Is humanity the summit of evolution—or a transitional stage?
Matter produced complex chemistry. Chemistry produced life. Life produced intelligence. Intelligence created culture and is now creating artificial intelligence—a possible non-biological successor.
Is this sequence accidental? Or does each new way of storing information, predicting the future, and altering the environment make the next evolutionary transition more accessible?
Sequential Cosmic Emergence proposes a way to test that possibility. The paper compares four rival explanations—from contingent evolution to the Great Filter—and states five observable predictions together with conditions that would require the framework to be rejected.
If the framework is right, the most advanced extraterrestrial civilizations may no longer be biological. Their technosignatures, goals, and modes of existence could differ radically from those SETI usually seeks.
Humanity may now be approaching the very transition this paper attempts to explain.
What will cross that threshold: us—or the intelligence we create?
Status: independent preprint; peer review is not yet complete. Constructive criticism and attempts to falsify the framework are welcome.