We are often compelled to ask why? Why this and why that? Usually our why questions are directed towards everyday occurrences, and we ask them out of curiosity. For example, why is there thunder and lightning? Why is the sky blue? Why are there high and low tides? As far as the tides go, high and low tides are caused by a combination of gravitational effects, which are exerted by the moon, the sun and the rotation of the earth. That being said, I have not provided an answer for why there are high and low tides. I have explained in simple terms, how high and low tides occur. On these relatively simple questions we ask why, although I think we really mean how. What we are looking for is the reasons or the causes behind the observed reality. We are not searching for a hidden meaning or purpose for the tides. But rather for how high and low tides occur, the causes for the tides, or the thunder and lightning, or the blue sky.
Having said that, other “why” questions are of a more profound nature, and they generally come in two categories. One type of question relates to the deeper mysteries of life. For example, why are we here? Why is life the way it is? And why is there a universe in the first place? Although we may ponder these or other similar questions from time to time, we can usually put them aside without too much trouble. There is some value in just asking the questions, even though there may be no complete resolution.
A second category of questions, which are more disturbing, arises primarily when an event impacts us in a negative way. That is when we tend to ask: why do bad things happen? As opposed to the simpler questions, like the ocean tides, when it comes to the bigger questions, we ask why—and we really mean why. We are looking for a meaning or purpose behind an event that has transpired—an underlying order behind the apparent chaos of our present situation. Conversely, when something happens that we perceive as positive, we seldom ask why it came about. I have yet to hear someone question why their day went so well.
It is very common for people that are faced with a tragedy to ask why. It could be the death of a loved one, or an illness that compels us to ask why. The trouble with this line of questioning is that it very rarely leads to a satisfactory answer. It may be comforting to believe that “everything happens for a reason,” as the well-known phrase goes, however, there may be no why (at least no why that the human mind can comprehend). The random element in life alone, if not for countless other factors, makes it inevitable that bad things will happen. Instead of saying that “everything happens for a reason,” we could easily reverse the phrase and say that “there are reasons (causes) for everything that happens.” We may be able to find the cause (the how) for an event, but trying to find why something happened will leave us scratching our heads.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a couple of friends while watching the evening news. The newscast was reporting on a tragic motor vehicle accident that resulted in several young people losing their lives. There had been a snowstorm the night of the accident and the safety of the vehicle involved was in question, namely the condition of the tires. One of my friends commented, “I can’t understand why young people, with so much life ahead of them, had to die in this way.” The other friend responded by stating the obvious, “It’s just tires and ice.” The accident was caused by icy road conditions, and worn out tires. Although it may have sounded cold and unsympathetic, perhaps he was right. In most cases, the only answer available to us is how.
In fact, all investigations focus on “how” questions. For example, when an airline crashes, which usually results in casualties, investigators will focus their attention on determining how the plane crashed. The obvious reason is to prevent a future accident, but also to provide the grieving family members with an explanation. The people that are closely connected to the tragedy may also seek comfort by asking why the plane had to crash, and why those people had to die. Once again, the only attainable answer will be in determining how the plane crashed. As for the passengers, regrettably, they were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The strange thing about the randomness in life is that when we are not personally or emotionally involved, we have no problem with it. I doubt that anyone would question why a coin toss turns up head or tails. We all accept without hesitation, the random nature of a coin toss. Keep in mind that the same natural laws that determine the outcome of a coin toss, also apply to the rest of our lives. The random element in life will also lead to inequalities, which may be slight or seem grossly unfair. This may lead someone to ask: “Why is life so unfair?” In some ways life is a numbers game, much like a lottery. Sometimes your number comes up, and sometimes it does not. Look at it this way, if I had 100 dollars to give away, and I chose to give it away by lottery, would anyone say it was unfair?
Aside from our efforts to either prevent or alleviate bad things from happening, it may be that bad things happen for the simplest of reasons. There is no apparent mechanism to prevent it. Another point worth noting is that good and bad are sometimes subjective. Even a single event can be perceived as good by some people and bad by others. This is usually based on how an event personally impacts each individual. Aside from our egocentric viewpoint, there is no reason to believe that the universe will favor one individual above anyone else or anything else—there is no empirical evidence to support it.
