The meaning of life: A very short introduction

... business of material survival, rather than to fostering the values of human sharing and solidarity. The political realm was more a question of management and manipulation than of the communal shaping ... life has meaning, and so has that bit, so what meaning do all the various bits add up to?’ But it does not follow from the fact that the parts have meaning that the whole has a meaning over and ... than practical and material. After all, it was the material, in the shape of private jets and hordes of minders, that they were trying (mentally, at least) to escape from.For these types, the...

... was a great collision asAfrica drove north into North America and Europe, causingearthquakes and volcanoes, and raising a chain of mountainsfrom the Appalachians, across Ireland and Germany, ... animalsthat are otherwise entirely unknown, and may never be knownother than by these intriguing exuviae. The Cambrian Explosion The Small Shelly Fauna of the Early Cambrian was a precursor of the Cambrian ... to allow passage of water in and out for feeding andrespiration. The pedicle valve is larger than the brachial valve, and the fleshy pedicle emerges from a hole at the apex of the pediclevalve...

... entities,on the 'tgroundsthatit can explain a large range of observational data.Ananti-realist philosopher of science comes along,andarguesthat the datacan in factbeaccounted for by various ... theorychoiceinadditiontocompatibility with the observational data, the problem of underdeterminationdisappears.Notall the possibleexplanations of ourobservationaldataare as good as one another.Evenifthedatathat the kinetictheoryexplains ... from the lack of a common language,thereis alsowhathecalled 'incommensurability of standards'. Thisis the ideathatproponents of different paradigms may disagreeabout the standardsfor...