Open a box. Pick up a stone. Turn a doorknob. Eat a sandwich. Input a number on a phone. Put on a shoe. Pat a dog. Each of these things, and all physical actions, involve acting within the context of matter, necessitating a manipulation of matter.
Anywhere on earth, it doesn’t take people long to figure out that moving and manipulating matter is essentially all there is to life—or, at least, that’s how it appears. This discovery comes early. Just consider how a baby’s first act, even before birth, may be to move a hand and put it to the mouth. Spatial relationships and sensitive matter become early, weighty impressions.
Yet it’s curious how, for centuries, many people have been thinking deeply about how there is actually more to existence than the materiality that meets the eye (and hand, mouth, ear, and nose). “The soul, which is spirit, cannot dwell in dust,” said St. Augustine, about 1,600 years ago. The Apostle Paul of biblical times said, “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (II Corinthians 4:18). And more recently, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking stated, “To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.”
