An inquiry Into Meaning of Life

Pages:135-137
Vikas Yadav (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)

What is the meaning of life? Why we have been put on earth? Why do we live? What do we live for? What to live by? Everybody asks this question to himself, in some phase of his life. The problem of meaning is not something new; it has been discussed & debated by philosophers for centuries. Furthermore, empirical research in last few decades has shown that our perceptual system is designed in such a way that we provide coherent pattern to the incoming stimuli. Most of this research from the gestalt school of thought, whose prominent scholars like Wolfgang Kohler, Max Wertheimer & Kurt Koffka, spawned a number of researches on perception & motivation. The work of these psychologists have brought into several interesting insights into the perceptual organization of human beings. For instance, when human subjects are provided with random dots, they feel a need to organize these dots into coherent pattern. And if they are unable to fit any stimulus or situation into a coherent pattern they feel tense, annoyed & dissatisfied. This problem continues until the subjects can find a way to fit the present situation in some larger, recognizable pattern.