-
Asked by anon-258474 on 10 Jul 2020.
-
Kim Liu answered on 10 Jul 2020:
Absolutely no idea ^_^ Evolution suggests that something similar to a ‘human’ is some sort of thermodynamic ‘inevitability’, but that’s not really an explanation in the way you’ve phrased this question. Would love to see what other scientists think 🙂
-
-
Sreejita Ghosh answered on 10 Jul 2020:
Humans started to exist as a result of billions of years of evolution starting from some form of prokaryote. From early days they learned to fight against predators and to hunt for prey. They fashioned weapons for this purpose. Then, they became creative day by day, year by year, age by age, and learned to turn against other humans and use weapons against even their own kind and their planet, the Earth. Despite all of their attempts to destroy Earth and themselves humans still exist probably because a giant asteroid hasn’t yet hit the planet Earth. But the pandemic is here, and there are enough humans who still do not want to wear masks, nor maintain social distancing, and some even suggest that the pandemic is a hoax and believe vaccines are evil ( even after the world came to a standstill due to the lack of a vaccine for covid19).
So for human race this might just be it, maybe we don’t really have to wait for an asteroid to end us, for our collective stupendous stupidity will. -
Andrew Yool answered on 12 Jul 2020:
Humans (and all other species, for that matter) exist as a result of a chain of low probability events stretching back over billions of years. For much of Earth’s history, the most complex living organisms were bacteria, and it is unclear whether the evolution of more complex forms was inevitable or a happy (for us) accident. Since complex organisms began appearing, there have been 5 mass extinctions during each of which significant fractions of then-living species have been wiped out – despite being perfectly functional organisms up until that point. The most recent of these – triggered by an arbitrary collision between the Earth and an asteroid – cleared the stage of the non-avian dinosaurs (i.e. all dinosaurs but the ones we call birds), opening up the world for the vertebrates that we call mammals and, most recently, ourselves. Throughout this history of the Earth, things could have gone very differently (e.g. no asteroid, no humans), and other creatures could well have been here asking the same brilliant question that you have.
.
So, overall, it’s difficult to see us as being special – except, that is, in one particular way. While the previous mass extinctions I mentioned have been caused by external or geological processes, the current mass extinction – number 6 – is being driven by us. So maybe we are special after all. -
Aisling Ryan answered on 15 Jul 2020:
Humans exist because of a process known as evolution- which is basically why everything that is living exists! Every living thing has originated from a single cell that lived in the ocean. Eventually a population of single cells evolved into a population of living things with multiple cells. This led to sea creatures and some sea creatures then evolved to live on land which started life above sea level. (This took a very long time by the way!)
Human are primates, meaning we evolved from other members of this family such as apes. What sets humans apart from monkeys or other primates is their ability to create fire! Fire cooks foods and makes them easier to digest. The ability of humans to create fire is what evolution scientists believe to be the reason that we evolved into such an intelligent species and other primates didn’t.
If you’ve ever watched the Jungle Book, you’ll notice that King Louie wants Mowgli to tell him the secret of how to make a fire! 🙂 It’s all in the song ‘I wanna be like you’. Here’s the song if you want to listen to it 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JDzlhW3XTM -
Andrew McDowall answered on 15 Jul 2020:
It depends a great deal on what it is you mean by the question “Why do humans exist?”
Read as “How is it humans came to exist?” then the answer “through the mechanisms of evolution” given by colleagues above answers perfectly. We’ve come to exist through a process of random, undirected natural processes without concept of an end point or an objective. This can seem somewhat unsettling, the idea that we stand atop a stack of incredibly unlikely events, the current protagonist in the masterpiece of one of an infinite number of typewriter-encumbered monkeys (one the ones that hasn’t decided to ignore it, break it, eat it, mate with it, throw it at a rival or use it to crack nuts; all in all a pretty poor excuse for a monkey). If our existence is so unlikely, ceasing to exist seems so much more likely.
If, instead, you’re asking “What is the purpose for which humans exist?”, I’m afraid that tends to fall outside the realms of scientific enquiry, and more into theology and philosophy. We’re very good at answering “What are the circumstances in which things happen” and “By what mechanism do things happen”, but rather less so at “What did it happen for”. Various answers have been given for this question of “why do humans exist”, ranging from “To work towards ending the cycle of rebirth” and “To praise God”, to “To eat, breed, pay tax and die “, it’s one of the defining human traits to seek narrative and meaning in events, a plotline with beginning, middle and end, but these are not scientific answers. It’s something that science is unlikely to able to answer, assuming there is an answer to find. This absence of an answer, even questioning the question, can make science seem coldly nihilistic, but this is as much one side misunderstanding the question, and one side misunderstanding the answer. Certainly, I have many colleagues, good scientists, who see science and their religions as complementary, not contradictory, both providing answers to differing questions, either side of the “Why?”, and gaining satisfaction from the answers each provides them.
Comments