Does scientific advancement make life seem pointless – why?

What is the point? The more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless This quote of scientist Steven Weinberg points to a fundamental paradox that is eating away at the core of the scientific quest for knowledge which is eating away ultimately the core of humanity subjecting it to an existential crisis What is that paradox? Science originally started off as a search as an attempt to make sense of the world around us In the incident that is said to have started off the engine of science Newton saw or felt whichever version of the story we wish to accept a fruit falling and he asked the question What made this fruit fall? When he asked this question it was his intelligence by which he came up with the answer in the form of the theory of gravity but the very question signifies or implies an assumption that Newton felt that things don't happen by chance. There is a pattern and orderliness in nature Apples don't just fall down in a disorderly random way. There has to be some cause for them to fall and this cause was what he pointed out with the theory of gravity So science started off as a quest for making sense of the observed world around us and in fact science progresses on this very assumption when scientists make some observations which don't make sense according to the current theories that they have then they try to expand their theories so that things can make sense again Newtonian physics which is also called as classical physics worked very well for nearly three centuries but by the middle of the by the start of the 20th century they there were two dark storms looming on the horizon the black body radiation and the phenomena associated with it were not being explained nor was the motion of very large celestial objects explained when they were moving very fast and for explaining these science did not reject its presumption that things could be explained rather it came up with new theories the theory of quantum physics and the theory of relativity Now as we are moving forward here what Stevens Wienberg indicates the more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless what it means is if we extend the explanatory net that science casts on the world to make sense of it we make sense of more and more things but we can't make sense of our very existence why do we exist at all? what is the purpose of life? are we just some parcels of protoplasm just flapping around for a few moments in between two points of birth and death we can be killed at any moment by a bug or a bank and is life just meant for casual destruction we all intuitively feel that our life is meaningful even small decisions in our life often we put a lot of time and thought in making those decisions because we want our life to be meaningful science itself started off as a quest for as a quest for meaning in a world that seemed disorderly if we extend the scientific world view beyond its scope then we end up with this paradox that we have islets of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness why do apples fall down? why do things fall down? because of the law of gravity why do the objects move in the space, celestial objects? it's by the laws of motion we have explanations for various things in the world but we have no explanation for the world so we have islets of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness some people respond to this by saying that actually there is no meaning to life and we just have to accept that however this is a truth claim it is not a truth it is a claim to the truth of meaninglessness and it runs antithetical to both the spirit of human search for knowledge as embodied in science and as embodied in the rest of our lives so science by its very method looks for material explanations for material phenomena if there is any non-material element involved science by its very definition as it operates today in the mainstream world doesn't look for that explanation if someone goes fishing and they cast a fishing net which has holes of the size 1 inch by 1 inch they may cast the hole they may cast the fishing net in a pond filled with aquatic life they may cast the fishing net there for a hundred years but they will never catch any aquatic life that is smaller than 1 inch by 1 inch it is not that such life doesn't exist that net is not equipped to catch that form of life similarly science casts a net for acquiring knowledge around the world and this net is very powerful when it comes to looking for material explanations for material phenomena but what about non-material realities the human search for meaning is a non-material quest and rather than dismissing the quest by saying that the universe is meaningless in the same scientific spirit of expanding our theory to explain that which cannot be understood we can open ourselves to other branches of knowledge and spirituality is one such branch which offers answers to life's big questions who am I? where does my consciousness come from? why do we have a longing to love and be loved? what is the point of life? all such questions are what spirituality endeavors to answer and Francis Bacon, one of the pioneers of the scientific method he said that the world should not be shrunk down to the human understanding human understanding should be expanded to accommodate the reality of the world so we are not scientists we are human beings on a search for knowledge where science offers us knowledge we enrich ourselves with that knowledge where science doesn't offer us answers we as human beings need to be open minded enough to explore other branches of knowledge which enrich our life with meaning Einstein himself had this open mindedness when he said that all the arts, the sciences and the religions are fruits of the same tree the tree of the human quest for knowledge when that human quest for knowledge looks for material explanations for material phenomena, we have science and when it looks for non material explanations for non material realities that is when religion or spirituality comes up the differentiation between religion and spirituality with religion acquiring the word religion acquiring a negative connotation and spirituality a positive connotation that is a recent phenomenon at the time of Einstein, religion had the same connotation which spirituality has today so in this series we will discuss life's big questions and how science points towards some answers beyond the non material and what those answers may be, we will draw on an ancient eastern tradition of yoga to get a broad picture that brings together the evidence towards which science points in a coherent home so we can expand our understanding in the spirit of science beyond the reach of science through opening ourselves to spirituality that is what we will discuss in this series, thank you.