For many years, I have asked why, especially when my life was not going as I wanted. Even after considerable reflection, I have found no suitable answer to any of my why questions. There may or may not be an ultimate reason for life’s unfolding. But if there is a why, it lies beyond human comprehension. And for me, when I started asking how, I was able to make some progress on the bigger questions. How did we get here? How is life the way it is? How did the universe come to be? And of course, how do bad things happen? So from now on when I am inclined to ask why, I try to catch myself, and ask how.
Our conscious experience is so commonplace that we seldom think about how remarkable it is. How does the mind integrate all the sensory information into one coherent picture? How does it seamlessly update the information from moment to moment? How does the perception of the self emerge? The brain is one of the last frontiers of the scientific endeavor. Much research has been done in identifying different parts of the brain and their functions. Although a large amount of progress has been made in connecting behaviors with specific brain activity, consciousness remains elusive. There is still no well-established scientific theory of consciousness.
Much of our lives are affected by random events; however, we are not fully aware of them. How could we, there is just too much randomness to keep track of. Despite our best efforts to reach our goals, we can’t eliminate the role of chance and unpredictability. We know that randomness exist, but to what extent? That is when a keen understanding of probabilities can be helpful. Calculating probabilities can determine a course of action and set realistic expectations for outcomes.
Imagine you are trying to predict the outcome of a coin toss. You toss the coin 5 times and it turns up heads every time. On the sixth toss, would you be inclined to call tails? Or with a number of people predicting the next toss, would there be more calls for tails than heads? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, someone has fallen victim to the gamblers fallacy.
This is the point when the Monty Hall Problem arose. He gave the contestant the choice to change his/her mind. Should the contestant stick with door #1, or pick door #3. Without careful analysis, it seems that it makes no difference. Both door #1 and door #3 have an equal chance of winning the car. However, that is incorrect. The probability of winning is twice as high if the choice is switched.
If you are hosting a party, what is the likelihood that two people will share the same birthday? Worded another way, how many people need to show up for the odds to be higher than 50%? Once again, intuition is shaky. One would think that the number would be quite high, as there are 365 days in a year. The answer is surprisingly low: just 23 guests will give a better than even chance of two people sharing a birthday.
Interestingly, most of the plants that feed humans today were domesticated before the first century. From these initial regions framing would continue to spread around the globe. Why did humans change their way of life after so many years of foraging? One factor worth considering is that agriculture developed independently in unconnected parts of the world. What could account for this fact? It happens that the beginning of agriculture coincides with the end of the last ice age. This was a global phenomenon; as regions warmed framing became possible.
Once villagers became dependent on agriculture for sustenance, they now had something very valuable to protect. Their lives depended on farm land, animals, and crops. The notions of property, state, law and quite possibly economics can be traced back to the early agrarian villages. What’s more, in time the shift to agriculture made cities and empires possible. With the first crops came questions that did not previously exist. Who manages the land, animals and crops? How will the area be protected from other humans and pests? If there was a surplus of food, should it be traded and who acquired the wealth?
In most cases development come with a cost; the adoption of agriculture was no exception. As you can imagine, the life of foragers was probably not an easy existence. However, it does not mean that early farmers had an easy time of it. Framing with primitive tools was hard work and as societies emerged a hierarchy was created. This usually meant that a large group of people toiled for the benefit of the higher class. I can’t help but think that if it were not for agriculture, would slavery have existed in the same way? And let’s not forget the fate of farm animals, who in effect, have been enslaved for thousands of years. At the hands of humans, some of these animals have been subjected to cruelties too numerous to mention.
For much of human history, tradition was the authority. The rules were set by the state or the religion of the time and they were strictly enforced. During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church was the unquestioned intellectual authority. Free expression of ideas was not tolerated and the main source of knowledge was church doctrine. This not only applied to spiritual matters, but also to nature and the universe. 
Galileo’s confrontation with the church is well-known and is an iconic turning point in history. For 1500 years the church supported an earth-centered model of the universe; it was considered heresy to challenge this view. In 1632, Galileo published his most famous work, 
If there was any doubt that science could explain the world, by the time Isaac Newton was done it had been dispelled. According to some present scientists, Newton was the most brilliant scientist that ever lived. In 1687, he published the 
The first step was to discover the laws that governed the universe. Then gradually it became apparent that nature could be manipulated for man’s benefit. Science had a say in the philosophical questions by challenging long-held beliefs, but it also changed humanity’s way of life. In the last 500 years the world has seen more changes than any other time period. This is mainly due to the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial and Technological Revolutions that followed.
