Will We Ever Understand the Meaning of Life?

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is there a purpose to it all? These are questions that are normally reserved for the fields of philosophy and religion, not science. Indeed, science is often thought to be in direct opposition to the existence of a meaning, design or higher purpose to our lives.

However, author and theorist John Stewart has proposed the possibility that evolution can, in fact, provide meaning to life on Earth. Stewart, who is a core member of the Evolution, Cognition and Complexity Research Group in Belgium, has theorised that we, as humans, are part of a larger evolution of life. This evolution has a purpose and a meaning, which can provide meaning to our own lives in some obscure way.

Breakneck Evolution

Recently, a study by Kári Stefánsson published in the online magazine Nature Genetics has pointed to the strong possibility that humans, as a race, have evolved much more rapidly than previously thought. By analysing the rate of DNA mutations present in a study of 753 Nordic men, the author was able to extrapolate a “molecular clock” and pinpoint a date when our universal ancestor (or “Adam”, if you will) walked the Earth.

This located Adam on the world’s timeline anywhere between 174,000 and 321,000 years ago – much more recently than previously thought. Since then, we have evolved in many ways, bringing together the disciplines of industry and technology to unite us more globally than ever before.

Societal Evolution

Such a sense of union and community is actually what lies at the crux of Stewart’s theory on the meaning of life. Stewart notes that quite aside from human globalisation, evolution has repeatedly gathered together single entities into cooperative masses on an increasingly large scale. Our mastery of communication and technology is only the most recent and notable development in this evolution.

Such a view of evolution is somewhat in opposition to the traditional “survival of the fittest” theorem. This has always maintained that direct competition between opposing species (or members of the same species) has ensured that evolution dictates which organisms thrive while other die out.

However, Stewart believes that regardless of these minor distractions, on the whole, all manner of life forms (humans included) have slowly but irresistibly come to work together for the good of the whole. He points to our journey from solo nomads to family tribes to greater clans to wider communities to cities to nations and so forth.

Universal Evolution

Eventually, Stewart predicts our communal industry expanding ever more outwards, into the solar system and beyond – where we will interact with other life forms and combine our accrued experience and knowledge. The end game of all of this inter-cooperation? A universe so in sync with itself that it is capable of reproducing more universes.

Such a thought might not offer much in the way of comfort to a lost soul searching for meaning for their life in the form of religion – but looked at from another angle, it could take the pressure off of our individual struggles. If we are just single pieces in a spectacularly grandiose jigsaw puzzle, we really needn’t worry so much.