THE ORIGIN OF AN INTELLIGIBLE UNIVERSE

Have you ever wondered why humans have the capacity to understand the universe around us. One may say the eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility. It is one of the great realizations that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless without its comprehensibility. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle. The study of matter, energy and time is thought to render the universe intelligible. Intelligible order existed in the universe before the first scientist began to inquire into it. Science is merely the intellectual process whereby mankind gains understanding of that order. It is the order of the universe which allows it to be understandable to science. It would be unintelligible if there was only chaos. Science reveals the mechanisms by which it is intelligible, but scientific thought does not explain the origin of that intelligibility. The notion that the universe is rational is rooted in the realization that the universe possesses inherent order, identity, lawfulness and these elements are what make it knowable to a conscious rational being.