The holy trinity of the existential sciences:astrophysics, evolution, and neuro

[Simfish]

So I've just read through http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/science-with-soul-sells/ and I found it *extremely* inspiring. Namely, this quote in particular:

Neuroscience, evolution, and astrophysics speak to normative concerns of our species. That is, they grapple with values. The brain is the seat of our self in a material sense, and neuroscience emerges out of a deep tradition of philosophy of mind which goes back 2,500 years. Evolution has had a fraught relationship with teleology, and some philosophers of biology have quipped that their field to a first approximation can be reduced to philosophy of evolution. Molecular biology is more fundamental in a concrete proximate sense, but evolutionary biology is more fundamental in the ultimate abstract sense. And finally, astrophysics when it bleeds into cosmology rather obviously treads on the ground which was once the domain of mythology, of cosmogony. In a very broad sense these disciplines push against our conceptions of ontology. Astrophysics in the most general sense, neuroscience in a very anthropocentric sense, and evolutionary biology spanning the two extremes.

And so, I've thought - is there a significant number of people who are interested in these three subjects in particular? http://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofScience/comments/diael/survey_analysis_interests_map/ doesn't seem to say so (although astro is connected to neuro). Especially professors who might like students more if they have these interests? (which might be mergeable in astrobiology now). I've talked to a few astrophysics professors, but none of them seem to have the passion for existential questions that I have (that draw me precisely to those three subjects in particular - e.g. few seem to also be interested in neuroscience). Although some professors from other departments have this interest in existential questions, and go into complex adaptive systems for it.

 

[hadsed]

I've found out that it's hard to find people like us (blue-skies kinda guys) even in such [seemingly] blue-skiesy work like quantum mechanics and astrophysics. Personally, I'm disappointed a lot by this because I hope to get into a line of work where I can be that scientific 'philosopher', as the article says.