LIFE! Why We Exist... And What We Must Do to Survive [Paperback]

This is a philosophic work written by a physicist, grounded in rationality and empiricism. Walker begins with subatomic particles and ends with life itself and how it should be lived. A central assertion is that life exists because it perseveres whereas things that do not persevere tend not to exist. There is something Buddha-like and iron-clad in this utter simplicity that is arresting.

Walker ultimately argues that we have a moral responsibility to persevere and to do things that tend to make the life form itself persevere. What I found striking is his assertion that persistence itself is a kind of force or rule of the universe.

He uses the example of a chess game. The rules of the game are of a different kind of stuff than the players and the pieces. The rules exist independently of the pieces and the board. As Walker says, "the rules don't appear in the pieces and the board." (p. 10) The rules exist independently of any game and exist whether a game has ever been played or not. (I like to say they exist on the ether.) Every thought I ever thought exists and will exist until the end of the universe and beyond, and every thought I ever thought existed before I was born.

It is obvious that Walker has been influenced by Schopenhauer who saw "The World as Will and Idea." But Walker does not use Schopenhaur's terms although he acknowledges Schopenhauer's influence. Instead Walker speaks of "persistence" and "concept." The will of the world is its persistence, and the ideas are concepts.

The ancient and always contemporary question, "Why is there anything at all? Why isn't there nothing?" is something that Walker attempts to answer but of course does not. He does explain why hydrogen and helium and carbon and iron atoms continue to exist in great numbers whereas some other configurations of electrons, protons and neutrons exist only momentarily and/or in lesser numbers. His main point is that there are rules (as in the chess game) that "determine the tendency for something to exist--the chance of it coming into being, and the likelihood of its remaining in existence." (p. 24) Unstable elements decay. Stable elements persevere. The interesting thing is Walker's assertion that the rules exist prior to and independently of matter and energy.

This simple idea is startling. There was something prior to the Big Bang, is what he is asserting. There was something prior to space and time. That something guides and shapes matter and energy. Moreover, "the concepts of extension in space and progress in time, the rules of this existence, came before and live outside the material universe." (p. 10)

Walker makes it clear that he understands that we do not experience the world directly, that the objects that we see and touch are conceptual objects, not the objects themselves. He explains that conceptual objects are sufficiently like physical objects for our purposes as evolutionary beings. Our perceptions are utilitarian, one might say. A brown chair is brown although in fact it is white with light in some places and dark with shadow in others because it is a conceptual chair that we see, and we miss the subtleties that do not relate to the chair's utility for us. We do this with everything in the world because it would be far too complex (and of little or no evolutionary value) to see things more precisely.

Another of Walker's interesting ideas is that the persistence that living things exhibit in reproduction is similar to the persistence of nonliving things. But what persists is not the individual but life itself. He sees our tendency to exist as being manifested on three levels, the individual, the group or species, and the life form itself. (No "selfish genes" here!)

Persistence then is the foundation upon which all morality is built. His is an "objective morality" that does not rely on doctrines or authority, but, as he argues, is derivable directly from the way of the universe and the way of life. I believe he is correct in this, and that his book is very much worth reading for this alone.

Consequently, Walker sees that our sense of morality does not and need not come from religious texts or teachings and that it is largely innate, a consequence of our ability to put ourselves in another person's position along with the ability to recognize that if we always acted according to what we would want for ourselves (cf. the golden rule) society would benefit.

