Aunt Matilda’s Cake

Dr Shariq Ali
Valueversity

Renowned mathematician and philosopher of science, John Lennox, presents a fascinating illustration in his book Can Science Explain Everything?.

Imagine that Aunt Matilda has baked a delicious cake. Now suppose the world’s finest scientists—chemists, physicists, and biologists—are brought together to examine it. They could analyze the cake in remarkable detail. They could identify its chemical composition, explain how heat transformed the flour and eggs, describe how the molecules of sugar and butter interact, and outline the physical and chemical processes involved during baking.

Yet there is one question that none of them could answer, despite all their scientific expertise:

Why did Aunt Matilda bake the cake?
Was it for a birthday celebration? Was she expecting guests? Was it prepared to celebrate a loved one’s happiness? Or was it simply an expression of love?

This question lies beyond the scope of science because science investigates how things happen, not why they ultimately happen.
The same principle applies to the universe.

Science can explain how stars are formed, how galaxies evolve, how gravity operates, how atoms come into existence, and how the chemical processes necessary for life take place.

However, when we ask why the universe exists at all, or what its ultimate purpose is, we move beyond the boundaries of science. This is not because science has failed, but because such questions do not fall within its domain of investigation.

Through this simple analogy, John Lennox highlights an important point: science is an extraordinarily powerful way of acquiring knowledge, but it is not the only one. Questions concerning purpose, meaning, intention, and ultimate ends belong to disciplines such as philosophy, logic, and religion, where they are explored from different perspectives.

So whenever someone claims that science can answer every question about the universe,

Aunt Matilda’s cake reminds us of an important truth: understanding how something works is not the same as understanding why it exists.

To fully understand the universe, we may need not only science but also the other intellectual traditions through which humanity has long sought meaning and understanding.