![]() ![]() But you have good company in wondering where you were before you were born … Melia, bad news: you were never in my belly. Where was I before I was born and before I was in your belly? Melia, 4 So I think that numbers are a part of the world that we discovered, even though we can’t see them, smell them, taste them or touch them. But flowers seem to have got there first. Fibonacci wasn’t the first to notice that set of numbers, though mathematicians in India described it long before he did. Those numbers appear in the Fibonacci sequence – a special set of numbers named after an Italian mathematician. Lots of flowers have either three, five, eight, or 13 petals. There are mathematical patterns all over nature. (This is called Platonism, after the philosopher Plato.) They think that numbers would exist even if we didn’t. Other philosophers think we discovered numbers, just like we discovered gravity and electricity. We use them to play games and bake cakes and make sure our spaceships get to the right destination. Numbers are amazing we can do so many cool things with them. (The fancy word for this is fictionalism, since the idea is that we’re telling stories about numbers.) If we did invent numbers, that was a really good idea. Some think we made numbers up – that people created them to help us solve problems. Unless you’re the main character in a movie and I’m just another robot trying to trick you … Is there any reason to think that you, and you alone, are real? Probably not. Why should I be the only person in the entire world who’s real? Why would someone make all those robots just to trick me?Īsk yourself the same question, Ursula. I’m just some guy who was born outside Atlanta in 1976. But what about everyone else? When I worry about this, I remind myself that there’s no reason to think I’m special. And to think, you have to exist – or as Descartes put it: “I think, therefore I am.” After all, he was thinking about the possibility that a demon was trying to trick him. Instead, he imagined that an evil demon was filling his head with falsehoods – that none of the people or things he thought he knew actually existed.īut even if a demon was trying to trick him, Descartes thought there was one thing he could know for sure: he existed. He didn’t suppose the people around him were robots, since they hadn’t been invented. A philosopher named Descartes once tried to imagine that everything he believed was wrong. Because it’s hard to say anything for sure. And let’s not do that, since they would get hurt if your hypothesis was wrong.Īnd it probably is! I can’t say for sure. If they were really good robots, you wouldn’t be able to tell, at least not without cutting them open. Have you checked your family and friends for circuit boards and fuse boxes? I’d give them a good look if they’re acting like robots. How can I know if that’s true? Ursula, 8 I sometimes feel like I’m the only real person and eve ryone else is a robot. It just raises new questions, which are at least as mysterious as the old ones. Imagining that there’s a God doesn’t help us explain anything. And your question points to one of the reasons why. But that’s just silly! The fact that we can think of something doesn’t make it real.ĭoes God exist? I don’t know, but I’m sceptical. If Saint Anselm’s argument was right, he said, that island must actually exist somewhere. He imagined the greatest island possible – as beautiful as could be. I don’t think that works, and neither did a monk named Guanilo. (This is called the ontological argument, because philosophers like to give things fancy names.) Since actually existing would make a great guy even greater, God has to exist, otherwise, we could imagine an even greater guy. He said that God is the greatest guy we could possibly imagine. In fact, some think that God has to exist.Ī long time ago, Saint Anselm tried to prove that God has to exist. Most religious people don’t think God was created by anyone. But that doesn’t get us very far, since it raises a new question: why does God exist? Some people think the answer is: God created it. I think the biggest mystery about the world is the reason it exists at all. If God created everything, who created God? Leyha, 7
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