Things Fall Apart

From Omar Malik, Times Higher Education

Philosophers have long pondered the big question: why is life such a bugger? Lesser orders have similarly wondered why life is just one damn thing after another. Why do things always go wrong? The answer is short and simple: the laws of nature.

Some like to believe that we are the highest form of life, blessed with free will. Maybe. But as far as nature is concerned, we are just another of her countless products and, like the rest of them, serve sentence under her laws.

Francis Bacon said that we cannot command nature except by obeying her; sadly, he omitted to say that to obey her, we must first understand her. In macro terms that is surprisingly easy: all we have to do is identify her laws. The micro task of combating them is much more difficult, well beyond the scope of libraries of regulations, however vast.

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