More Potentially Powerful Ponderings

And the deep questions keep on coming - or at least they were, a couple of weeks ago.. Read below, an extract from my Formspring page (feel free to leave a question, dear blog follower):

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What is the meaning of the universe? From a physicist's perspective?

I was just about to put in a long speech about the meaning of the Universe .. but then I realized that that makes no sense. What is the Universe? It is the physical realm within which we perceive our existence - it has no meaning in and of itself.

If you intended to mean the meaning of Life, I could say 42 and leave it at that.

Remember, the question "Why do we exist?" can have two meanings:
1) Why are we physically capable of existing?
2) What is the ultimate goal of our existence?
1) The point of physics is not to actually find a meaning for existence; rather, it is to (ideally) find a unifiable set of laws that completely and unequivocally explain all physical phenomena within the known universe, and, perhaps, even beyond.
In other words, physics aims to answer the first interpretation of that question "Why do we exist?".
While it is not meant to answer the questions of sentience or consciousness, I would not be surprised if it offers some explanation in those regards.

2) But the second, more controversial interpretation of the question - that's what philosophy and religion are for (or better yet - an unbiased, but discerning mind).

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To further clarify (or more accurately, to reiterate), the question "Why do we exist?" consists of the two components How and What, which are completely independent of each other. Specifically:

1) How is existence physically possible?

2) What is the ultimate goal of existence?

1) As answered above, the How component is the question that the ever-evolving fields of sciences hope to explain. It is somewhat clarified by this comic, courtesy of XKCD:

2) The What component is the one that inspires so much of the controversy we love. All them religious fanatics have no other answer than "to worship God", or "to get to heaven", or some other idealistic fantasy that doesn't really lend itself to logical evaluation. Of course, I believe in some of that illogical crap too, albeit in my own science-influenced way that would probably guarantee me death stares in more conservative circles.

However, something that not many people think about is a minor corollary to said existential question: namely, what is the definition of existence? How do we know we exist?

Perhaps we should take the example of The Ruler of the Universe and just all be solipsists .. but even then, how could we be sure of consciousness?

As always, I'm open to comments.

-- Everything's Relative.