The Best Science Books of 2016
8.
THE BIG PICTURE
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“We are — as far as we know — the only part
of the universe that’s self-conscious,” the
poet Mark Strand marveled in his beautiful meditation on the
artist’s task to bear witness to existence,
adding: “We could even be the universe’s form of consciousness. We
might have come along so that the universe could look at itself… It’s such a
lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.” Scientists
are rightfully reluctant to ascribe a purpose or meaning to the universe itself
but, as physicist Lisa Randall has pointed out, “an
unconcerned universe is not a bad thing — or a good one for that matter.” Where poets and scientists converge is the idea
that while the universe itself isn’t inherently imbued with meaning, it is in
this self-conscious human act of paying attention that meaning arises.
Physicist Sean Carroll terms
this view poetic naturalismand examines its rewards in The
Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itsel) — a nuanced inquiry into “how our desire to matter fits
in with the nature of reality at its deepest levels,” in which Carroll offers
an assuring dose of what he calls “existential therapy” reconciling the various
and often seemingly contradictory dimensions of our experience.
With an eye to his life’s work of studying
the nature of the universe — an expanse of space and time against the
incomprehensibly enormous backdrop of which the dramas of a single human life
claim no more than a photon of the spotlight — Carroll offers a counterpoint to
our intuitive cowering before such magnitudes of matter and mattering:
I like to think that our lives do
matter, even if the universe would trundle along without us.
[…]
I
want to argue that, though we are part of a universe that runs according to
impersonal underlying laws, we nevertheless matter. This isn’t a scientific
question — there isn’t data we can collect by doing experiments that could
possibly measure the extent to which a life matters. It’s at heart a
philosophical problem, one that demands that we discard the way that we’ve been
thinking about our lives and their meaning for thousands of years. By the old
way of thinking, human life couldn’t possibly be meaningful if we are “just”
collections of atoms moving around in accordance with the laws of physics.
That’s exactly what we are, but it’s not the only way of thinking about what we
are. We are collections of atoms, operating independently of any immaterial
spirits or influences, and we are thinking and feeling people who bring meaning
into existence by the way we live our lives.
Carroll’s captivating term poetic
naturalism builds on a worldview that has been around for centuries,
dating back at least to the Scottish philosopher David
Hume. It fuses naturalism — the idea that the
reality of the natural world is the only reality, that it operates according to
consistent patterns, and that those patterns can be studied — with the poetic
notion that there are multiple ways of talking about the world and of framing
the questions that arise from nature’s elemental laws.
Brain Pickings
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