EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



ditions; and if so, what are these conditions? Why 

 must all living creatures die? Is this a result of the ef- 

 fects of the all-powerful Second Law of Thermo- 

 dynamics which indicates that all naturally occurring 

 processes must tend towards equilibrium and which 

 on this basis predicts the eventual "death" of the uni- 

 verse itself? If death is indeed a consequence of this 

 law, how then is it possible that life itself, although 

 sacrificing the individual creature, has yet been able 

 to persist for billions of years and has succeeded in de- 

 veloping forms becoming ever more complex? 



It is true that science has not left these questions 

 completely unanswered. Yet many of the answers given 

 are none too convincing. They seem surrounded with 

 a high degree of uncertainty. What appears most un- 

 satisfactory is that some of the theories that would pro- 

 vide solutions have not been correlated with other es- 

 tablished findings and consequently remain in a highly 

 hypothetical stage. What also seems to be lacking is a 

 unifying theory linking the concepts of the physical 

 sciences with the mass of data that the social sciences 

 are now accumulating and classifying. 



There are other questions that man has been asking 

 through the ages, which in the past have been in the 

 realm of philosophy. They concern the problem of 

 whether life has any purpose — and the relationship of 

 man to the universe. To these questions science has as 

 yet not provided answers and it is felt by many thinkers 