Walker writes, "...the totality of material existence...is transitory and conditional... We came from nothing and we will return to nothing. What happens in between has meaning and importance only to the extent that we grant it such meaning and importance." (p. 99)

Although this statement is one with which an existentialist would agree, Walker believes that existentialism is a mode of rejection. (p. 99) He also doesn't like the kind of spiritual asceticism that is otherworldly, believing it to be "morally wrong" since "The religious devotee seeks to absent himself from the rigors and responsibilities of persistence." (pp. 99-100)

Near the end of the book Walker deals with free will. He acknowledges that free will may very well be (as I believe) an illusion. Nonetheless, he points out, it is an illusion that we cannot help but entertain (and I agree). And then he makes a nice argument to see free will as "the ability to resist and turn away from the instinctive, natural but nonconscious striving...," adding, "Free will means simply a will freed of the constraints of the nonconscious..." (p. 119)

One final bit of wisdom from the wise, articulate and always very fair Mr. Walker: "As conscious beings...We can conceive of things that don't exist and could never exist. We can therefore appreciate that material existence is not a necessary condition, and neither does it encompass all conceivable possibilities." (p. 99)

The kernel of the idea behind the book which is now "LIFE! Why We Exist... And What We Must Do To Survive" came to me as an epiphany on a transatlantic flight. "If we exist as living things in this universe, then we must exist according to universal principles or laws; by figuring out how those principles apply to life, it must be possible to figure out life's meaning." I spent the next three years probing and writing out an expansion of this thought, testing, modifying, rewriting, until the exploration made sense and was presented as elegantly and engagingly as possible.

Of course, the epiphany was the culmination of a life-long intellectual and spiritual search for answers. Since I was a boy growing up in a small town in the north of England I'd wondered about what existed behind our existence, which of the prevailing theories about life's meaning made sense. The answer I've found is both surprising and wonderfully simple and sensible, but has wonderfully rich and profound consequences.

This book is about furthering our understanding, as individuals and as a society. If you enjoy it, please let others know about it. If you'd like a few copies to sell locally, please let me know! (You can reach me through my homepage -- meaninginmylife.)

Thanks for reading!

My album is now available, too, in which some of these ideas are approached from a lyrical emotional perspective. nylon

Disclaimer: Although under no obligation to review this book, I did receive a complimentary copy from the author.

For as long as people have existed, they have wondered about the meaning of life. From this has sprung the worship of spirits, animals, the sun, and God(s) - the study of physics, consciousness, and evolution - and a vast collection of literature and art. In the author's words, "As science knocks down each door, philosophy and spiritual inquiry regroup behind the next."

In this ambitious and delightful book, Walker boils it down to "Persistence." Life wants to persist on three levels: individually, at the species level, and collectively as the whole of life. Hunger, thirst, and self-protection are representative samples of individual persistence. They are ultimately responsible for our social interactions and our sense of ethics and morality. The sexual urge indirectly leads to the rearing and nurturing of our children.

Persistence drives the topic in each chapter. In the Big Bang and cosmology chapter, protons, neutrons, and electrons persist while more exotic particles did not survive the cooling after the Big Bang. Carbon based life-forms persist because, among other reasons, they propagate their patterns on to the next generation. Individual genes and collections of genes persist through the competition of natural selection. Consciousness and the availability of concepts make it possible for people to further the persistence of the third level of life - an impossibility for other species. Our moral analyses focus on all three of the author's categories - individual, species, and life as a whole. Naturally, there are shades of gray everywhere in deciding on a moral action, but the bottom line is that the most moral approach is the one that is most helpful in aiding the persistence of all three life forms.

I really liked Walker's book but my main objection is his main premise - that this strange life force he calls "persistence" causes one force of nature to persist while others don't - yet they exist while others don't because they have attributes the others don't. I kept thinking of Daniel Dennett's "sky hooks." These are the compulsions some people have to find a god (of some sort) in nature despite nature acting very much like it has no driving force.
But that is my own prejudice. His book was a delightful assortment of knowledge and assessment about a very complex and ambitious subject from a very smart physicist.

Walker does not get into evolutionary psychology or game theory (Tit for Tat and beyond) - the details about how persistence might have shaped a system of human ethics, but that's another whole book. I just brushed up on particle physics, so I thoroughly enjoyed his 25 or 30 page cosmology section. The whole idea of religions thinking they guard the only door to morality is a hot issue with me, so it's easy to like this author's approach to human ethics. Finally, to write a science book such as this apparently without teaching and research experience seems to me quite a feat, and I congratulate this author on his fine effort.