WE (HUMAN BEING) AND UNIVERSE

WE (HUMAN BEING)  AND  UNIVERSE

By: Muhammad Muhibbuddin

The existence of human being in the world is always surrounded by mystery of cosmos. Human being never knows and always wonders whether the cosmos and all creatures inside it have a beginning and an ending in the context of space and time? Whether the cosmos is eternal or temporer? How does the cosmos come into being? How can the cosmos be  arranged like this? Who creates this comos becomes like this---if this cosmos indeed is created?

 A human being has been  afflicted by such cosmological and existential questions since he came into being; since he was born in the world.  When human being came into being, he faced  a lot of  problems, phenomena and dark things that he must thinks hard to invent the answer.  For example, when human being experienced earthquake, flood, tsunami, tidal wave, explosion of mountain, and the other natural incidents,  he wondered what’s wrong with such incidents? Who causes those natural phenomena? How do they occur and terrorize the existence of human being?

It means that the natural incidents always provide a deep mystery that human being cannot give an answer spontaneously.  The mystery of universe apparently is  indefinite and tremendous that  human being becomes frightened and spellbound at once. Here is what  called by mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Therefore, such mystery of universe or cosmos whiplashes curiosity of  human being to disclose reality being in the mystery of cosmos on and on. This effort of human being in exploring the reality of universe goes on from the past until present.  Cosmos or universe never ends in providing mystery for human being. Because what human being can disclose from universe always provides new mystery. The deeper human being explores universe, the wider new mystery he faces; the more answers human being he finds, the more new questions  he gets. Thus, as if human being’s duty in the world mainly is to overcome or  answer mystery, problem or puzzle in layers provided by cosmos.

 

The Birth of Universe

Picture is from https://www.google.co.id

Based on the curiosity of human being in exploring mystery of cosmos, a civilization of the world occured. Historically, the civilization of human being in the world is formed by  background of the curiosity of human being. Because of curiosity of human being in disclosing mystery of cosmos,  many kinds of  civilization of the world, such as mythology, religion, philosophy, and science appeared. In the past, human being created mythology is to answer some problems concerning with mystery of cosmos. They believed in gods, such as Zeus, god in Greek, or  Ra in Egypt, Mithras in Persia, Jupiter  changed by Roman from Greek god, Zeus.----When Roman empire conquered Greek in 146 BC., they added some Greek gods to own theirs, even they changed and adapted Greek gods’ names into Roman, some of them is Zeus became Jupiter, or Aphrodite became Venus (Simon Adams: 2003, 16)

The following, when religion existed, the gods were neglacted. It happened especially when Abrahimic religions (Jews, Christian, and Islam) appeared. The gods were considered by those religion as kind of  paganism which contradicted with them. So, the faith of the gods was fought againts. Therefore, the paradigm of mythology which existed in the long time, eventually was replaced by the other paradigm, namely religion. Even before, when speculative philosophy appeared in the 6th century BC, it became new paradigm to replace myth.  The new paradigm was pioneered by Thales (625-545 BC.). At the time, Thales tried to answer a principle question: what was the main basis of the universe? The main basis of cosmos in Greek is called arkhe. With his logic contemplation, Thales invented a proposition that the main basis of universe (arkhe) was water. The universe  was from water and  lain on water, and eventually it would return to water. This philosophical paradigm replaced myth which affirmed that the universe was consisted of gods. Here is the transformation from myth to logic (logos) in Greek.

The transformation from myth to logic, in the following, became a basis of appearing of science. It happened early when Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) formulated his philosophy. The scientific paradigm steadily increases widely. All of these paradigms appeared were actually to answer mystery of universe. Thus, science itself is principally created to disclose the mystery of cosmos and to overcome some problems human being faces them everyday. A lot of scientists do their scientific research is also caused by their strong curiosity of mystery or puzzle of universe. The mystery of cosmos and all of the implications in this life are  upsetting problems for scientists and philosphers, and because of that, they are never getting tired to explore and think universe.

Science as A Paradigm and Observation of the Universe

Science is one of paradigms to understand universe. The emergence of science in the human life is an amazing thing. Science contributes many good and useful things for human life. Because of science, human being can improve and develop his civilization. The result of science is technology used by human being for resolving some problems.

Of course, science and technology also have some negative effects for life, e.g. : nuclear bomb killing many people, or the increasing of the information technology, like twitter, facebook, etc. providing freely bad information to our children. But, out of the such negative effects, science and technology are the great achievement in human life.

Regarding universe, science has a significant role. Science provides principle and method to explain universe. Because of the special method, science appeares as a new paradigm to replace old paradigm in understanding cosmos. The replacing of a paradigm  with the other paradigm, according to Thomas Kuhn, is called The Shifting Paradigm. The science shifts the other paradigms (religion, myths, etc.) and provides new understanding of universe based on certain method and point of view. The paradigm of science is more based on logic, empirical and positive approach to see object actualized through observation.

In the post Medieval Age, the such paradigm of science firstly appeared in Renaissance Era. One of philosophers in the Reanissance Age, Francis Bacon admired science based on empirical observation. His famous slogan is Knowledge is Power. It means that  sensory knowledge based empirical obervation can develop human life. (Budiman:2007, 27-28). This scientific paradigm could achieve its succesful in 18th century when Enlightenment Age existed. In this era, the paradigm of science inclined to logical-positivism. The one of  personages is August Comte.

   The such paradigm of science, in the following, has a significant impact in the context of increasing of science, especially concerning with universe. Modern scientists not only use logical approach, but also empirical and positive approach to explore and understand universe. Science, with the its paradigm, makes human being to do deep exploration based on empirical and positive observation for universe.

As one of its implications, some modern people actively do an exploration and an observation of outer space. For example, in 1960, three American astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, stepped their feet firstly on the Moon along with Apollo 11 mission. Even before, in 1961 the Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gargarin was well known as the first man in space with Vostok I. And in July, 2015, NASA’s New Horison mission visited Pluto for doing a probe of the smallest planet (dwarf planet). Here is what  named by Space Age. Human being can cruise outer space more freely.

Go Beyond the Earth!

From the observation and exploration conducted by some scientists, there are many new  discoveries regarded universe which were never discovered before. It is including some new problems of cosmos. One of the greatest problems that always whips scientists in the Space  Age is: is  there a life out of the earth? Is there a life at the other planet? If  there is a life in the other planet, hence our earth is not only planet for doing the life. Human being in this age is challenged to discover a new planet for perpetuating his life in view of the condition of our earth is densely populated more and more.

A well known physicist, Stephen Hawking, said that our earth, will be extinct. Thus, in future, human being must go beyond earth and build his life at other planet. When Hawking delivered his speaking in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, in 2013 he said: “We must continue to go into space for humanity. If you understand how the universe operates, you control it in a way. We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet (earth)”.

Even, as recorded by BBC, Hawking also affirmed: “Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year might be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years. By that time, we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human rac. However, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period.”Because of this reason, Hawking called  the exploration of space as  a guarantee  of the future of  human being in the world. Discovering new planet for perpetuating our life  is our challenge today. Can you conquer this challenge?