Transcendence
By Marcus Loane
13th May 2010
We
humans have big brains and our scurrying around for food, shelter and mating is
not enough to satisfy us. Often we want to be part of something larger and more
meaningful than ourselves. This is a gap that religion may have filled in the
past and for many today it still does.
What
if you cannot believe the claims of religions or the idea of anything
supernatural? Many will find meaning in other arenas such as politics,
improving human conditions, music, art, science or philosophy.
My
sense of transcendence has come from my interest in science. I appreciate the
history of it as one long noble endeavour to find out more about ourselves and
the universe we are a part of. The scientific endeavour spans many lifetimes
and will continue to do so down the generations and, like philosophy (the Great
Conversation) it has a continuity with discoveries being built upon, tweaked or
overturned and this will continue into the future long after I am gone. The
endeavour is noble in that it is honest and not afraid to say we don’t know. It
also touches on profound questions and gradually, step by step, comes up with
answers.
The
picture of the universe which science has brought us also contributes to
transcendence. The sheer scale, age and strangeness of the universe when
compared to us and our earthly environment are enough to inspire awe and wonder
and take us out of the mundane concerns of our everyday lives. This does not
negate our lives. It gives us a context or backdrop within which we can live
them.
I
am also fascinated by the frontiers of our scientific knowledge, the areas
where we do not have all the answers and where we are chipping away trying to
learn more. This is the most exciting part of science and scientists are most
stimulated when there is a puzzle, or something that does not fit with existing
theory.
An
example is physicists have proposed “dark matter” and “dark energy” to explain
some of the movements of galaxies which we have observed. This is not very
satisfactory and suggests that we are missing something and not seeing the
whole picture yet. It could be that there are other universes interacting with
ours or that this exotic matter does indeed exist. Another idea is that our 4
dimensional universe (3 spatial dimensions and 1 time
dimension) is embedded in a higher dimensional structure whose effects may be
detectable. The answers may come with ever better telescopes and particle
accelerators and advances in mathematics. The very large (the galaxies and
large scale structure of the universe) is intimately related to the very small
(the sub atomic particles studied in particle accelerators). It is a dream of
many to come up with one unifying theory which brings it all together in an
elegant solution which explains any anomalies. If you are interested in this it
is an exciting time to be alive. Another area which science is tentatively
tackling is the thorny issue of human consciousness and some small steps have
been made.
The
transcendence comes from the long integrated history of the group effort that
is science. The transcendence also comes from science giving us our most
realistic model of the universe as a context within which we live our lives. We
can compare our paltry life spans to the 13+ billion year age of the universe
and we can compare our size to that of galaxies and that of the sub atomic
world. We are either insignificant little specks or we are great lumbering
giants depending on what you compare us with. I can also see myself as a
biological entity embedded in the incredibly long and complicated evolutionary
epic. It is the evolutionary process which has created minds and meanings and
purposes.
I
can revel in all of this, and feel
privileged and grateful to be conscious of it, unlike other species whose
concerns are more local and immediate. I can feed my curiosity by keeping
abreast of the latest findings at the frontiers, anticipating more within my
lifetime. We just might get our Grand Unified Theory in the next 40 years and
if we don’t I will have been stimulated and entertained by the attempts of
others to crack it.
Anyway,
that’s what does it for me. Each to their own.
--
Marcus
Loane
Back
to home page