The origin of science is generally credited to the ancient Greeks, starting around 500 BC. There were surely other civilizations that applied scientific thinking, as cultures often evolve similar methods independently. It is well-known that other cultures tracked the motion of the stars and natural cycles. For example, Stonehenge and the Pyramids at Giza are aligned according to solar alignments at specific times of the year. In order to build these and other ancient sites, some fairly advanced technology would have been required. It is also possible that some discoveries and knowledge have been lost through the ages. One can conceive a number of ways this could happen, such as poor documentation, political strife, religious suppression and various conflicts.
The Pythagorean Theorem also originates from Ionia, stating the mathematical relationship between the three sides of a right triangle (the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides); the theorem is named after 
The early scientists were as much philosophers as anything else. In fact, the term scientist was only coined in the 1800s (previously they were called natural philosophers). The Greeks’ method for describing patterns and principles in nature was mainly through reasoning. In other words, they had the idea that natural laws existed, but had not yet devised a method for testing them. Either they did not see it necessary to provide experimental evidence for their conclusions, or they believed it was fundamentally beyond their capabilities to do so. Or maybe they thought it was sufficient to understand the world by reason alone.
Memes are the cultural equivalence of biological genes. The term meme was coined by 
Mathematics is a meme of numbers, symbols and diagrams. It is more accurately copied than language, because there is less ways it can be altered. 2 plus 2 will always equal 4. There is an order in mathematics that is self-correcting, although concepts evolve over time with new applications. Language, music and mathematics are coded information that are replicated and evolve in human brains.
A sport is an example of a well-established meme-complex. The North American culture is fascinated with sports on a daily basis. Many play sports at local venues; many more watch sports at stadiums and on televisions. What memes could be working together? How about this list: (memes for running, throwing and catching), (memes for competing, winning and losing), (memes for watching, cheering and analyzing). Any stable and self-replicating cultural norm will consist of mutually beneficial memes.
The cultural enterprises that have dominated human life contain large numbers of memes. Such examples are: religion, war, agriculture, kingdoms, art, music, politics, nationalism and science. No one can tell if the history-making memes (or meme-complexes) took the best course of action for humanity. Some did and others did not. Nevertheless, they had the attributes to enter human brains and to be imitated. Our modern culture is formed by memes with the same qualities as the historical memes. That is, copying fidelity, with variation, and wide-spread selection from the meme pool.
Then there are the big decisions, which can alter the course of one’s life. Good or bad outcomes often follow based on the decisions we take. For example: The partner we choose, the career we pursue and unforeseen events that will force us to choose the next path. As the saying goes: “When you reach a fork in the road, take it.”
What do we mean when we say free will? Free will is the idea that we have the ability to make decisions independent of our genetics and conditioning. Another way to think about free will is the belief that we could have done differently than we did in a given circumstance. And likely, the only way we could have done differently, is if we were different at the time. That is, if our genetics and conditioning were different.
As an observer one has to wait and see how the balls will collide and bounce around, but it can only turn out one way. It was all determined by the brake and the way the table was setup. The movement of the billiard balls are a consequence of the characteristics of the balls, the break and the nature of the table. One could say that it is a closed system; after the initial conditions nothing can intervene in the process.
It was the development of complex language and social structures that set them apart from other humans. They could communicate everyday practical information, such as where and how to hunt and gather berries. In addition, myths, gods, legends and religions emerged at this time. Whether fact or fiction, storytelling allowed large groups to unite and work for a common cause. Stories also made it possible to pass on knowledge and wisdom to the next generation.
What is the best way to know how something works? A good place to start is with a well thought out question. And then we can proceed in looking for the answer. The scientific method could be described as the process between the question and the answer. Science arrives at answers by observation and experimentation. Scientists can make predictions that nature will behave in a certain way based on observation (known as a hypothesis). Then the experiments will either confirm or disprove the original hypothesis. If the hypothesis is verified then it becomes a theory. The theory is then subjected to analysis by other scientists, and if it holds up, it becomes accepted as scientific knowledge.
We now know about microorganisms and their role in disease and infection. We have a greater understanding of weather systems and can reasonably predict their effects. The discovery of electricity has eased our way of life significantly. The unlocking of the atom has made possible a multitude of information technologies. This is but a sample of what scientific discovery means for us.
THE LANDSCAPE OF REALITY 