Big Questions

Inspired by Mohammad's post (1) "توی سرم جا نمیشه " I decided to write a few words on "Big Questions". Not that I feel the need to add a note to his post; or agree or disagree with him, but mostly because I want to express the same issue from my own point of view.(2,3)

At any epoch through the history, human kind has always been struggling with a set of "Big Questions" concerning the meaning of life, why we are here, where we come from and where we are going. The form of these questions are subject to change as is human's knowledge. What used to be considered a deep question -as Mohammad was quoting from "Isaiah Berlin", a problem beyond our time- thousands of years ago is not necessarily a deep question today.

However, there has never been a human with no "Big Question". These "Big Questions" are strongly time, place and society dependent. By studying the mythologies, the religions and the traditions of ancient societies we learn about what kind of "Big Questions" they have been struggling with. This is intimately tied with the long history of metaphysics in human societies. The pyschological need to find answers to big questions is, in fact, responsible for the creation of if not all, most of religions, traditions and superstitions we have seen through the history as well as a more reason-based intellectual approach called philosophy.(4)

Wikipedia defines: "Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument."
This critical, systematic approach is the crucial feature that differentiates between philosophy and the other approaches to addressing big questions. Here, the emphasis is on the proper use of reason or logic.
Wikipedia:
"The concept 'reason' is closely related to the concepts of language and logic, as reflected in the multiple meanings of the Greek word "logos", the root of logic, which translated into Latin became "ratio" and then in French "raison", from which the English word "reason" was derived."
(4)

Not only societies have never been ignorant of this psychological need of human being, but also they have tried to feed individuals with different packaged sets of answers (beliefs). That is why the chances of a child growing in Saudia Arabia becoming a Muslim is much more than a western child.

Due to what Mohammad was calling it "Being limited to time and space" or in other words the psychological fact that we define ourselves in our societies, we subconsciously buy a lot of these packaged set of believes. The modern agnostic view point that Mohammad is talking about is one of the products of our time, the same way that Christianity and Islam were products of their time. How were the old packages such as religions different compared to the new schools of thoughts (ideologies) and how do they evolve is another long interesting story. Nevertheless, I would like to mention the importance of an attemp to re-think about these marketed packages.

The part of the society (let's call them enlightened people for the moment) which always tries to question the rules and think differently is carrying a large burden on its shoulder in the evolution of these socially imposed set of believes. The enlightened people are inevitably struggling with questions beyond their time.

In a large scale, out of these movement comes the renaissances and movements that help us improve the instructions that we sell to the people as a guide to life. The laws of our societies are intimately related to the these set of beliefs. As a recent example of this, one can name how homosexuality turned from a crime and a psychological disorder to an acceptable behaviour in some societies today.

I said all this to say a few words on the nature of the "Big Questions" scientists are struggling with. However, I think I would pass for now. Hopefully, I will come back and continue this note some other time.


1) Roughly translates to "Can't wrap my head around it."
2) I have to apologize to my Iranian friends who might be reading this post for switching to English.
3) I wish I could latex this! \footnote{...}
4) I wish I had kept myself updated enough so that instead of refering to wikipedia repetitively, I could have refered to more original sources.