Living In a Rational or Irrational Universe

Throughout history, there have always been essentially two ways of thinking about the universe.  First, we live in a universe where everything plays out by a system of rational laws.  And second, there is room for events and entities that have no rational cause.  To put things in simpler terms, one can imagine the symbolic example of a set of dominos lined up back to back.  It would seem obvious that when the domino at one end is pushed over, this would cause a chain reaction, knocking all of the dominos over.  However, a person who adheres to the second way of thinking would think it plausible that knocking the domino over at the end could lead to any number of different outcomes where there would not be a chain reaction knocking all of the dominos over. 

The second way of thinking basically says that logic and rationality does not always have to exist when events occur.  Strangely enough, this has been the pretty well dominant way of thinking throughout human history.  Religion essentially relies on this.  Belief in magic and spirits is the same.  To me it seems extremely obvious that the universe should function in a rational way.  It makes no sense to me that that an event could happen without a cause.  After all, I am a biology student who hopes to become a research scientist eventually.  How could I even form my career if not for the simple assumption that future events can be reasonably predicted, based on what has been observed in the past?

            But even I have my doubts.  It is of course true that there are many phenomena that have yet to be understood by science, as well as many more that will never be understood by human rational thought.  This is due to the limits of human intelligence, and our limited reach into the universe.  However, there are certain paradoxes which do not seem as if they could be answered, even with infinite intelligence and knowledge of the universe.  The ultimate question, of course, is why anything exists at all.  But equally confounding is the question of how consciousness can exist, or how we are able to experience the universe rather than just being inanimate objects moving about like robots.  For believers in an irrational universe, these don’t necessarily need explanations, rather they just are.  This has been an easy answer to many for difficult philosophical questions throughout history.

            But I can’t settle on such a simplistic answer.  As much as these dilemmas may call into question how far one can go in considering the universe rational, my mind simply can’t conceive of the notion of effect without cause.  My resolution is simply that, though everything must have a logical explanation, it is far beyond the scope of human intelligence to ever solve all of the mysteries of the universe.  Some answers may come in a form that our minds can’t even comprehend.  Science and rational thought has their limits, and this will probably remain true no matter how intelligent we become.  Even with our most thoroughly proven theories we have today, it is impossible to know for certain whether these are truly correct or just perceived to be correct. 

With all that being said, I mean in no way to undermine the importance of science.  Though it has its limits, it is literally all we’ve got to advance ourselves in a rational universe.  Science looks for patterns and repetition in nature through which to make predictions about the true nature of things, and how things will be in the future.  And so far, throughout human history, we’ve seemed to be pretty good at making these predictions in order to advance civilization.  At some point, we’ve all got to come to accept that there are those questions that we can never and will never be able to answer.  But this shouldn’t stop us from trying to get as close to the answers as we can.                   

The Moral Dilemmas of Modern Technology

             Every so often, it occurs to me what a unique time period I live in.  I just so happen to have been born right as one not only one century, but also as one millennium drew to a close.  That fact by itself shows that I was born on the brink of a new era in human history.  But, in truth, these numbers mean relatively nothing if society doesn’t change from one epoch to the next.  Although many big changes have occurred throughout the course of human history, these changes have often been slow, occurring over hundreds, even thousands of years.  But when I think back to when I was a small child, I realize that not a single person in the entire world had a smart phone. Or a Facebook account.  And when I imagine my parents at my age, I realize that they didn’t even have a concept of “the internet”.  These things may seem somewhat trivial, but the truth is that the very things that define much of my existence today have only come into being within the last 25 years or so.  But that’s nothing compared to what I can imagine the future will hold.  We all truly sit now on the very precipice of an immense and sudden turning point in human history. 

            But this raises major questions, as well.  If your first thought after all this talk is “Does this mean the end is nigh?”, then you are not out of line.  Whether this radical change in the nature of human life means we are finally headed towards a utopia, or we are one wrong move away from global disaster, there may not be much we can do about it.  However, we are nevertheless forced to consider the all important question of how exactly we should be using technology as a society, when its effects are having such a dramatic impact all around the globe.               

            Technology, in its essence, is a disruption of nature.  One may easily place humans within the realm of the “natural”, and claim that whatever we do is a part of our evolutionary pathway and is completely normal. This school of thought dates all the way back to ancient times with the Greek philosopher Parmenides’ doctrine of “being is one”, that the universe is all one complete natural entity (McDermott 62).  This is a completely fair take on things.  However, it ignores the fact that concepts like “natural” and “unnatural” have essentially no meaning if everything is in the domain of the natural.  We continually use these terms in our daily lives, so they must refer to something.  Though there may not be some scientific criteria for what is natural and what is not, the concept most often is used to describe that which is not produced as a result of intelligent life, and “unnatural” is that which is.  “Technology” is really any tool used by intelligent life for the purpose of creating any of these “unnatural” changes, or in other words, a direct manipulation of nature.    

            To many people, this in itself is something immoral.  But, truthfully, how can something be immoral if there is no choice in the matter?  Simply by living and using any tools at all, humans are using technology. We have no choice, if we want to survive.  And humans have understood since ancient times the idea that the universe is in constant “flux”, or change of some sort (McDermott 59); and because of this we have to constantly use our resources to adapt the way we live.  For these reasons, technology is not a choice.  The choice that does exist, and which bares moral implications, is how we should use technology.

            The moral dilemmas created by technology are extremely vast.  In every facet of our lives there are potential down sides to technology.  The two categories these can fall under are damage to nature and damage to ourselves.  Damage to nature includes the obvious environmental destruction (through pollution, habitat destruction, etc.), but also treatment of animals within our own systems (such as the food industry), and other things.  Damage to ourselves is widely recognized and includes everything from the dehumanizing effects of advanced warfare to the negative effects on our waistlines from watching too much TV.  But, of course, technology provides endless benefits and necessities to humans, allowing us to exist in the highly interconnected, complex world that we do today.  Indeed, technology has a quality that 16^th century thinker Giordano Bruno might describe as “natural magic”; it “does wondrous things merely by manipulating active and passive powers” (105).  So, there’s a balance that must be created.  How can we fully utilize the wonder and utility of technology, while avoiding as many of the downsides as possible?

            The truth: there is no satisfying answer.  The world is much too complex to slap down any specific universal rules about what should and shouldn’t be done with technology.  But, rules and regulations are incredibly important for specific cases.  Pollution, warfare, and safety mechanisms for transportation, to name a few things should of course be guided by proper policy.  The most important thing, however, is simply a strong moral compass that each of us must strive to be guided by.  With each of our own personal uses of technology, perhaps the best thing to ask is “will the positive effects of what I’m doing be worth the negative effects”?  It’s not always easy to answer, but it gets us somewhere.

            A few decades from now, the technological landscape of our world could well be unimaginably different from what we see today.  Today’s smart phones and laptops could seem as primitive as many things from a generation ago seem today.  However, the same moral guidelines should continue to persist if we want to use the coming waves of technology responsibly.                       

                        

Works Cited

Bruno, Giordano, and Alfonso Ingegno. Giordano Bruno: "Cause, Principle and Unity" and Essays             on Magic. Trans. Richard J. Blackwell and Robert De Lucca. Cambridge: Cambridge                           UP, 1998. Print.

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.