Things great and small

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Just click on the title “Things great and small.”

As you likely know, Resonance Women’s Chorus, home to my major volunteer gig these days, just finished up the season with its marvelous concert on climate change. After being immersed in this earth-ish topic for months, it’s been fun to find myself stretched through other layers of reality by a handful of articles I've encountered—outward to this incomprehensibly vast cosmos of ours and inward to microscopic realms that touch on our very identity. Not trivial matters, but definitely fun.

(Before I get all wonky, check out these gorgeous roses I spotted on a walk the other day. If nothing else, they're testimony to two happy facts: it's spring and I'm out walking again. Hooray!)

So, as a hint of this perspective stretching I mentioned, I offer these few tidbits for your consideration. 

First, the microscopic: 

The first set of articles I read had to do with the relatively recent development of a new technique in the field of genetics. Not long ago, two geneticists developed a technique called CRISPR-Cas9, which gives scientists the ability to remove and add genetic material at will, altering an organism's genome—sperm, eggs, embryos—in a way that will be passed on to future generations. Here’s a video explaining it, if you're curious. The technique has already been used in rats, monkeys, and a few other species. Folks are pretty certain that it would work in humans. Genetic manipulation that is limited to non-germ cells (e.g., in GMO foods, gene therapy) already raises some ethical concerns. But this is about changes that will be transmitted to subsequent generations. Still unknown are how precise such changes can be (might I clip too much, insert too little?), how specific (what if I alter surrounding genes in the process?), and what the side effects might be (will eliminating, say, a gene that predisposes allergies also damage part of the natural immune response?).  

Aside from these technical issues, CRISPR raises huge ethical concerns—even theological ones. It could have great benefits in curing diseases, preventing birth defects, and so on. But it could also be used in questionable ways, like to engineer offspring sex, physical characteristics, intelligence, etc. Recently, a number of people working in the field called for a moratorium on this research in humans until these issues can be addressed. In the words of one scientist, “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny.” Another comments, “I personally think we are just not smart enough—and won’t be for a very long time—to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.”

Yet, just the other day I saw an article about scientists who had attempted to perform this research in human embryos. The experiment failed in most cases—the embryos died or the DNA was not altered as planned. In other cases, the results were as feared: in some, the DNA interrupted the process, resulting in some changed and some unchanged DNA. In other cases, non-target segments of the DNA were altered, a phenomenon some have called “collateral damage.” So the experiment basically confirmed that the scientists who had issued the warning were right. Still, this research also highlighted the possibility—even the high likelihood—that others will try again.

The questions this raises are just mind-boggling. What is identity? What does “I” mean if my DNA, the “building block” of my distinctive genetic makeup can be altered? And what does it mean to be a human being if the core features of human existence might be subject to alteration? If these techniques get perfected, who decides what traits are worthy of continuing and which are not? It is impossible not to hear the echo of early 20th century programs of eugenics in these questions.

But in a different microscopic domain, another story seems to bring good news: I wrote here before about scientists’ conclusion that viruses make up over 8% of our DNA. These viruses are evolutionary hitchhikers, organisms that infected our long-ago ancestors and that gradually became incorporated into our very genes. Now, that’s mind stretching enough by itself—nearly 1/10 of our DNA consists of viruses! But even more astounding is what these viruses do for us. In that earlier post, I noted that they may be responsible for the evolution of the placenta (the placenta! We’re talking here about the very beginning of our individual selves). And now, last week, I also learned that some such viruses—endogenous retroviruses—may “come alive” during the earliest stages of embryonic development. Retroviruses are not usually our friends—think HIV—but in this case, these endogenous retroviruses may actually serve to immunize the embryo against other viruses. 

Now, this is good news, but it still challenges any simplistic notions we might hold about ourselves as individual, self-contained, unitary beings. Just think about it … microscopic viruses—viruses!—stow-aways from pre-human history may be responsible for the placenta that supported our individual prenatal life and for our immunity to viruses that might otherwise have done us in. So don't you wonder wonder, where does the “I” in this process end and the “they” begin?

To leap from the microscopic to the telescopic ...

