Equations and Life

“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"

This was the question Stephen Hawking made in his famous book "A Brief History of Time". What are equations? Have they anything to do with our lives? You know there's an equation every time the following symbol appears

=

There's always a left-hand side and a right-hand side. And the symbols means a simple thing: relation. Through an equation we establish and express relations between the left and right members.

I remember one of my classes on heat transfer when I speak about an energy balance according to the first law of Thermodynamics. On the left-hand side we characterize energy exchanges within the system, like the kinetic, potential and internal energy terms. And the balance occurs with energy exchanges at the frontier of the system with the outside of a system.

- "Isn't this similar to our lives?" - I often ask. - "Shouldn't we find an equilibrium between who we are within, and how we behave and express ourselves to others and the world surrounding?"

Obviously this is a silly question because the answer is "yes". But, not everyone is that transparent and hide secrets inside. Similar to an energy balance that is a disequilibrium, and the system reacts to find equilibrium again. Sometimes it may be as depression, violence, suffering, but we can always chose and it can be also as sharing, mercy, redirect our mind to important things in our life.

There are isolated systems which don't exchange energy or mass with the surrounding, but are immerse in it. And, in isolated systems, the state of confusion, which Thermodynamics designates by entropy increases. Isn't this the result when we isolate ourselves from others? The solution is the open the system, like we need to open ourselves to avoid increasing the degree of confusion in our lives.

So, you see, equations and life have a lot in common. More than we might imagine. However, there's a word in Stephen Hawking question that puzzles me. It's the first word: "what...?". The act of breathing pressuposes a sentient being, thus, if it has being it's not a "what", but a "who". Also, equations are expression of more or less compress relations between parts. Therefore, I would think this is only possible if the one "breathing fire" is aware, self-conscious, of his actions. In these categories we only have self-conscious beings and God, the all-determining reality.

Now, you probably expect that I'll say it is God who breathes fire into equations because He created the world. But no. I think we can go further than that.

I believe in a God that created the world in such a way that, this world actively takes part in the ongoing creative act. God created a world that creates itself. This happens through law and opportunity (contingent events). Therefore, maybe Stephen Hawking is both right and wrong.

By creating the world, God created the flux of life of random events unfolding toward unity. From the flux of "life" emerge elements, stars, planets, a biosphere and noosphere. And we describe this flux through equations. So, "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"

Life itself.

A Life created by God who loved so much that, from Existence, "existing" is born.