Science has given us a fantastic new story — the story of the evolution of the universe and the story of ourselves as witnessing and participating in an unfolding cosmic drama. The discoveries made by the Hubble telescope, as well as the discovery that the universe came into being 13.7 billion years ago, have utterly transformed our perspective on the evolution of cosmic and planetary life and our own origins. Edwin Hubble (1889–1953) has been compared to a new Copernicus and the famous telescope he developed has revealed a universe that is not only incredibly vast and incredibly strange —even terrifying in its immensity — but also breathtakingly beautiful, as if painted by a cosmic artist of unparalleled genius.

The view of our planet from the moon, the ever-expanding dimensions of the universe, the ongoing complexity of the sub-atomic world and the story of the biological evolution of life on this planet may all be called revelations; it is almost as if the cosmos is speaking to us, telling us the story of how it came into being, how we came into being. And it is speaking to us through its own creation—human consciousness.