Why am I here? Did you ever think deeply about that? The
words themselves aren’t difficult. On the face of it the phrase simply means,
of all the places I could be, what things transpired to cause me to end up here
rather than somewhere else? What decisions did I make throughout my life that
resulted in the path I walked from my childhood until now?
The aforementioned are all great questions which could lead
to a wonderful discussion and might be fodder for later posts, but that isn’t
the direction I wanted to go with today’s edition. I guess what I really mean
is, why do I exist? What is my purpose, if any?
In college, I took and introduction to philosophy course. I
don’t remember much from the class except that the professor, Dr. John Hall (no
relation), had a phenomenal vocabulary and required that any philosophical
argument must begin with a definition of the words used. So, Dr. Hall, in
deference to you let me begin there.
I will assume that the words why, do, and I are universally
understood and that we all mean the same thing when we use them. But the word “exist”
is different. I think I know what it means until I try to explain it. For
example, I might say, “to exist means to be present in the real world”. So, I could
hug my wife and in a moment of passionate inspiration exclaim, “I’m totally
astounded that someone as perfect as you could exist!” Now that might put some
chips in the love bank, but does it make sense in light of my definition of
exist?
- OK, so the average mass of a man in the United States is 87kg.
- A realistic estimate of the number of atoms in the human body is 7x10^27 (7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
- The average volume of this average man is about the same number as his mass, 87 liters or 3 cubic feet.
- Now, how much of that 87 liters contains the actual material of which the man is made? Well, most of the volume of an atom is empty space – space that contains nothing! In fact, an atom is about 99.9999999999996%empty space!
- This means the volume of space containing the stuff that man is made of amounts to nearly .000000348 cubic millimeters or 348 cubic micrometers. Wow!! A human being doesn’t take up much space at all!
Hey, that was fun but where did it get us? Let’s now consider
what these tiny atoms are made of.
This reminds me of
that old rhyme:
What are
little boys made of?
What are
little boys made of?
Snips and
snails
And
puppy-dogs' tails
That's what
little boys are made of
What are
little girls made of?
What are little
girls made of?
Sugar and
spice
And all
things nice
That's what
little girls are made of
What are little atoms made of? To the best of our knowledge today, atoms are
made of electrons, protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are made of up-quarks,
down-quarks, and gluons. Electrons, quarks, and gluons (as well as some other
particles) are considered by most experts to be elementary particles (particles that can't be broken into anything smaller). According
to quantum theory, elementary particles can be considered as little tiny vibrating“strings”. And strings are tiny chunks of vibrating energy that are continually
jumping in and out of existence. You might say they exist and don’t exist at
the same time.
Ahh….since that man is made of gazillions of tiny strings that
sometimes exist and sometimes don’t, he must be both here and not here at the
same time! Some quantum physicists say that the act of observing a particle
causes it to exist. I guess that means there must be some Observer paying
attention to the man to cause him to exist! Now, Who could that be?
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