Astrophotography and Human Self-Reflection
Introduction: Evolution Beyond Biology
The premise behind UNNATURAL SELECTION is that industries and technologies evolve under the same Darwinian pressures that shape life itself. But, what about when industrial innovations actually precipitate evolutionary leaps? Today, we examine astrophotography—a field that turned 185 years young last month and has undergone breathtaking evolution, adapting to environmental pressures and demonstrating the principle of survival of the fittest in technological innovation.
Just as species evolve to fill ecological niches, astrophotography has innovated and adapted to capture what was once invisible. This technological evolution reflects our growing awareness that something unseen, yet critical, existed beyond our sight. The adaptive pressure was clear: develop better ways to see the cosmos or remain blind to fundamental truths about our universe.
I’ll be honest, looking into the evolution of astrophotography has made it much easier for me to imagine how life on earth formed photoreceptive eyes. The complexity in how we detect photons, transcribe them to electrical signals through our rods & cones, and then relay them through the optic nerve to our occipital lobe where we process the information and react often seems too intricate to have happened by chance. And, yet, here we have done the same in the course of 185 years! Astrophotography is truly our species evolving eyes that can see past the clouds.
What makes this evolutionary story particularly fascinating is how, in the process of developing technologies to discover cosmic vastness, we learned more about ourselves than we could have imagined. Each adaptive leap in astrophotography didn't just reveal more of the universe—it fundamentally reshaped human consciousness itself.
From Lunar Whispers to Cosmic Revelations
In 1840, John William Draper captured the first photograph of the Moon—a grainy daguerreotype that did more than record light on a metal plate. It marked humanity's first adaptive response to a profound evolutionary pressure: the need to objectively document the cosmos beyond subjective drawings. This technological mutation succeeded where others failed, surviving a brutal selection process of trial and error.
March 26, 1840. First ever photo of the Moon, captured by John William Draper. This blurry image marked the birth of astrophotography.
Today, 185 years later, the James Webb Space Telescope reveals galaxies formed just after the Big Bang, representing the current apex predator in the technological ecosystem of cosmic imaging. Each step between these points followed the same pattern we see in natural selection: variation, selection, and adaptation.
This technological evolution has profoundly reshaped human society, altering our self-perception and cultural frameworks in ways that mirror how organisms co-evolve with their environments. Each major advancement in astrophotography didn't just improve image quality—it recalibrated humanity's place in the universe.
The First Revolution: We Are Not Alone (1840-1900)
Draper's lunar daguerreotype initiated a wave of celestial photography that democratized astronomy. The selective pressure was clear: make astronomy accessible beyond elite observers. Photography evolved to meet this demand, creating objective records that could be widely reproduced and studied. Looking back, these lunar daguerreotypes seem primitive, but think about the evolutionary leap that they represented from the what humanity had before:
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Drawings of the Moon, November-December 1609. Galileo produced this extremely famous set of six watercolours of the Moon in its various phases "from life", as he observed the Earth's satellite through a telescope in the autumn of 1609. They represent the first realistic depiction of the Moon in history.
When Lewis Rutherfurd produced detailed lunar photographs in the 1860s using the wet collodion process, he demonstrated a successful adaptation to the environmental challenge of capturing faint celestial light. These images circulated widely, allowing ordinary people to see detailed views of another world. This technological adaptation drove a parallel evolution in human thinking, challenging Earth-centered worldviews and creating selective pressure for new philosophical frameworks.
The most profound societal impact came when Henry Draper captured the first stellar spectrum of Vega in 1872. This technological adaptation revealed that stars were made of the same elements found on Earth—a discovery that forced human consciousness to evolve. Our cognitive niche expanded to accommodate the revelation that the cosmos was not alien and separate but composed of familiar materials. Like biological coevolution, the technology and human understanding developed in tandem, each influencing the other's evolutionary trajectory.
The Second Revolution: The Expanding Universe (1900-1950)
The early 20th century brought revolutionary changes to both astrophotography and human consciousness. The environmental pressure was to see deeper into space, driving the evolution of larger telescopes. Using the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson, Edwin Hubble photographed distant galaxies, proving the universe extended far beyond our Milky Way. In 1929, his photographic evidence demonstrated an expanding universe—a cognitive earthquake requiring human understanding to evolve rapidly.
The societal impact mirrored how sudden environmental changes drive rapid evolutionary adaptation. The universe suddenly grew vastly larger than previously imagined, and humanity's self-perception evolved in response. Traditional human-centered narratives faced extinction pressure as they failed to adapt to this new reality. More adaptive philosophical frameworks—those that could accommodate cosmic scales and human insignificance—survived and flourished.
As astronomical photographs appeared in mass media, they became selective agents in cultural evolution. Education systems gradually incorporated these new cosmic perspectives, raising generations with a fundamentally different adaptive fitness for understanding their place in the universe.
