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.
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