Meaning

Contextual Quote

"Meaning is real (and cannot be denied), but is fluid (so it cannot be fixed). It is neither objective (given by God) nor subjective (chosen by individuals)."

- David Chapman [1]

Discussion

Francis Heylighen:

"For an organism, life’s “meaning” lies in maintaining and improving fitness — surviving and reproducing. But when we scale up from individuals to collectives, fitness becomes synergy: the capacity of multiple agents to cooperate for mutual benefit. Over evolutionary time, systems that cooperate outcompete those that don’t. Meaning thus expands: it evolves from self-preservation to co-evolution, from survival to synergy.

This logic culminates in what John Stewart and others have described as the ultimate evolutionary preference: the extension of cooperation and evolvability itself. In other words, the long-term “purpose” of life — and by extension the universe — is the growth of collective intelligence and adaptability.

I discuss this broader, noospheric perspective in:

• The Third Story of the Universe: An Evolutionary Worldview for the Noosphere (Heylighen, Beigi & Vidal, 2024, CLEA/Human Energy), which frames humanity’s search for meaning within the unfolding evolution of mind and culture on a planetary scale."

https://francisheylighen.substack.com/p/why-the-universe-has-meaning-without