July 19, 2005

Nature's Absudity

Here's an interesting passage from an Eric Cohen essay on embryonic research:

In the age of modern science, therefore, we must confront the fact that nature is both orderly and absurd: Nature is orderly, in the sense that we can understand how many biological systems work and how they fail, and we can often use this rational knowledge to fix them. But nature is absurd, in the sense that sickness strikes some individuals and not others for no apparent reason—a fact made dramatically clear by the young faces in the cancer ward.

I think this dovetails with my evolution/creationism post from last week. I hold dearly to the idea of God's mystery in the universe. I wrote,

I take the story of Genesis on faith. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Being able scientifically to "prove" God's existence or His ability to mold the world robs faith of its importance.

With reason Man can grasp a portion of nature's order. It's the absurdity that throws us off. All of us seek to understand the world around us. But reason has its limits. As F.A. Hayek writes,

[T]he liberal is very much aware that we do not know all the answers and that he is not sure that the answers he has are certainly the rights ones or even that we can find all the answers.

Many of us just need to accept the fact that we won't find what we're looking for.

"The Tragedy of Equality"