency of the universe to expand can be seen as a physical manifestation of power, as it exerts itself over the nothingness, filling it with matter and energy. In this way, the cosmos is not static but in a constant state of progress—at an increasing pace.

In organizations, power is in the sublime and, as Nietzsche said, striving for excellence. The sublime is encountered when we marvel at something immensely powerful, which can be physical, mental, moral, metaphysical, spiritual, or aesthetic, and is beyond our capacity to comprehend. People can experience this in organizations when there’s a bold, meaningful vision and exceptional leader who stands for something with awe-inspiring moral courage. The sublime is also about confronting challenges that seem insurmountable but still striving against them with a deep sense of agency and passion. It is to be empowered and have rights, to possess autonomy and the ability to galvanize action, overcome, and achieve.

Chaos

The laws of thermodynamics contribute to cosmic unpredictability. The second law of thermodynamics, which posits that the disorder of an isolated system increases over time, suggests chaotic progression at the cosmic scale. Chaos is the default state of the universe. This natural drift toward disorder not only fuels the formation of complex cosmic structures but ensures that the universe is in constant transformation.

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In organizations, just as cosmic chaos leads to the creation of new stars and galaxies, personal chaos can be a catalyst for transformation. Learning something new often means that something wasn’t just added, but an old idea has died. The person has become something new, like the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. And we’ve all heard how stretching outside our comfort zone, into chaos and unpredictability, is how self-transformation happens.

Relatedly, the connection between chaos and creativity is well-recognized. Divergent thinking can lead to new discoveries in organizations, much like chaotic cosmic events lead to new forms of celestial phenomena. Artists speak of embracing chaos in their creative process, allowing ideation without the constraints of order, to generate original works of art. In business, it’s embracing chaos to catalyze original ideas for new products, marketing channels, technology advances, and even creative ways to solve operational challenges. As Nietzsche said in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

Order

The drift toward disorder is counteracted by a set of laws that govern everything from the orbits of planets to the behavior of particles. This cosmic order, which manifests in the regular patterns observed in the natural world, from the symmetry of snowflakes to the spiral arms of galaxies, embodies order in the universe. In this sense, the beauty of the universe is not just in its visual splendor but also in its underlying structure, the elegant mathematical principles that underpin space and time.

In organizations, the struggle against entropy mirrors our attempts to bring order to the chaos of daily life, striving to create routines, goals, systems, organizational structure, and processes and procedures. People in organizations also get meaning from order. On an existential level, the search for meaning is largely the quest for a coherent structure. Just as scientists seek to discover the laws that govern the cosmos, individuals seek philosophies, religions, and narratives that provide a framework for making sense of their experiences. Amidst the chaos, there is a purpose to be found.

As Nietzsche said, the fundamental forces in the cosmos are embedded in human psychology. Our consciousness, which can be thought of as the universe within, is made up of harmony, power, chaos, and order. It is here we find our deepest motivations, our strongly held values, our personality dispositions, our everyday psychological needs, our vision for the future, our connection with something greater than ourselves, our engagement with a mission, and our quest for meaning and purpose.