Paradise: Man’s Destination

PARADISE: MAN’S DESTINATION In 1912, he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In 1935, he published a book titled Man, The Unknown. This book became very popular and was translated into different languages. A commentator remarked about it thus: “This book sums up much of his experience of man and his life seen from the purely scientific aspect.” In this 312-page book, Dr Carrel failed to discover the truth about human life. Thus, he titled the book Man, The Unknown. As far as man as a scientific being is concerned, Dr Carrel had discovered him to a great extent. However, why did he give the book the title that he did? Because of confusion. Dr Carrel found ‘man’, but his study could not tell him what man’s destination was. Therefore, he felt that a known man was moving towards an unknown destination. This was why he did not know the truth about man. In this sense, a more appropriate title for the book would have been Man’s Goal Unknown. It is not the problem of Dr Carrel alone. It is a problem of all philosophers and thinkers. It may have appeared that man was, for them, something known. However,