On the Nature of Life, Part III—The Law of Inevitability

The Search for a Path Through Life

The word "inevitable” is derived from a Latin root that means something that cannot be avoided.

Physics and chemistry are all about universal laws; the physics and chemistry in a distant galaxy billions of light-years away are identical to the physics and chemistry in this galaxy. (Some few very speculative hypotheses posit otherwise, but there’s no evidence to support them at this time.)

There are, as it happens, trillions of galaxies with trillions of stars in them, so far as we can tell; and statistical inevitabilities regarding the potentials for the property of matter must inevitably (ha ha)  apply here.

Put bluntly, from a mathematical point of view alone, the sheer scope of the cosmos dictates that every probability that can possibly arise from the straightforward laws of physics and chemistries will eventually do so, not once but many times, due to the sheer volume of mass in the universe.

Put another way, the universe had to produce you, personally.

Us.

Them.

It had no choice.

We can deduce this much in a direct and linear fashion without a great deal of argument, because the mathematics overwhelmingly favor this interpretation so much so as to render counter-arguments more or less moot. It has even, as it happens, been pointed out that given the size of the universe, the statistical odds of another planet exactly like this one with a second person exactly like me writing exactly these words at exactly the same time relative to one another is, numerically speaking, not only probable or possible, but in fact, pretty much a done deal. There are even, statistically speaking, people exactly like you reading these words with exactly the same reactions you’re having. The statistics that support that don't even involve numbers too large to write on a page, as many other statistical things may do.

We are not alone… and we’re not even unique.