• Question: What is the meaning of life?

    Asked by AaronF4M to Mark, Linda, Koi, Franco, Claire on 20 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Franco Falcone

      Franco Falcone answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      @AaronF4M Difficult question and the answer will be different depending on who is answering it – if there is an answer at all!. It also depends on whether you mean the meaning of human life, or more in general. I cannot comment from a religious point of view. Science itself does not really answer such questions: science will tell you HOW something works but not WHY, at least not what you mean by why in your question. Of couse a ball will fly if you kick it bebecause kinetic energy has been transfeerd to it, it will fall because or gravity, etc. but all of that is how, not why.

      Biolocically, life is a nacessity, not a purpose. My personal answer is that the meaning of life is the meaning that you decide to give to your life, which very much puts you in control!

    • Photo: Claire Bourke

      Claire Bourke answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      If you like Douglas Adam’s very funny sci fi book ‘the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy’, then the answer would be ’42’! But, even the imaginary supercomputer that came up with the answer in that story didn’t know what the original question was, so the number doesn’t make sense on its own!

      In the real-world your question will always be an interesting one because there is no single answer and it is up to us, with the one life that we have, to come up with a meaning and a purpose if we want to. Science is all about asking questions and trying to find a way to answer them in a systematic way, for me that is quite a meaningful process to try and get closer and closer towards understanding the world around us, but there are loads of meaningful ways to spend your time.

      Perhaps this is a question for philosophy at the moment, but who knows, maybe one day there will be a scientific experiment or a supercomputer like the one that Douglas Adams imagined that can solve the mystery for us!

    • Photo: Mark Booth

      Mark Booth answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      Hi Aaron

      I like the response I heard when Prof Brian Cox was asked about the origin of life. He said it was ‘inevitable’. In other words, the events that happened in the early stages of the universe set in motion processes that eventually led to life. If this is the case, then really we should be asking if the Universe has any meaning. I draw a blank on that one.

    • Photo: Arporn Wangwiwatsin

      Arporn Wangwiwatsin answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      Live, learn, grow, and embrace changes.

      that is for me
      😉

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