Growing Up in the Universe: Part 5: The Genesis of Purpose

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Growing Up in the Universe is a series of lectures given by Richard Dawkins as part of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, where he discusses the evolution of life in the universe.



The lectures were first broadcast in 1991, in the form of five one-hour episodes, on the BBC in the UK. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science was granted the rights to the televised lectures, and a DVD version was released by the foundation on April 20, 2007.



This Torrent Contains

Growing Up in the Universe: Part 5: The Genesis of Purpose



Other Torrents Available:

Growing Up in the Universe: Part 1: Waking Up in the Universe

Growing Up in the Universe: Part 2: Designed and Designoid Objects

Growing Up in the Universe: Part 3: Climbing Mount Improbable

Growing Up in the Universe: Part 4: The Ultraviolet Garden





Life makes the wonders of technology seem commonplace. So where does life come from? What is it? Why are we here? What are we for? What is the meaning of life? There's a conventional wisdom which says that science has nothing to say about such questions. Well, all I can say is that if science has nothing to say, it's certain that no other discipline can say anything at all. But in fact, science has a great deal to say about such questions. And that's what these five lectures are going to be about. Life "grows up" in the universe by gradual degrees - evolution - and we grow up in our understanding of our origins and our meaning.



The present century is a tiny spotlight, inching its way along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything before the spotlight is the darkness of the dead past. Everything after the spotlight is in the darkness of the unknown future. We live in the spotlight. Of all the 200,000,000 centuries along the ruler of time, 199,999,999 centuries are in darkness. Only one is lit up, and that is the one in which we happen - by sheer luck - to be alive. The odds against our century happening to be the present century are the same as the odds against a penny tossed out at random on the road from London to Istanbul happening to fall on a particular ant.



We do of course, have an ordinary life to get on with. We do have a living to earn. We've got to earn our living being a solicitor or a lavatory cleaner or something like that. But nevertheless, it is worthwhile also from time to time shaking off the anesthetic of familiarity and awakening to the wonder that is really all around us all the time.



Natural selection - nature - is constantly choosing which individual shall live, [and] which individual shall breed. And the result, after many generations of natural selection, is much the same as the result after many generations of artificial selection.



In any case, all creation, all design, all machines and houses and paintings and computers and airplanes, everything designed and made by us, everything made by other creatures, is only made possible because there are already brains put together as designoid objects - and designoid objects come about only through gradual evolution. Creation, when it does occur in the universe, is an afterthought. When creation appeared on this planet it came locally, and it came late. Creation does not belong in any account of the fundamentals of the universe. Creation is something that, rather late in the day, grows up in the universe.





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