ANALYSIS of a QUOTE

ANALYSIS of a QUOTE
by Manfred F. Schieder

"'You cannot prove that you exist or that you're conscious,' they chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of the knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved."

(From Galt's Speech in "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand)

A quote of mine, originally published on the pages of Rebirth of Reason and preceding my article "Gustave Courbet and 'The Origin of the World'", originated some misunderstanding among several readers. It is a nutshell-statement that, I agree to this, may require some pondering.

The quote, which for the purpose of the article I prefixed by a conditional, states the following:

"If for any focus at all, the world exists for us human beings. It is not we who exist for the world, as the enemies of mankind would have it, for a world without humans lacks every sense of existence."

In view of the bewilderment involved, I decided to provide a full analysis of the statement. This will further clear the high importance of the quote itself and give me, in addition, the opportunity to construct a theorem that follows at the end of this article but which I recommend the reader to view only after reading the analysis itself.

Even the conditional prefix of the quote ("If for any focus at all") and the use of the word "sense" in the quote produced incomprehension. Thus, I will start by repeating the explanation for both as I gave it in the thread following the article on Gustave Courbet.

By "If for any focus at all" I used the conditional in the sense of meaning "If there exists any reason for its existence at all, the world exists for us human beings" and the word "sense" was, of course, not used to mean "feeling" but merely as a synonym of "meaning".

Having done this I will now "disembowel" the full quote:

If for any focus at all, the world exists for us human beings

Is matter only inanimate matter? No, of course not. In the correct amount and arrangement it reaches the behavior of animate, i.e. living matter. Does this involve anything like an "intelligent design" or some other mystic miracle and so forth? Not at all. It is merely the myriad of possibilities presented by the physical and chemical laws inherent to matter and operating so that matter behaves in the manner or capacity of what we call life. And we, matter, can give it a name, a denomination, because one of the capacities of living matter presents itself as thinking matter, as matter not just able to perceive its surroundings, as an amoeba would do, but able to evaluate, i.e. analyze and understand other aspects of matter; to be intellectually aware of the whole range that matter can take up. This is due to the full expanse of the physical and chemical laws which are in themselves a further aspect of matter itself. All this might be quite formidable but it is in no way unusual or extraordinary, for it is simply a result of the sum of what matter is. Hartmut von Bastian , a German science historian, brought it excellently to the point when he stated: "Life is one of the possible states that matter can adopt". It's as simple as that: among the many, not infinite but still very, very many possibilities in which matter can present itself, one of them is life and, much, much further along the developing line, the evolution of a rational being.

Notice that I don't state that the world, i.e. the universe, was "created" for us human beings, as this immediately pushes the whole statement into a religious view. No, I merely state that it "exists" for us human beings in the simple sense that the evolution of matter, specifically starting from the level of "quarks" (my book "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe", published by Rebirth of Reason, incorporates in the first three chapters an explanation of the term), developed to build the correct possibility for a rational being to appear along the line and, additionally, it did so not just anywhere in the universe but only where the correct conditions for the evolution of life and, further on, of human beings were, by chance, favorably joined, which means: the correct assembly of elements, the existence of water, the general absence of catastrophes, the correct biospheric distance from a steady, long lasting G-type sun (a technical qualification of our sun), the existence of a large enough tide regulating moon, the correct range of planetary revolutions around its own axis and around the sun, etc. etc., all in all what is called "the correct conditions for life to emerge". Given these conditions, the emergence of life becomes unavoidable. Again, and briefly, given the right conditions, life and unavoidably human life will evolve, but only where the conditions are the ones required, i.e. the right ones, which are in themselves a product of the physical-chemical constitution of matter.

The above will immediately move the religious people to cry: "You see, this place was made for us, we are unique in the universe" which is, of course, total nonsense. Isaac Asimov made a very extensive, deep and very conservative analysis and estimate of the planets in our Galaxy (this involves only the Galaxy of which we are part, for there are, for all practical calculations, an infinite amount of galaxies in existence) where a technological, i.e. a civilization having rational beings, developed. Conservatively there are 390,000,000 of them in our galaxy alone. This means 390 million places where beings exist that have the capacity of perceiving, understanding, evaluating what makes up the universe and that include in their constitution the all-important characteristic of self-awareness. Will we ever be able to communicate with these other intelligent beings? Arthur C. Clarke clearly calculated this. Beyond eventual radio communication, the chances to ever meet the others or any of the others is, for all practical purposes, nil since the distances involved turn such a space travel impossible, which immediately renders flying saucers, little green men, etc. into the regions of sheer science fiction. The fact just mentioned shows additionally that most people don't even have the capacity to understand the distances, the distance problems and the limit of speed involved, this last item being for anything larger than a photon much, but much, much lower than the speed of light, which brings to mind a very good statement Carl Sagan expressed about civilization and science: "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology".

