One of the comforts that we derive even from the most tragic experience in our lives is that it must have a purpose. An unexpected death in the family, a sudden horrible illness that reduces an active person to a vegetable, a sudden financial loss that wipes out the savings of a lifetime, a sudden loss of one’s job that is as much a loss of personal dignity as of income—all these, after the initial shock and pain, are seen as events that must have occurred for a purpose. Usually the purpose is seen in purely spiritual terms: the tragedy is a means to bring the black sheep back to the fold, it is a wake-up call to shake one out of a life of false values. It is purpose that makes suffering bearable.

Belief in purpose is belief in a higher power, an authority beyond human understanding, that may appear harsh, but is just, so that in the end, there is order in the world. The philosopher Leibnitz was inspired by this perception of an orderliness in the workings of the higher power, whether it is called God or Providence or Fate or Destiny, to describe our world as the best of all possible worlds, where ultimately everything can be explained as a perfect fit between cosmic purpose and event, no matter how perplexing, painful or evil.

Now modern Science tells us the opposite, that there is no purpose in Nature, no planning, no designing, no mindfulness whatever of human needs. Everything happens by chance and necessity, the first referring to the randomness of events, the second referring to natural laws such as those related to gravity and thermodynamics that are the only constraints upon these events. For instance, the way we have evolved as human beings with our enormous intelligence, our creativity, our moral passions, was largely a matter of chance. If our planet had not been hit by a rogue meteor 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs would not have gone extinct, and certain small mammals would not have emerged from hiding to proliferate on the face of the earth, becoming the ancestors of a long line of mammals that evolved into primates that evolved into human beings. If early hominids had not left Africa, the ancestral home…. if there had been no ice ages…. And back, back, billions of years ago, to the origin of life itself, if single-celled organisms had not come together to form multi-celled organisms that would, over the aeons develop complex structures….

It would be extremely difficult to assign a single overriding Purpose to the messiness that is the story of life on earth, with its many hits and misses, the many dead-ends and extinctions, always at the mercy of the most destructive forces not only of the planet itself but also from a hostile, chaotic neighbourhood. Another way of looking at the matter is to see the impossibility of doing a reverse engineering of Nature, since engineering, starting with a special purpose and design, is always a top-down process, whereas Nature, with no purpose, is always a bottom-up process.

But this truth is so ugly that even in the face of scientific evidence, it is resisted and rejected. For it makes a mockery of human achievement—what, how can all that creativity, genius, beauty, goodness, nobility come out of a purposeless universe? It seems like a huge cosmic joke! George Bernard Shaw could not accept the idea of what he called a ‘higgledy-piggledy’ universe; Einstein famously proclaimed, ‘God does not play dice with the world!’

Like the messenger who bears the brunt of the bad news he delivers, Science is often criticised for its delivery of a truth that is not only inconvenient but downright hideous. The Romantics such as the poets Wordsworth and Keats lamented that Nature, subjected to the scientific method of inquiry and experimentation, had lost all her beauty: Science ‘murders to dissect’, and the rainbow, scientifically analysed, is no longer an object of wonder. A lover of music, Einstein decried this analytical approach of Science: ‘What’s the use of describing a Beethoven symphony in terms of air pressure waves?’Even today, those in the humanities criticize what they call the repulsive reductionism of Science that in the end reduces everything to particles and energy waves.

And above all, there is the protest of ordinary men and women like ourselves going about our lives: ‘No, leave Purpose alone. We need purpose in life. Otherwise, there is no meaning to anything.’

A philosopher once asked, ‘Would you rather be an unhappy philosopher or a happy pig at its trough?’ The modern existential dilemma, instead of having recourse to such rank imagery, can be expressed simply: to accept a truth that hurts or continue with a false belief that comforts? I think I would opt for the first, because it opens up the way for further exploration of our human condition, leading to a greater understanding of ourselves and eventually, of how we can come to terms with what we really are, with our strengths and weaknesses, potentialities and limitations, capacities for both good and evil. Whereas to accept a comforting belief that goes against the hard-earned evidence of Science, is to close the door to this very exciting journey.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...