“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. … “So says   renowned physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg  in his 1977 book “The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe)”

In general, we humans like to think that things happen for a reason, either accidentally or on purpose – whatever the case may be. At least, that is the way we usually think about the world based on our very experience of it.  Seeing the world in this manner allows us to understand the interaction between things and events while enabling us to manage our lives around them with some degree of predictability.

So what about the universe? Would it not be reasonable to expect there was some reason for it to be here as well? I’m kind of two minds about that.

First of all, it is quite a conceptual leap to jump from considering the status of some event or another in the world to considering the status of world itself. Is the world  just another event in the sense that we should be able to look at it from either end, i.e., consider the likely cause of it and the effect that it has on other things in the world? Can the world be seen as an event beyond all the things that take place in it? (look up: Gilbert Ryle’s category mistake)

Since the world is both logically and physically necessary for anything to take place, I don’t believe you can put it in the same category of events that take place in the world. As such it occupies a class or category all its own. (I think I’m running into a version of Russell’s set paradox here, but let’s not go there … )

For anything to happen, the world must have happened – that much seems clear. But – as far as we know – the world appears to have happened on its own account, i.e., it is simply here – full stop. It is the container that contains everything else, but itself it is not contained other than by itself.  Such is the mystery of the world.

Now one  could argue that we just don’t know that the world isn’t part or the result of another event that brought it about, i.e., the world is a transitory event that came into being as a result of “the big bang”  – which is the prevailing view at the moment, and so on, and end up in an infinite regress of events preceding events, and then only because we cannot accept that events can appear out of thin air or materialize from within a material empty vacuum for that matter,

Our language is the limiting factor here because it is the language of the living and breathing  mortals that we are.  We cannot get beyond the logic derived from our species’ experiential involvement  with the world and make sense of events that seem to go beyond that.

But what if the point of the universe being here is simply just that: to be here for what it is, i.e., to exist for its own sake?  That we may be able to make sense of this might depend on  what sense or meaning we are able to attach to  our lives, as by extension we would  then be valuing the point of universe being here as well.

If we think about our place in the world this way, well-known  20th century existentialists such as Sartre and Camus would be wrong  classifying life as essentially meaningless and  – among other things –  attributing the absurdity of our predicament to a cold and indifferent universe that remains silent on such things, given that only human beings are able to attach meaning or value to something.  The conclusion has to be that meaning comes from within life, from experiencing life as meaningful, and not from having it  derived from a source external to it.

It would follow that no feature of the universe will likely make sense unless it is viewed in the context of providing the ground for some aspect of meaningful human activity that could otherwise not have taken place.  The logic may sound counter-intuitive but I believe that this is the only way out of the absurdity paradox that Albert Camus entertained when considering the fact that human beings inevitably seek to understand life’s purpose:

“Camus takes the skeptical position that the natural world, the universe, and the human enterprise remain silent about any such purpose. Since existence itself has no meaning, we must learn to bear an irresolvable emptiness. This paradoxical situation, then, between our impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer, is what Camus calls the absurd. Camus’ philosophy of the absurd explores the consequences arising from this basic paradox. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)”

The question remains then how the seemingly puny human could conceivably value the existence of the mighty universe simply by finding meaning in their everyday lives.  I think it boils down to the distinction between  quantity and quality, and between form and function in the context of an evolving universe.

As such it wouldn’t matter how old or how large and complex  the world is, given that the significance of that could only be expressed by how well we would be able to experience the quality and depth of  being at the receiving end of this  spectacularly creative effort,  and then solely with the sensibility and reasoning  that has been given to us as a result of merely being a part of it. Everything beyond it is more or less irrelevant, in the sense that -as spectacular as that may be – it is at most a set decoration, the backdrop against which we play out the destiny of our species and of which we have for the moment absolutely no clue.

So what would be the grounds for such assumption when I seem to say that the basis for it is  outside life’s experiential realm?   To get a sense of what I’m hinting at is a little bit like what the character Morpheus says to Thomas A. Anderson, AKA “Neo” and the protagonist in the excellent 1999 Sci-Fi movie Matrix: You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. 

Now I realize that this might be an understatement for some, but here I’m not talking about all the really bad things that are happening in the world today (and have more or less always happened in the world of yesterday) and an astonishing human tragedy by any other name given all the calamities, war, religious strife, murder and mayhem and what have you, but the fact that regardless of the nature of the event – good or bad –  it remains a mystery why any of it actually needs to take place, i.e., what in the world  is playing itself out here?

In short, I am saying that life, living, doesn’t add up … at least not for me, and while that might just be my problem, I think not.  I suggest we are seeing only part of the script here.

This has to do with the fact that you cannot make sense of something existing for its own sake. I know, some will say something equally nonsensical, like “it is what it is”,   but trying to make sense of apparent nonsense is one of my interests, especially when there appears to be so much of it, such as a whole universe of it.

So when I say that it doesn’t add up, I mean to say that I have never come across the reason as to why we are here, on this planet, in this universe, or the reasons why life is the way it is to the extent that we are challenged by it on a daily basis.

