Throughout all the ages, men have been trying to fathom the meaning of life. They realize that if some direction or some meaning could be given to the whole thing, to our actions, then great human forces would be unleashed. So, very many answers have been given to the question of the meaning of it all. But they have all been of different sorts. And the proponents of one idea have looked with horror at the actions of the believers of another—horror because from a disagreeing point of view all the great potentialities of the race were being channeled into a false and confining blind alley. In fact, it is from the history of the enormous monstrosities that have been created by false belief that philosophers have come to realize the fantastic potentialities and wondrous capacities of human beings. The dream is to find the open channel. What, then, is the meaning of it all? What can we say today to dispel the mystery of existence? If we take everything into account, not only what the ancients knew, but also all those things that we have found out up to today that they didn't know, then I think that we must frankly admit that we do not know. But I think that in admitting this we have probably found the open channel. Admitting that we do not know, and maintaining perpetually the attitude that we do not know the direction necessarily to go, permit a possibility of alteration, of thinking, of new contributions and new discoveries for the problem of developing a way to do what we want ultimately, even when we do not know what we want. Richard Feynman

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Added on: September 5, 2014

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