First off, i'll just say that i'm not a religious man. I'm quite firmly an atheist, and those are my views. I have never studied philosophy, or psychology, or anything else like that, i've only been taught chemistry, physics, maths, biology and geology. Also, the following is my own personal views and opinions, and you know what they say about opinions: "they're like arseholes, everyone has one". Finally, apologies for the essay, this is something i've been thinking about and contemplating since my dads midlife crisis, and his struggle to understand the world. This interpretation is based on my own knowledge, and also my (often vain) attempts to understand what my old man is blabbering on about.
Philosophers are great at one thing, describing perception and the mere reality of existence. philosophy tries to explain who we are and our own individual purpose in life. Now that's great for understanding what makes us human, but it's completely the wrong way to go about answering the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
You see, in order to understand the universe, you have to understand what makes it tick. This is easily described in a hierarchy of science complexity:
- Mathematics is the most basic science, and can be used to describe almost every other science.
- Physics is next, describing the make-up of matter, an explaining why matter exists. Mostly explained using maths.
- Chemistry describes how matter is made into more complex molecules, mostly using physics.
- Geology describes the laying down of matter and molecules to form planets and asteroids. Described using both chemistry and physics
- Biology describes how living matter is created. Mostly described in chemistry or physics.
Now that is probably a very basic summary of all the "real" sciences, and IMHO geology and biology fight for joint 4th place in the order of complexity.
Why is this important? Well, chemistry has a concept of entropy, where simple, "chaotic" things like hydrogen and oxygen want to combine to form a more complex form such as water. These reactions can either be exothermic, where more chaotic matter (such as hydrogen and oxygen) form a more complex molecule (like water) and release energy (in that pop when you set the hydrogen on fire) or endothermic, where energy is absorbed from the environment.
So what does entropy have to do with the meaning of the universe, and that hierarchy of science you made? Simple. We can expand the idea of entropy to a simple rule: "chaotic things want to become as complex as possible". You, this planet, and the entirety of the universe is made up of atoms wanting to become more ordered. The silicon oxides making up the sand on beaches started out as hydrogen in a star trying to become more complex. The carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and phosphates making up the tissues in your body all started out as simpler molecules bubbling around in a primeval soup millions of years ago, and that soup evolved to become living matter. That living matter became more complex as time wore on, diverging from unicellular life like microbes into more complex multicellular life. And that multicellular life evolved into plants, animals, fungi and more. And those plants, animals and fungi evolved into more complex species: Animals that walk; ones that swim; algae that photosynthesise; plants that photosynthesise; plants that eat the walking animals. This list could go on.
But millions of years later, as the universe tries to make itself more ordered, we evolve. the human race evolved for one reason only, to make our chaotic world more ordered.
Here's a simple experiment. Look at the following images of pencils. Ignoring the quality of the picture or the size, which of the the following looks best?
How about another? What is the first thing you notice about the picture below?
Humans have changed the face of our planet over the last 5000 years, and we're not likely to stop in a hurry. We've turned sprawling grasslands into uniform concrete jungles, full of perfect right angles and concrete and steel, all arranged in grid patterns as much as possible, unless confined to the geography. This is what we do, we turn less ordered matter, like bauxite and sand, into more ordered products, such as laptops and cars and skyscrapers, that we can use to better our lives.
Fundamentally, (and TL;DR) the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything isn't forty-two, it is that everything wants to become more ordered. Humans evolved out of less complex species to order the planet, and that is the meaning of life. Humanity is not the culmination of the universes ability,
just a component in what it fundamentally wants to do: make itself more ordered.And to finish things off, i'll take Defeats quote from the OP
defeat wrote:
It's to have ideas and make them reality.
Doesn't that involve taking simple raw materials and turning them into more complex forms? Clay into a pot? Pen and Paper into a novel? Wood and strings into violins? A group of violins and other musical instruments into a symphony? It's all just simple(r) things becoming more ordered. We're just a mechanism that allows the universe to do that.