Sure, science will give you a hand full of reasons as to why the world is the way it is, but these are descriptive accounts that assume the world as a given without any further justification for it being there in the first place. When it comes to life, similarly – and discounting religious nonsense of any kind – the answer to the question “why are we here” is lacking also.

And so, in whatever way you look at it, the world – life – appears to be more of a solution in search of a problem, i.e., we don’t have the whole story. And  unless there is something more going on than what meets the eye, i.e., what we must confront on a daily basis, the world and everything that can be found in it appears to make no sense at all. At least not for the present …

… But Trailing Clouds Of Glory Do We Come, From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”  (William Wordsworth)

Apart from the obligatory nod to the prevailing local deity at the time that this was written, that is exactly where we came from – and, of course – where we still are! The  cosmic womb that spawned us,  and that continues to nurture us! And so let’s focus for a moment on the ongoing scientific effort to probe the heavens – our heavenly home – with the hope of finding out more about its origin and scope – such as how all of this might have come about.

And as we continue to do so – by reaching out further and further into the depths of the physical universe with VLTs (Very Large Telescopes) – whatever we want to conclude about our cosmic environment becomes less and less intelligible the further we move away from earth. And here I couldn’t agree more with what was once said  by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit paleontologist, in 1923  in Letters from a Traveler “The more remote in time and space is the world we confront, the less it exists, and hence the more barren and poorer it is for our thoughts”.

Ask yourself this: how meaningful is the recent discovery of the oldest galaxy ever observed by the Hubble telescope: “It is thought the galaxy is more than 13 billion years old and existed 480 million years after the Big Bang.”

Or: “Astronomers have spotted the most distant object yet confirmed in the universe – a self-destructing star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from Earth. It detonated just 630 million years after the big bang, around the end of the cosmic “dark ages”, when the first stars and galaxies were lighting up space”.

Apart from the “wow!” factor, this kind of information says more about the technology that made these discoveries possible than the actual objects themselves. While we may be able to express these observations in a manner that suggests that we actually know what we are talking about, we have clearly no concept of what this  means beyond building a theoretical model of our universe in which we appear to be just another speck of dust.

At most we can conclude is that an event is being played out here of cosmic dimensions, but also that – as unlikely as this may seem – this incredible spectacle is  directly relevant to us, as it pertains to both our origin, and our destiny. Yes, gentle reader, all this cosmic commotion is about you, regardless of whether you want to accept that or not.

I want to suggest that we can talk about the cosmos in a more meaningful fashion, by accepting all of it as another dimension of ourselves.  And here I am not talking  about some  esoteric physical and (above all) theoretical dimension requiring a succession of half-a-dozen blackboards to get spelled out, and meaningful only to some other theoretical physicist working within the same Kuhnian paradigm. With due respect, no.  I want to suggest an aspect of the cosmos that connects every particle internally regardless of where it is located – or how it is configured – and constitutes its integrity as an phenomenon in all its perplexing detail.

And while we do not know or understand much or any of it, it is an intrinsic part of our own existence, meaning that the key to all its magical and mysterious secrets lies not out there in some distant and abstract corner of outer space, but within ourselves. We embody all of this within the entity that we are: its origin, its history, its present scope, and its destiny.

Much of our scientific probing of outer space reminds me of a cat that got itself locked in a closet, scratching around in the dark trying to find a way out.  But we’re not trapped here, in the sense of being an isolated event in the cosmos: we are an event of the cosmos, and so  we don’t need to find a way out, we’re home safe and sound!

And so I am suggesting the possibility that, on the evolutionary front, we are its leading event – with the history of all that preceded us behind us, and a future in front of us to decide and create!  With the arrival  of our species  – Homo Faber –  the spectacular creativity power inherent in the evolutionary process that brought us about is now able to work directly through us for whatever goals we set for ourselves now or in the future!

I have been led to conclude that, if the cosmos is about anything at all, its agenda is about reinventing itself as a new entity, by turning itself inside out – so to speak – through the process of evolution, and reconstituting  itself as the sum of all the power and creativity that it is capable of.  You could say that it is a question of “rising to the occasion”, and as participants in this process this is something that we are all challenged with on a daily basis: we all have the same agenda, namely to make something of ourselves that captures our true potential.

And so we, the simple creatures of the earth, are finding ourselves at the top of creation as defined by our emerging consciousness, to be challenged to look deeper within ourselves to enable our own advancement as a species, to be more creative, more empowered, and to be more enlightened to take on our fate as an agent of evolution.

Presumably, all this to bring about a better world while seemingly still  preoccupied by the instincts of the  predatory animal that once preceded us – but in many way is still within us –  as evidenced by the dystopia we’re stumbling around in today and which appears to be entirely of our own making.

Sisyphus – by Franz von Stuck

Sisyphus, as we know, is the figure in Greek mythology who was punished by the local Gods for his deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down again at the top, forcing him to repeat this action for eternity.

In The Myth of Sisyphus published in 1942 French author and Nobel laureate Albert Camus retells the tale of Sisyphus as likening the futility of his labours to the human condition, the point being that all human endeavours are essentially meaningless in a cold and indifferent universe.

