The Mystery of Life

Everyday almost everyone will wake up, work, eat, and then they keep repeating. This is the reality for most of us, but why? What is all of this for? The real question is, Can science explain life? There was a public debate with this guy who said he thinks one day we will merge with computers and eventually in the end, nothing will remain hidden and all the facts of the world will be exposed. If you were to ask me if science can explain life I think eventually it will. Scientists have already developed the technique of reduction to see the building blocks of life, they still find it difficult to fully understand. Reduction means looking for explanations or successful predictive descriptions of a system by focusing on its smaller constitutive element. “The frontier now seems to be understanding life as a complex adaptive system.” This means that one in which organization and cause occur on many levels. Although, information may play an essential role in ways that don’t occur in non-living systems. But the question still remains, “ Will this ongoing process of explanatory refinement exhaust the weirdness of being alive or the mystery of life?”

Personally I don’t think it would do either. This is because experience is always more important than the explanation. We are the people who invented the process of science to understand the patterns around us. I believe we do this to try to gain control of the world around us. The way that experience is always more important than the explanation is because explanations always take some particular aspect of lived experience and separate it out. For example, if someone was to test a theory and do experiments on them, then give you a paper with all the words and numbers to you, it wouldn’t be an experience. This is because the person with the explanations hasn't experienced it yet but the person with the experience can also explain as well and that is why experience is always more important than the explanation. Although explanations may help in specific situations, they can never exhaust the ongoing revelation that is the mystery of life.

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” This quote doesn’t diminish science in any way. This is just saying that because our experience of science makes us want to learn more about it. For example, when you figure out why the sky may be blue or why blood appears red. In conclusion, the answer to the question would be yes life is a mystery but it doesn’t mean we have to be left in ignorance. We can know the mystery of life but not with words, explanations, etc., but by living it thoroughly with body, heart, and mind.