Reflection on Posts 21–24
Posts 21 to 24 describe a period of my journey that took me from an internship in Polokwane to a short-term GIS position in George, and eventually to a PhD at Rhodes University.
Each event can be explained individually.
But does explaining each event necessarily explain the whole?
What I Used to Tell People
I used to say that if I told people the story of my life and then told them that God exists, or that my ancestors had been behind me all the way, they would believe me.
I was not saying that my life proves that God exists, or that my ancestors were directing my journey.
My point was about interpretation.
Tell the story to someone who already believes in God and conclude that God was guiding the journey, and that person may agree.
Tell the same story to someone who believes in ancestral guidance and conclude that the ancestors were behind it, and that person may also agree.
Someone approaching the same story from a naturalistic perspective may instead see human decisions, circumstances, social networks, probability, and chance.
The events remain the same.
The explanation changes.
So how do we determine which explanation, if any, is justified?
What Can Science Explain?
Science can explain much of my journey without requiring supernatural intervention.
Financial relief during my Master’s changed what was possible. Education gave me qualifications. Applying for jobs exposed me to opportunities. The internship gave me professional experience. Going to George changed my professional environment. My work allowed another professional to assess my capabilities. Mentorship exposed me to opportunities I did not know about.
My actions clearly mattered.
But perhaps actions do not necessarily determine outcomes. Perhaps they alter the probability of certain outcomes becoming possible.
That distinction matters.
I could control whether I applied for a scholarship. I could not control whether a scholarship existed.
I could decide to go to George. I could not control who would later be appointed there.
I could demonstrate my abilities through my work. I could not control whether someone would see enough potential in that work to advocate for me.
My agency operated within circumstances I did not control.
What Were the Chances?
It is tempting to look at the sequence and ask: what were the chances?
There was the financial relief during my Master’s, the GIS internship, my decision to leave an extended internship for a short-term contract in George, the later appointment of the GIS manager, our professional interaction, the unsuccessful first scholarship application, the second opportunity, and the motivational letter written without my knowledge.
But I cannot simply assign probabilities to these events and multiply them.
They were not independent. One event changed the circumstances in which the next occurred. My education influenced my employment prospects. My internship changed my experience. My experience affected subsequent opportunities. Going to George changed the professional environment in which my career continued.
And then there is hindsight.
Am I connecting these events simply because I now know where they led? Perhaps. But even if hindsight explains why I find the sequence significant, does it explain why the sequence happened?
I cannot calculate a meaningful numerical probability for the life I have lived. There are too many dependent events and unknown alternatives.
What I can say is that the outcome depended on a chain of events, some influenced by my decisions and others entirely outside my control.
That is the part I am trying to understand.
Where Does the Mental Schema Fit?
I have previously considered whether the mental schema explains some of these experiences.
Perhaps knowing what we want makes us more alert to opportunities connected to our objectives.
I wanted a career in GIS. I wanted professional registration. I had also wanted to complete a PhD.
That may explain why I recognised and pursued certain opportunities once they appeared.
But can it explain why they appeared?
When I decided to leave Polokwane for George, the GIS manager who would later influence my PhD journey was not there.
There was no opportunity for me to recognise.
My preparedness may explain what happened after our paths crossed.
It does not explain why they crossed.
Is Chance an Explanation?
Perhaps the answer is simply chance.
I had reasons for going to George. The GIS manager had a separate professional journey that eventually led there. Rhodes University’s Institute for Water Research had its own reasons for offering the scholarships.
Separate causal chains eventually intersected.
There is nothing scientifically impossible about that.
But when I call the intersection chance, what have I actually explained?
If I mean that I could not predict the convergence, that is true.
If I mean that I have no evidence that the events were deliberately coordinated, that is also reasonable.
But if chance becomes the explanation for everything that remains after the individual events have been explained, I am less convinced.
Have I explained the unexplained part, or merely given it a name?
The Same Standard Must Apply to God and the Ancestors
The question has to work in both directions.
If I am unwilling to accept chance simply because I have reached the limit of an explanation, I cannot insert God, the ancestors, or the universe into the same gap and pretend that the problem has been solved.
Not being able to explain something does not make a supernatural explanation true.
This brings me back to what I used to tell people.
A Christian believer may look at the journey and see providence.
Someone who believes in ancestral guidance may see the ancestors.
A naturalist may see human agency, circumstances, social networks, and the intersection of independent causal processes.
My story may be compatible with all these interpretations without being capable, by itself, of proving any of them.
When Explaining the Parts Does Not Explain the Whole
I can explain many of the individual events.
I can explain why I applied for the internship.
I can explain why I left.
I can explain why I went to George.
I can explain how mentorship, professional networks, and scholarship opportunities subsequently influenced my journey.
But I am still left with the convergence.
Perhaps nothing further needs explaining. Perhaps lives emerge from countless intersecting events, and humans construct meaning from them afterwards.
Perhaps ordinary causes and deeper meaning are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
I do not know.
And perhaps that is the most honest place for me to stop.
I am not prepared to use my life as proof that God exists or that my ancestors have been directing my journey.
But I am equally uncomfortable with using the word chance as though naming the unexplained part means that it has been explained.
Science can explain many of the mechanisms that brought me here. What remains difficult is determining what, if anything, the convergence of those mechanisms means.
Perhaps the question emerging from Posts 21 to 24 is therefore not whether God, the ancestors, chance, or a mental schema brought me to this point.
It is this:
When we can explain the individual parts of a journey, have we necessarily explained why those parts came together to produce the life that was actually lived?
Join the conversation
When ordinary events converge into an extraordinary turning point, how do you distinguish coincidence from meaning?
Leave a Reply