by Richard G. Lanzara

Created on: May 26, 2008   Last Updated: May 28, 2008

It's always fun to try to answer this one, but to get at the absolute truth we may have to wait until the end of the universe for a definitive answer. At the end of the universe (if there is a definite end), we may not care much about the answer to this question, but I hope that there is someone who can laugh and push the restart button so that we can go around again just in case we got something wrong the first time around.

As we struggle with understanding why we might be here, we should not be too ego- or ethnocentric about it lest we make the Ptolemaic mistake that unnecessarily complicated our views of the heavens for centuries. This produced a serious setback in our attempts to understand the nature of the universe, which should be a lesson to those who attempt such theories that require layer upon layer of complexity in order to fit the universe into their theory. Not until Copernicus showed us the simpler heliocentric theory of the universe did we begin to see the errors of our Ptolemaic ways. Even today, I flatter myself by declaring that I'm a Copernican in a Ptolemaic world. Anyway, I do like to shave with Occam's razor especially when it comes to something as important as the theory of our existence.

Perhaps philosophers and even scientists are somewhat like Winston Churchill's description of the Americans during WWII. When asked how he would describe the help that the American's gave to the British, Mr. Churchill replied that they could always be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities first.

There may be some philosophers and scientists who truly believe that they are qualified to seriously answer these difficult questions and some of them may even make quite a decent living doing that without the burdensome necessity of Socratic inquiry to know themselves. At this sensitive juncture, I have to tell the gentle reader that I don't have the answer to the question so you can save yourself the few extra minutes it may take you to finish this essay and spend them in a more productive mode such as getting to know yourself or your loved ones better. However, dear reader, if you persist I shall be forced to tell you that I know almost nothing, but I do like to try to simplify past theories and ideas into ones that even I can understand and appreciate.

How might I simplify something as complex as the theory of our existence? Well one way to do this might be to say that human beings are life forms just like the other life forms

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