Remembrance of Former Things

How does a meaningful world differ from a meaningless one? If the difference lay in some fact about the world, we might expect scientists to discover it. But that is absurd. Science deals with causes, not meanings or purposes. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, “We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.” It is not some fact, but the sense of the world as a whole that makes it meaningful or meaningfulness.

There is perhaps no more powerful evocation of meaninglessness than Ecclesiastes, with its repeated assertions that nothing matters:

“The thing which has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: there is no new thing under the sun. . . . There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. . . . I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”