We are a part of a universe that is ‘everything’ and from which we ‘inherit’ all our characteristics, yet it doesn’t appear to be all that we are because, unlike us, its nature isn’t characterised by thinking sensibilities.

Undeniably, we are a part of something bigger than us, but neither the evidence nor our reasoning is sufficient to resolve the conundrum that ‘nature’ does and does not include those thinking sensibilities – that the resultant ‘everything’ turns out to be more than its beginnings.

Perhaps ‘the nature’ we take to be ‘the starting point’ of existence is, in fact, a plurality of natures, which is why our observations of causality don’t give us all the answers we so willingly ascribe to it – especially when there happens to be so much more to the nature of the effect than we can find in the cause.

Mike Laidler