Why life?

 

Why life?

I am not being facetious. I am devoting my retired life to watching YouTube videos, on economics, on physics, on philosophy, on theology, on history, on sports, on religion, on politics (in the US) … In one of those videos the narrator raised the following question: Why are we here? In a less philosophical mode: Why there is life at all, as opposed to what?

The question struck me as odd.  Instead of answering the question, I raised the counter question (my wife does this to me, every time I even merely state something!): Why shouldn’t there be any life? That is, why can “no life” not be the other state of the universe?

My thesis (I have to sound serious here!) starts with the age old question in philosophy which has not been answered yet. Were a tree in a forest to fall and there be no one to hear it, could the tree really have fallen?

The so-called objective reality takes the fall, along with the tree! I do not purport to have any kind of answer, but the question itself is loaded. How loaded? It must have stumped Socrates. I do not know whether he was asked this question at all. Assuming he was, his answer would have been profound silence; silence is profound (those who read my mind-vomit remain silent on this score telling me things without telling them)!

But there was someone earlier or contemporaneous who also used the sword of silence, but in a more devastating way, the Buddha. He would have said, “The question lacks utility. What are you going to do with the answer even if I deigned to answer it?” Ouch, a cutting answer that puts the questioners way down in Hell. Oh, The Buddha did not believe in Hell or Heaven! My bad.

Sankara of Kaladi pulled one over the eyes of the Buddha, by seemingly answering but not quite, postulating the indistinguishable Atman that is reposed in the universal Brahman. Then, why do TamBrahms (Tamil Brahmins, the cult I am born into) re–visit their ancestors, who, after all have fused themselves into the Brahman? Questions, questions and more questions! Rather, just one question.  

This is an age old question and to bring it to current times, we need to transform philosophy into physics. Go to Sir Isaac Newton. What is the title of Newton’s magnum opus? Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (In English, The Mathematical Principle of Natural Philosophy). So, what we now call physics was, in Newton’s time natural philosophy

Philosophy is wishy washy (ask David Hume about existence, about analytical statements – try parsing, at the lowest level, “the existing thing does not exist!” the statement is logically valid, just says something does not exist, but that something exists is adjectively proclaimed!), and to my dismay I found physics is too, with or without Newton! Schrodinger’s Cat is living/is dead. In the much fabled double–slit experiment, the particle (light/electron, what have you) goes through which slit? It goes through both slits simultaneously! Does and does not go through (proxy for existence) any one of the two slits simultaneously!

Some philosophers, perhaps unwilling to ascribe our existence to a single entity say, ‘We are nothing but a divine mistake, a cosmic accident, something that should never have happened’. Yet, they invoke divinity! This is what Hume was possibly referring to. We may go even earlier to find what could have been embers of divinity, but we fail. Newton described the sun’s luminosity to divinity (when contrasted with the darkness of the planets, as Steven Weinberg says in his conversation with Richard Dawkins).

Sam Harris, though sharp, slipped here: “We can’t get the data; but, we know data is there”. Let him argue this point with David Hume, for whom nothing is, including data!

Was Jesus a historical person? Yes, no, may have been, may not have been! A valid question to ask and not answer on his birthday!

So, gradually I have come back, step–by–step to the question I started this post with: Why life?

Life is, is not, maybe, maybe not!

Raghuram Ekambaram