Camus concludes  that it is absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none, and that it is equally absurd to try to know, understand, or explain the world when no rational knowledge can be obtained from it.  While accepting absurdity as the mood of the times, Camus appears most interested in the question of whether or how to live in the face of it.

But there is a problem  this line of reasoning,  and not only on just logical grounds.  Firstly, we can’t exclude the possibility that there is in fact a meaning and purpose to the universe just because we can’t see the point of it.

Secondly,  it makes no sense to say that we cannot obtain rational knowledge of the world given the multitude of verifiable scientific successes that have occupied themselves with the material nature of the world. This includes the discovery of evolution as a means to provide perspective to the phenomenon that live represents as well as the context for where we are in the in the hierarchy of all things living.

And  by linking our biological ancestry to the heart of the material universe through the process of evolution, science has attached us more firmly to the world.

This leads me to believe that the universe has a plan,  and within it lies the larger context for all human endeavours, as we find ourselves at the receiving end of it.  For many this larger context simply may not exist or is merely taken for granted,  its relevancy subsumed in the background noise of every day life.

Other than that, yes, the story the greater universe may have to tell  is definitely something of interest to science, but by and large their observations and subsequent theories put it so far out of reach of everyday life that  it is difficult to see how much of it has any bearing on the way we conduct our lives.

One might presume that merely living our lives provides us with all the meaning and context we find ourselves preoccupied with at a given moment. But that might only be the case so long as we don’t look beyond the immediacy of the current moment and try to place it within the larger reality of the surrounding universe.  And just because it is seemingly so grand and perplexing that  we can’t possibly get our heads around it,  it is nevertheless part and parcel of who and what we are, yet have absolutely no clue what we all of this means.

This also tells me that I relate to them not only as just another instance of cosmic being, but also as an instance of cosmic evolution the purpose of which is not yet understood.

But  how do you reconcile the existence of the most distant star with our own existence, when we’re essentially made of the same stuff – stardust – yet cannot begin to explain why either exists in the first place?

Which brings me once again to my favorite subject: where is evolution taking us? Already, from stellar dust to the present day human being – we have been on quite a journey!

Are we there yet?  I don’t think so … because we will know when we get there.  My worry is, we have so much further to go on the evolutionary plane,  we will get lost a million times before we will have even an inkling in which direction we should be heading.  In the meantime, we appear to be little more than a pathetic collection of lost souls as evidenced by the content of the world news media every day.

The first point I would like to make is that it is unimaginable to me that we see the meaning of the event of ourselves as something over and above the event of the cosmos.  As such, the cosmos is intrinsic to our being, and vice versa – we cannot be separated.

It follows too that – while it may have taken the world some time to bring us on to the scene – we have always been here, in principle, from the very start, as a potential event that was eventually realized as an expression in physical matter.

Secondly, the incidence of our physical existence is not a function of when, where or how, but of why we are here. I know this notion flies in the face of those who believe that everything that exists beyond the most elementary particle of matter is strictly a function of the random action of such particles, with no rhyme or reason in mind – other than of course the seemingly innate ability of matter to organize themselves into progressively more organized structures which – in its most complex formation – are able to exhibit life, prescience and consciousness as new properties not seen before. This is of course a bit of a problem for the random motion folks who’s fear of metaphysics – the “why?” beyond the mere matter of cause and effect  – must be a product of random thoughts as opposed some kind of structured logical thinking.

I think that the reason why we are here is the same reason as to why the world is here – or, for that matter – why there is anything here at all. Well, at least it means we have only one why to worry about …

It is easy to be intimidated by the sheer scope of the physical universe, it age and its size, but as incomprehensible as that may be  – it would be wrong to attach a significance to that beyond the fact that it simply is what it is. Its true meaning will be completely independent from and over and above its physical attributes, in the sense that it will be larger than the sum of its parts.

This makes our experience of the physical aspects of our existence less relevant, and that beyond the point of being able to survive them, we can  – to a certain degree – take them for granted, i.e., we wouldn’t be what, how and where we are without them.

Thus, what we will conclude about ourselves is not going to be strictly a function of our physical interaction with the world, but what we discover about ourselves as we interact with our environment and, more importantly, with each other, i.e.,  what we mean to each other, how we treat each other, or are able to work together towards common goals, and how we arrive at such goals. And – ultimately – from what we want from life in terms of accomplishments during the short time that we are here as members of the human species, as well as what our history will show us about ourselves as a species.

What I want to take from the above episode is the fact that something with an incredible creative ability  was destroyed – either wilfully or by accident – is able to reconstitute itself; that it has this inherent ability.

So – taking this recovery model into an analogy – what if the origin of the cosmos was also a calamity (the “Big Bang” scenario), in which something was destroyed that has the ability recover, and which is now trying to reconstitute itself. This scenario would offer the picture that within each particle in the universe resides the capacity to assemble itself back into ever increasing levels of organizational complexity so that it can become whole once again and regain control of its being. In this process, it is able to morph into whatever shape it has access to given its current environment in order to regain its desired integrity. This would account for all the creativity, drive and determination that evolution continues to demonstrate.

Pure speculation, I’m sure.