Of Salmon, Swifts and the Purpose in Nature

One of the fundamental attitudes of the scientific account of the human species are that we are the creatures of 'chance and necessity.' This was the title of a very influential book by that name, by French Nobel Laureate in Biochemistry, Jacques Monod. Monod set out to demonstrate that man was in fact a 'biochemical fluke', a product of blind physics and chemistry, which was unlikely to be replicated even in a vast universe.



This is, of course, a basic tenet of scientific biology: that there is no question of what Aristotle would call a 'telos' or ultimate goal, or a goal of any kind, for that matter. There is neither a final, nor formal, cause in the work of the 'blind watchmaker'.

Another influential account of the materialist view was given by Bertrand Russell, in whose 'A Free Man's Worship' we are assured that life and the Universe is nothing 'but the accidental collocation of atoms':



Of course, the current champion of the scientific account of the origins of human life is Richard Dawkins, whose book, alluded to above, and many other works, provides an account of the evolution of the human shaped entirely by adaptive necessity and natural selection.

Now a question has occured to me, specifically about the notion of 'purpose', and also 'intention' - which would seem to me to be very closely related - and its place in the scientific account of life and mind.

If you ask yourself whether anything in nature 'happens for a purpose' or whether nature 'intends' to evolve, the answer is 'of course not'. We might say animals do have a purpose, namely to survive and reproduce, but this occurs in accordance with the manner described by evolutionary biology. Salmon return to their home rivers, Japanese swift to their summer haunts in Alaska, we know not how, but the instinct seems to work flawlessly, and can be explained with reference to the requirements of natural selection, acting over the course of many thousands of generations.

But this is not a conscious purpose, not in the sense that the human mind has a purpose. Neither salmon nor swift have an intention, in the sense that we understand the word. They are not intelligent in the same way that humans are, and cannot make plans, nor devise solutions to problems. They simply act according to instinct, and if their behaviours are successful, they will survive, and those slightly better adapted, are more likely to thrive and propogate.

Now I am quite inclined to accept that this is all true. What I do ask, however, is this: is the gulf between the human mind and nature so absolute, that our conscious sense of purpose, our intentions and aims are the only purposes, aims and intentions in the Universe?

In other words, why are humans the only thing in the Universe that can be said to have a purpose?

If life arises without any purpose, and animals act without any purpose, then can purpose be said to exist anywhere but in the mind?

And how, if there is no purpose in life or to evolution, can human purpose said to be anything other than personal, or, perhaps, social? In other words, even if I do have a purpose, how can it have any meaning beyond what I can persuade myself that it has, if it has no purpose in reality.

Here is an irony: the scientific account of the human species is often said to have 'removed man from the centre of the cosmos'. We are now understood to be one species among many, on one planet among many, in one galaxy among many. Whereas in all of the Sacred Cosmologies of traditional societies, humans were more or less depicted in the centre of creation, engaged in some vast cosmic drama of creation, fall and redemption.

Yet now, in this revised formula, while we might paint ourselves as being peripheral creatures in a great Cosmos, in actual fact we are declaring that ours is the only purposeful intelligence. So to that extent, we are more self-centred than ever: the human ego as the sole arbiter of purpose in a universe devoid of any purpose of its own.

But wait - it gets worse. Because in fact, there is really no reason to accept that our purposes or intentions are really any more substantial that that of the salmon, or the swift. Why? Because if our faculties, including our sense of purpose, have been shaped only by adaptive requirements, there is really no reason to think that anything we believe is 'true' in any sense other than the fact that it produces a result - which is, it appears to help us, or rather, our selfish genes. 'The neurophysiology on which our beliefs depend will doubtless be adaptive; but why think for a moment that the beliefs dependent on or caused by that neurophysiology will be mostly true? Why think our cognitive faculties are reliable?' (2)

So it may be that many exponents of the scientific explanations of human kind lack the imagination, or the thoroughness, to realise the actual implications of what they are saying. If the universe does indeed proceed without design, direction, intention, purpose, or any such characteristic or attribute, then life truly is completely absurd, as is any attempt, scientific, philosophical, or religious, to really understand it. There is nothing to understand. But this has not really been gotten by the current crop of materialists. It was much more clearly grasped by Neitszche, Dostoevski, Camus, and Sartre. (And yet, existentialism seems to have had its day as well.)

In any case, I propose another way out of this false dichotomy, the empty universe in which the sophisticated modern ego finds itself. Because I reject the division between man and nature; ultimately, I am the child of nature, and my intentions and purposes are not so different from those of swifts and salmon. Except that I am more able to reflect on them, give them conscious form and ponder their meaning. But basically, I am life made conscious. And I would like to think that this is one of the things that has driven nature to find its home river and summer feeding grounds, all these many aeons; so that I might look upon it all, and wonder. I truly believe that nature does have a purpose, and that humans indeed are a part of it; but they certainly look as though they have completely forgotten what that purpose is, and had better remember it quickly, lest nature reconsider.


Thomas Traherne.

I have not felt that feeling yet - but I think it is a true description of the greatest station in life, and it remains my intention to pursue it.

(1) A Free Man's Worship It is interesting that the Buddha has a very similar diagnosis of the human situation, but derives from it a radically different conclusion.

(2) Alvin Plantinga, review of God Delusion.