The meaning of life

While living in our everyday life or thinking about things in general, we hardly look for the meaning of things in deeper sense. Life is so dense and vibrant that we neither have the urge nor the inclination to go beyond the line that borders between life’s function and philosophy. But inevitably for us, at one time or another, we can’t but be somewhat philosophical about life. So if you have some time to spare and if you are interested in wasting that, let’s ask the age-old question again: what’s really the meaning of life?

In most of the cases this type of question arises in times of despair, or loneliness, when our everyday life is not engaging enough or not fulfilling enough to keep us ashore. Our mind might wish to take a voyage in the sea of thoughts and it’s tempting to take the boat of philosophy. In search for the meaning of life, everyone can be a philosopher. And everyone has his/her own point of view. 

For many philosophers and humanists, the meaning of life is to serve the humanity. They say, the meaning lies in helping other people; the meaning is in dedicating oneself for others. But this is an odd answer, if you really think about it. If the meaning of my life is not within my life but others’ and the meaning of their lives are also not within their lives but others’, then this is a very unsatisfactory situation. How does it make ones ‘own’ life meaningful? If my meaning of life lies within you and your meaning of life lies within me; then what’s the meaning of ‘our’ lives?

Many people will say that believing in God and afterlife gives the ultimate meaning to life. But even taking this for granted, never ends the quest for meaning. What is the meaning of life in the eternal afterlife? Is the life in earth meaningless itself? If meaning of life here is found in the afterlife, then where can the meaning of life in afterlife be found?

Some people would argue that life has no meaning at all. Whereas this answer might put an abrupt end to our quest; this is not a very satisfactory answer. Indeed, if life has no meaning then what’s the point of living?

Now let’s change our point of view and ask one different question: What’s the meaning of ‘meaning’? This is in fact a serious question because when we are going to ask for the ‘meaning’ of life we must first define what ‘meaning’ is. In language the meaning of a word is what it refers to. So when one wants to find the meaning of life – one must define what ‘his/her life’ refers to.

But the meaning of a word also depends on the context of the language. A word of one language might be meaningless in another. So what something refers to actually depends on the context. Thus the meaning of a particular thing depends on the context it is being used within. Well, what is the context of life? As far as we are concerned, our life encompasses everything. It is like, every English word has a meaning under the context of English language, but what is the meaning of ‘English’?

So it can be clearly seen that the meaning of life can never be within life itself. We need a bigger context of which life is a part. The meaning of life is what life refers to in a bigger context - bigger and larger than life.
But the quest for a bigger context might not be the ultimate solution as it seems. If life has a meaning under a bigger context then what is the meaning of that bigger context? A greater context? This leads to an unbreakable chain.

While we are asking the meaning or purpose of life we should also take a look on what’s the purpose of asking this question? Why do we need a ‘meaning’ of life? Do we need a meaning of life? Well, perhaps we do. Everyone who is living a life must have a purpose behind or they would cease to live. But perhaps this ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ never needs to be anything of ‘grand’ genuineness for most of us. So when we ask the question about what is the meaning of life – it is not generally to find a ‘real’ answer.

One of the important meanings of parents’ lives (hopefully) is to see their sons/daughters prosper, the meaning of Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s lives is perhaps to consume the whole internet by using their garage project turned tech giant Google, the aim of a day laborer might be to serve the daily bread to his family, for an actor to win an Oscar… of course for our philosophical mind these answers won’t suffice. But that’s only until we are blown away by life’s motion - from the high tower of philosophy to the practical ground of everyday.

In reality, when we are hungry we don’t seek the meaning of hunger, we seek food. Similarly, as we live our life, we don’t actually need to attach any grand meaning with it, we just need to decide how to live through it.

The everyday purpose of life, no matter how fake that really is, lies within small works, bits of accomplishments and failures and the way we choose to live. For anyone who has never ever thought about life’s meaning, life sill has a meaning. He/she knows it somewhere but perhaps has never felt necessary to rigorously pin-point that yet.  

However, there will always be some stubborn individuals who insist for a meaning of life; the ‘real’ meaning. But first of all, the ‘real’ meaning, if there is any, is most probably beyond our comprehension. Or perhaps the real ‘meaning’ is in fact too absurdly complex to mean anything useful to us.

We generally try to find the meaning of life (if we), only when we need to proclaim a sense of self purpose to our selves or when we face any self-crisis in defining our goal. Throughout our life there will be multiple times when we may need to rediscover life’s meaning- consciously or subconsciously. The point is, that really never needs to be the ‘real’ meaning.

The important question is not, “What is the meaning of the life?” but “Why we need a meaning of life?” and “What we intend to do with it?” For most of us there is one or another casual answer in our mind. But if we are being too indulged with this, the easiest solution is to make up a choice for the meaning.

Even most philosophers do this. So do the launchers of religious faiths. All philosophies, religions and perhaps even the greatest endeavors of human minds are aimed towards the quest to know the meaning. But this is an unquenchable thirst unless you define your water and drink it! 

At the end of the day, we must bid farewell to philosophy. The meaning of life is the meaning we give to it.

