WHY

Why existence and even why am I doing this? Why would I want to hive off a few hours a week from my already frantic schedule to pursue this “... one person’s attempt to find out something about the meaning of existence...”  As noted, this is amateur philosophy because I haven’t yet found someone to pay me good money to contemplate my navel, (any takers?). The amateur status may not be a bad thing, after all Einstein’s most productive year, his Annus Mirabilis, happened whilst he was employed by the Swiss patent office where his job was to evaluate patent applications. The short answer is that as time goes by I seem to get stuck more and more on the treadmill of daily life that my existence has evolved into. This is my attempt to force myself to consider something other than the banalities of my life (work, buy stuff, eat, sleep and work some more.)

Of course I have no pretentions to equalling or even achieving a fraction of the insight in this pursuit as Einstein had in his. Yet the achievements of the great scientists of the last few hundred years and what I am trying to do are in some way linked. They queried the How by means of reasoning, experiment, mathematics and observation, and have produced an enormous body of knowledge that, though possibly far from complete, described our world to a remarkable degree. We know a lot about how nature works and have harnessed this knowledge to produce the technology that we wield (to good and bad effect). 

The Why question may well be answered by the scientists at some future date, but right now science can only eliminate possibilities, it does not answer why the universe exists, or why life or even why self aware life forms exists. This is no failing of science or humanity at all, the fact that a creature that evolved as a hunter gatherer has achieved this level of understanding is fantastic.  This points to a question that could be the subject of this blog at some time... why do we have this level of brain power that is clearly way beyond minimum spec for the job. I don’t believe that the Why question can be answered by anyone right now, and it is not a goal of this blog to attempt to do so, that would be silly. Instead I hope merely to gain some insight and using intellegent reasoning to come up with a set of possible answers and firmly eliminate some others.  

  

The Why question is closely linked to the How question especially when the thorny issue of religion comes into it. Evoking the existence of a deity to fill in the gaps of our knowledge automatically provides a framework to hang answers to the Why question on. Sadly these answers seem to always be driven by the very human interests of those that provide these answers, more on this discussion to come.

It is not my intention to structure this blog in any particular way, but rather to go with the topics as they come to mind, so bear with me in the hope that this could prove to be interesting. 

Well that’s about enough for one day...