So for any reason or sense we may read into it, the universe did NOT develop by chance, because matter is blindly obliged to follow the physical and chemical laws that are inherent and part of it. Thus, it can only do what it consists of, a condition that enabled the evolution of life and hence, also - in the course of evolution - of a rational being.

So while the existence of matter IS an axiom (see Rand for a really deep analysis of this) we can read into it, because it is one of the possibilities of existence's existence, that existence allows and supports the emergence of a human being, but this is only so because it corresponds to one of the possibilities involved in the existence of matter itself, always and strictly in accordance with the conditions referred to earlier.

So that's all there is in the nutshell: "The universe exists for us human beings". As said already, given the right conditions, it couldn't be any differently. The existence of matter made the existence of a rational human being possible, but clearly remember that the universe is not a separate entity that made us but merely a synonym for all that exists, which is what made us possible. And this does not allow the existence of a "god" or any such impossibility for such an impossibility is considered to be separated from all that exists, which immediately produces the contradiction in terms of "something else" existing separately from all that exists. Further details of this are analyzed in my book "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe".

It is not we who exist for the world, as the enemies of mankind would have it…

Given the above stated first part of the statement, the headlined second part becomes unavoidable. That part of the universe - in our case the planet Earth - where the conditions developed to allow the evolution of life (here we have Darwin, Wallace et al), exists for the maintenance of life, as long as the conditions mentioned remain existing and, thus, places into our hands the continued use and maintenance of the conditions required for the existence of human beings (again, for more on this see "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe", where I speak of nature having reached the end of its line, at which time - which is now - it transferred practically all of the further evolution into our hands). Now beware and don't read this in the sense the "Greenies" mean it: we have to develop, change and use the planet's aspects and resources to make it more and more friendly to what WE require, i.e. more and more apt to sustain the continued existence of human life (for example: a better prevention of natural catastrophes, etc., etc.). Not-human life couldn't do this at all. Such type of life merely exists, it either adapts to the existing circumstances or dies in the process (again, see Rand on this when she comes to speak of the construction of dams, writing the Constitution, etc.), so we don't have to care for the continued primeval state of the planet, which is what the Greenies pretend. We do have to care (while using it for our own purposes) for the continued existence and enhancement of the conditions that fulfill and make the sustenance of our human life possible. This is diametrically opposed to what the Greenies pretend, for they even propose our elimination as a species (of course, not of the Greenies themselves, let me add) to allow the planet to continue to exist in its primeval conditions. Not only the Greenies but also all further religious groups want this, the Islam as well as the Christians and their mutual origin, the Jews, and further Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, etc. etc., since this life, as they say, is only a preparation for the true next life. It is unnecessary to take any of this nonsense seriously. With reference to the Jewish and Christian religions, these two generally keep their mouth shut about this baloney for in the meantime they have been pushed more and more into silence, particularly from the time when Thomas Aquinas used the works of Aristotle in his futile attempt of "rationally" prove the existence of "god", unaware that the consequence, the immediate connection, would be the start of the Renaissance itself.

Now let's proceed to the last part of the quote.

…for a world without humans lacks every sense of existence.

While the existence of the universe per se would merely be and, thus, have no sense at all, the reality of this one wonderful form that existence can take, LIFE (as said before one of the possible states that matter can take), lays its own heavy weight on the existence of existence itself, automatically giving it the underlying function that its existence implies the intention of providing the ground on which life can develop. This additionally implies that not just ANY live provides its reason of existence but specifically human life does. It is the implicit foundation of matter's purpose and what matter signifies.

Why? Carl Sagan, a declared atheist, gave the motive or reason for the last part of my quote. When he did he couldn't know that he would provide the foundation for the final part of my quote, but then many of the things we do develop into things whose purposes we never had in mind when we developed them (a very serious and very revealing TV-science serial named "Connections" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections (TV series) - is based on this theme). In his book "Cosmos" Sagan stated a deeply precious thought: "We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring."

Which should suffice for explanation.

Now follows the theorem that comprises all of the above:

The universe, being, by definition, ALL that exists, consists of matter conditioned by its inherent physical-chemical laws.
We human beings consist of matter and are, thus, the product and individual parts of the universe. Hence, we are in no way to be considered separated from all that exists. As products of the universe, i.e. all that exists, we evolved to reach self-awareness. Since everything that has self-awareness is in itself a purpose, we are the result of the evolution of the universe itself that has reached, through us, this state of self-awareness. In accordance, we are the purpose of the universe itself.
The universe would lose its own purpose if we (or any other organism in the universe possessing the sum of characteristics that yield the capacity of self-awareness) were to disappear. In accordance, it exists for us (and any other organism that has the capacity of self-awareness) being, by the nature of it, its own resulting purpose.

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