The Third Revolution: The Cosmic Calendar (1950-1990)
The mid-20th century introduced a new selective pressure: the need to see fainter, more distant objects. Electronic imaging evolved in response, with image intensifiers and early CCDs representing successful adaptations that outcompeted older technologies. Radio astronomy produced evidence of the cosmic microwave background—the afterglow of the Big Bang—confirming the universe's finite age.
This precise dating of cosmic history created selective pressure for human conceptual frameworks to evolve. Carl Sagan's "Cosmic Calendar" metaphor, which compressed the entire history of the universe into a single year with humans appearing only in the final minutes of December 31st, represented a successful cognitive adaptation. Watched by over 500 million people through his 1980 television series "Cosmos," it fundamentally reordered public understanding of time scales.
Environmental movements evolved in this new cognitive ecosystem, drawing strength from these perspectives. The first photographs of Earth from space created the "Overview Effect"—a cognitive adaptation reported by astronauts and experienced vicariously by the public. Just as organisms adapt to new environments, human consciousness adapted to seeing Earth as a fragile blue marble, catalyzing environmental awareness and highlighting our planetary interconnectedness.
The Fourth Revolution: Cosmic Intimacy (1990-2021)
The Hubble Space Telescope represented a major evolutionary leap, adapted specifically to the environmental challenge of atmospheric distortion. Its breathtaking images—particularly the Deep Field photographs revealing thousands of galaxies in apparently empty sky—became agents of selection in cultural evolution. When the first Hubble Deep Field image was released in 1996, showing nearly 3,000 galaxies in a tiny slice of sky, it created intense selective pressure for human perception to evolve.
The Hubble Deep Field, a picture taken over the course of ten consecutive days in December 1995
These images transcended science to become part of our cultural DNA, appearing everywhere from textbooks to advertising. They fostered what might be called "cosmic intimacy"—a cognitive adaptation allowing humans to feel connection to an incomprehensibly vast universe.
The democratization of astrophotography through digital cameras created a new evolutionary radiation: citizen astronomy. Like the Cambrian explosion, this rapid diversification of participants accelerated the evolution of both techniques and cosmic understanding, creating a global community engaged with the cosmos in unprecedented ways.
Consider how far we have come in what amounts to just over 2 human lifespans, where we can now compare the original Moon image by Draper (top) with the most detailed photograph of the moon ever captured:
Hyper-detailed photograph of the moon generated by lunar photographer Andrew McCarthy by stitching together thousands of composite high-definition photos.
The Fifth Revolution: Origins Revealed (2021-Present)
The James Webb Space Telescope represents the current pinnacle of adaptive evolution in astrophotography. Specifically evolved to see infrared light from the earliest galaxies, its first deep field image showed structures as they appeared over 13 billion years ago. This technological adaptation is driving yet another evolution in human consciousness—reshaping our origin story by revealing our direct lineage from the first galaxies.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date.
Today's children, raised with JWST images as their baseline understanding of the cosmos, represent a new generation adapted to cosmic thinking. Their cognitive frameworks have evolved with a broader perspective than any previous generation, incorporating cosmic context as naturally as earlier generations incorporated national identity.
Conclusion: Coevolution of Technology and Consciousness
The evolution of astrophotography over 185 years demonstrates how technologies adapt under selective pressures, just as species evolve to fill ecological niches. Each innovation that better revealed the unseen cosmos survived and reproduced in our technological ecosystem, while less fit approaches faced extinction.
More profoundly, this technological evolution coevolved with human consciousness itself. As our tools adapted to see farther and more clearly, our understanding adapted in response. We evolved from a species that saw itself as central and special to one that understands its place in a vast cosmic context. This perspective shift represents one of the most significant adaptations in human thought—comparable to the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions.
Today, as we face planetary challenges that require us to act collectively, this evolved cosmic perspective may prove to be humanity's most valuable adaptation. By understanding ourselves as a small but connected part of a much larger whole, we've developed cognitive tools essential for our continued survival and flourishing.
The story of astrophotography reminds us that evolution—whether biological, technological, or cognitive—is driven by the need to adapt to what we cannot yet perceive. In revealing the unseen cosmos, we've ultimately revealed ourselves.
Personally, I take comfort in accepting that the coffee I’m drinking contains 4.5B year old water that originated when our solar system formed, and it is interacting with the atoms in my body that have outlived multiple generations of stars—with some going back to the Big Bang itself. The intimacy in knowing that I am intrinsically a part of the cosmos gives me a sense of belonging, an appreciation for the breakthroughs that enable this awareness, and a humility that offers perspective on the things that really matter (pun!). I am hopeful that, as we learn more about existence, our own self-awareness will evolve and actualize into something that not only marvels at the universe, but strives to build within it—wisely, boldly, and with reverence for the cosmic heritage we all share.
