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| Popular science |
Every so often I dip into what is called a "popular science" book, one that seeks to make the current state of our knowledge of our world explicable to the lay-person. Thus long algebraic equations are excluded in favour of stories of cats and descriptions of games of ping pong on moving trains; all in such a way as to make the bending of space time and quantum leaps matters of common sensibility. Not to mention Black Holes.
They fail of course; and the search remains for a new theory of everything (even though some would say that such a search is ill-conceived)
Keep it simple.
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| Seeking - or not? |
Back in time it was Isaac Newton who "appeared and made all things light" and it was also Newton who said:- "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in multiplicity and confusion of things."
Newton, in his search for simplicity, recognised that the very same "force" that caused an apple to drop to earth also caused the moon to orbit the earth - this by seeing that the moon was actually falling too, but in circles. This insight, that the movement of the heavens and movement here below were governed by the very same "force" (gravity) was in fact then revolutionary even though commonplace for us now.
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| Isaac Newton, with apples |
Until then it was the assumed view, inherited from the Greeks, that the heavens were a separate realm where laws totally distinct from those here below were in operation. Everything above was deemed to be immutable and perfect. Up there all moved in circles, a circle being a perfect shape. Yes, the heavens were untouched by human hand or infirmity.
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| Even the Tibetans loved circles |
It seems to me that much human theology could learn from all this. God is often seen as "up above" and distinct from us here below; perfect, a being governed by separate laws. Creator of a world/cosmos distinct from Himself. Duality.
Perhaps all of us, in our own way, are seeking for a theory of everything; maybe we never find it simply because it has to be - or we assume it would have to be - very much like the ancients understood the heavenly realms. Immutable and perfect. But surely, if this were so, we would just be going around in circles!
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| Aristotle - would you trust a man like this? |
This seems to be much the same problem as many of those in the past who, accepting without question the authority of Aristotle - or whoever - sought then to write a book on nature. It took a Kepler or a Newton to seek to read what it was that nature had to say. In the Pure Land this would be known as deep listening (to the call of Amida)
There is much in reality that is counter intuitive. The earth is obviously motionless and at the centre of all creation. Just as we would wish to be and assume ourselves to be. Yet in looking and listening, becoming simple (in the best possible sense) we may well find a "theory of everything."
"We are already one. But we do not know it. What we have to become is what we are" (Thomas Merton)
Getting back to Newton, he once said:-
I do not know what I may appear to the world but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
These words in a strange way echo those of Bob Dylan from his song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest", nothing is revealed. They speak of the incomprehensibility of God, in Whom, nevertheless, we live and move and have our being. Infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, infinite potentiality.
Related Quotes:-
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people"
(Isaac Newton)
"I'm gonna start my pickin' right now
Just tell me where you’ll be”
Judas pointed down the road
And said, “Eternity!”
“Eternity?” said Frankie Lee
With a voice as cold as ice
“That’s right,” said Judas Priest, “Eternity
Though you might call it ‘Paradise’”
“I don’t call it anything”
Said Frankie Lee with a smile
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