Creatures of the Dawn

James Jeans's 1929 phrase, adopted by Moynihan as the name for the cosmically early self-image: once radium lengthened the Sun's future (Eddington 15 billion years; Jeans a trillion), humanity could see itself as a baby "only just beginning to learn continence," with "unexplored potentialities" ahead — the stamp-on-penny-on-obelisk against a "pile as high as Mont Blanc." Today the past/future ratio is split: terrestrially we are late (4.5 billion years behind, ~1 billion habitable ahead), cosmically early (13.8 billion behind, trillions ahead). Moynihan's conclusion revives the phrase as a hedged conjecture: in a young, bookended universe it is "at least plausible" we live in the epoch before life spills beyond its planet. Konior's Long L takes this "we may be first" as a rare-earth premise.