The fundamental theorem of Arithmatic

We begin with Chemistry. There are about 118 basic elements. All other elements are actually combinations of those basic elements. There is an analogy of this fact in number theory. We know the basic rules for combining natural numbers to create new ones are: Addition and Multiplication. For example let us take two numbers 2 and 3. By adding them we can create 5 and by multiplying we have 6. According to our analogy there should be some ‘basic’ numbers which can be combined by addition to create all other natural numbers. Similarly there should be some ‘basic’ numbers which can be combined by multiplication to create all other numbers.

For addition, that number is simply 1. By combining 1 under the rule of addition we can create any other natural number. For example: we can get 12 by adding twelve 1s.

For multiplication, things are quite interesting. Suppose we take 12. How can we make 12 by multiplication? It seems that there are more than one way to do so. Let’s try:
12 = 1 X 12
= 2 X 6
= 3 X 4
= 2 X 6
Now, we try to break 12 into more ‘elementary’ parts. And we see that all of the above ways can be written as, 12 = 2 X 2 X 3. 12 cannot be resolved into any other smaller factors. (By the way, we are excluding 1, because multiplying with 1 doesn’t change anything.)

There are two things to note in above example:
(a) As we have already broken 12 into smallest pieces, the numbers 2 and 3 can never be resolved into any smaller pieces.
(b) No matter how we try to break 12, if we want to find the smallest factors, we always end up getting two 2s and one 3.

So, clearly there are some ‘basic’ natural numbers such that, by combining them by multiplication we can create any other natural number. And these ‘basic’ numbers themselves cannot be created by multiplying other numbers. (This is similar to the fact that the basic elements in chemistry can be combined to create any other elements but the basic elements themselves cannot be created by combining other elements.) These numbers are called Prime numbers.

Thus, we conclude that:
(i) prime numbers are numbers which cannot be resolved into any smaller factors (other than themselves and 1).
(ii) every natural numbers (expect 1) can be factored into a product of primes.
(iii) prime factors of any natural number (except 1) is unique. (For example: 15 = 2 X 5, and there is not another way to multiply primes to create 15)

Every natural numbers, other than the prime numbers, are called Composite numbers; for obvious reason. All composite numbers are (exactly) divisible by at least one prime number. But there is an important exception. That is 1. 1 is neither a prime number nor a composite number. (Unfortunately, there exists ambiguity concerning whether 1 is prime or not. Here we are following the definition of prime which excludes 1.)

Finally, following above discussion, here is the statement of The fundamental theorem of Arithmetic:
Every natural number greater than 1 either is prime itself or is the product of prime numbers. Although the order of the primes in the second case is arbitrary, the primes themselves are not. For example:
1200 = 24 X 31 X 52 = 3 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 5 X 5 = 5 X 2 X 3 X 2 X 5 X 2 X 2 = etc.
The theorem is stating two things: first, that as 1200 is not a prime, it can be represented as a product of primes, and second, no matter how this is done, there will always be four 2s, one 3, two 5s, and no other primes in the product.

We started this post with an analogy to Chemistry. As we know there is a finite number of basic chemical elements, it is natural to ask whether there is only a finite number of primes or an infinite number of of primes. The answer is given brilliantly by Euclid. And we conclude this post by giving his argument.

Suppose there is a finite number of primes and the number of primes is N. Then the primes are p1 , p2 , …. , pN. Where pN is the largest prime. Now we construct a number C such that C = p1 X p2 X ….. X pN + 1. We see this number is not divisible by any of the primes p1 , p2 , …. , pN (there will always be a remainder 1). So this number C is another prime number. And certainly C > pN. This violets our assumption that pN is the largest prime. So there cannot be just N number (ie a finite number) of primes. Thus, there must be infinitely many primes.

What is 'that' color?

What’s your favorite color? From our childhood, it’s a question we are very familiar with. 
We have given names to colors and when we ask someone about his or her favorite color we expect to hear a name. But what does the name of a color signify?
That might seem a silly question. So let's dig deeper.

What do you understand when you hear the word "green"? Well you understand a specific color. Color of the trees, as a general example. But what is the color of the trees? Green. Now, I hope you are noticing the circular logic here. What is the universal detonation of the color green?

A scientific mind will probably end this silly discussion just by saying – the color green denotes a certain range of wavelength in the visible area of the electromagnetic wave spectrum. No doubt that's a precise definition. But here the issue is not precision but perception. 

Before I write any more, let me jump ahead, and say what I will be trying to convince you about.
Color might be a subjective opinion. 

And here is the explanation why it might be so:

Let’s assume two people named A and B.
Now A is a normal everyday person. He sees all colors normally.
B has a strange eye problem (by birth). She sees any green color as blue and any blue color as green.
The interesting question is: Can A ever find out that B sees the world differently than him?
The answer is no. 

Let’s think a bit. From her birth B sees the trees (or any green thing) blue. But she have been taught to call the trees (or any other similar colored thing) as green. So even if she sees the trees as blue in general, she will call that color green. Similarly she sees the sky green, but as she is taught from her childhood she calls that "green" blue.

So A and B both say the sky is "blue", even though they see it in different color!

Thus thinking on this topic logically suggests that color can be a subjective opinion. Though we are not saying it is so, we are just pointing out that, in fact if color is subjective, we wont be able to find out!

How do you see the world? Maybe your trees are red and sky is yellow?…  You won’t ever know.

A Newton's third law paradox?

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