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Aristotle wrote: “philosophy begins in wonder.” This idea included in the
word “wonder” is not a simple curiosity about the world or the nature of
reality. It is a state of being that Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great 20th
century rabbi, called “radical amazement.” This is the state of openness that
comes upon us when we are open to the great mysteries of life and our
existence. We do this personally and we do it culturally. But where did all of
these thoughts originate? They were created in the minds of people who
knew how to ask the great questions. Allowing yourself to experience the
state of wonder fosters the great questions. Today’s lecture is based on the
wonderful book: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. To
be alive! How amazing! To be aware of being alive, to be able to reflect and
think, how utterly amazing it is. It seems unfortunate that we can so easily
forget how unbelievable it is to be alive and aware. To come back into touch
with this feeling is to enter the state of wonder that is the beginning of
philosophy.
We don’t know why we exist. Why did the universe organize itself in such a
way that I (that we) can be aware of it? The state of wonder begins in me
when I really let in the fact that my aliveness is sustained by atomic particles
that are themselves not alive! It amazes me that no energy is lost, it just
takes on new forms. What disintegrates in one form reassembles in another
form. I sometimes wonder if this knowledge is not somehow embedded deep
in us as an instinct, and that is where we get all of our ideas about eternal
life. We experience birth and death on a certain level, but in reality things
just change. In fact, one of the few things you can really know for yourself
with real confidence is the Buddhist notion of impermanence. Nothing stays
the same and everything is always changing.
Why is there something rather than nothing? In fact, Aristotle found this
question so disturbing that he could not tolerate it and simply decided that
the universe was eternal. But this only begs the question of how there could
be anything at all that had no beginning…
What are the chances of this universe happening? So small it is almost
impossible to imagine. As a result some see the hand of a divine intelligence
most call God but others simply see that given infinite opportunities and
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infinite big bangs the numbers were bound to eventually turn up “right.” I
certainly have no idea how it all happened. My purpose in sharing some of
these figures with you is not to make any claims but to simply allow
amazement and wonder to creep up on us all. Who knows how it happened?
What is truly stunning is that it happened at all and we are all here together
today to think about this!
How big is our universe? We don’t actually know! Part of the problem is
that we can only trace the outskirts from the light that reaches us, but there
could be quite a bit more light that has not reached us yet. Just looking up at
the stars at night is a good way to get in touch with wonder, but then think
about what you are seeing. So many stars! Who can tell how many planets
there might be? So much room for just about anything, and yet, as far as we
can tell, we are the only intelligent life around. Chances are there is life in a
universe so big, but it is a whole other question whether we will ever meet
these other life forms. It is interesting to speculate how this might change
our philosophical ideas…
Where do we come into the picture? Well we start to come into the picture
with the death of one of these trillions of stars, called a supernova. A huge
explosion threw out an immense quantity of matter into the universe and this
matter eventually settled into our solar system. The Earth eventually formed
an atmosphere, one that we could not survive in today, but one that allowed
life to develop slowly but surely. The Earth continued to form for perhaps
500 million years. It was not a pleasant place for any number of reasons, but
this process would eventually lead to creatures 4 billion years later who
could begin to ask the questions about how it all began, which led to the
birth of philosophy.
Our atomic nature becomes animate. This is astounding. “Dirt gets up and
writes poetry” is how the philosopher Ken Wilber describes this
transformation. The life of a cell is a whole cosmos unto itself. This is the
amazing thing about modern science. Because we have increased our means
of observation through technology such as microscopes and telescopes, the
universe only gets more amazing and mysterious, not less so. This is a cause
for wonder! We have seen that a star had to die for our solar system to come
into being and now we see the sacrifice of billions of cells each day. I can
only wonder how this influences our understanding of religion…
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Philosophy begins in wonder and ends in contemplation. The contemplative
life is the philosophical life because it is the life of living in the awareness of
the great mystery that surrounds us.