Two other recent stories escorted me back into my recurrent fascination with the cosmic. This past week was the 25^th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble telescope, which, as you likely know, has rewritten our understanding of the universe—and illustrated the book. The Internet was full of Hubble photo gems this week. In case you missed them, I’ll paste in a few, and you can click here for more and here for even more.  

                                                                                  

Hubble had some struggles from its earliest days (I’m tempted to say it was star crossed, but that seems too easy), with a microscopic flaw in the mirror that caused blurry views of even nearby objects. But with some clever fixes over the years by astronauts turned telescope experts, Hubble has taught us more about the cosmos than we ever knew there was to learn. As you may know from previous posts, I’m a totally amateur but enthusiastic observer of things astrophysical, so I’ve been paying attention to Hubble’s discoveries for years. This anniversary provided a delightful visual memoir of Hubble’s life so far, and I’m hoping for more.

And then, just today, I came across a short story about another recent Hubble-fueled finding: out there in the universe, there are “runaway galaxies,” and with Hubble's help, we’re starting to understand them. Scientists have known for some time about runaway “rogue” planets, which have either been ejected from their orbits around stars or somehow never belonged to a star system. They’ve also suggested the existence of runaway galaxies that are moving so fast they sail free from the “local cluster” of galaxies whose gravity generally holds galaxies together in a group. And now Hubble has spotted a runaway galaxy and tracked its trajectory as it veers away from its orbit and heads off into … somewhere. I love that the universe is so unruly.

So, I find this stuff fascinating in its own right. But this week, with my thoughts shifting from the issue of climate change—which is global, but local, in the planetary sense—to matters larger and smaller, I realized that both directions of my drift these recent days—the microscopic and cosmic—raise very similar questions: Who are we? What counts as human if much of our substance is actually other organisms? Who do we become  if we alter the genome that defines who we "naturally" are? Where is our place in a universe whose early beginnings over 13 billion years ago is just now coming into sight and whose extent, some would argue, is infinite? And that remains stubbornly errant.

If I drift back from the vast, cosmic question to this smallish, ordinary planet, I wonder at our arrogance to think we matter at all. If I move the other way, to the microscopic, I wonder if we realize how tentative and ephemeral our existence is. Either way, I'm struck by the astonishing improbability of it all. Which cycles me back to earlier musings on this very question, shared here many blogs ago.

I float in these dilemmas for a while, and then go about my business as if none of these questions mattered, as if they hadn't come to mind. Until they do again.

I wonder what that means. 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Readings for a foggy day

In the past week or so, I’ve come across three very different publications, each of which seemed particularly profound to me, so I wanted to pass on the recommendation that you catch them when you can.

The first is an amazing issue of National Geographic, “The Firsts Issue.” They had me with the cover. The lead story is “The First American,” and the cover shows a drawing of a teenage girl based on a 12,000-year-old skull recently discovered in a cave in Mexico. The girl’s DNA confirmed that contemporary Native American populations are descended from a Eurasian/East Asian population that was isolated (between the current continents) for about 10,000 years before making it to this continent—although many of her physical characteristics look very different from contemporary Native peoples. There’s much more to that immigration than I ever knew. I found it fascinating, speaking straight to my curiosity about human evolution and archaeology. 

But there’s more. An associated story explores the “first artists” and the “birth of art”—including evidence of symbolic expression long before the famous caves of Europe. My favorite line: "The beauty whipsaws your sense of time. One moment, you are anchored in the present, observing coolly. The next you are seeing the paintings as if all other art—all civilization—has yet to exist.” It gave me goose bumps. 

Computer simulation of one of the first stars in the universe,
exploding through dark matter to seed the universe with elements

Then there’s the article on a “first glimpse of the hidden cosmos” – which is about another of my favorite topics, the evolution of the universe. Another explores the “first year,” with interesting new findings and a range of stories about the importance of the first year of life. And more – the first city of Nigeria (Lagos), the first artificially conceived penguin (Magellenic), the first continent (called “Pangaea” by Wegener, who, in 1915, first theorized the existence and movement of tectonic plates), the “first bird” (bald eagle, in much less glamorous form than usual), and on it goes. It’s so great!

The second piece was a great column by David Brooks—who so often makes me think, hard, about complex topics (even though I disagree with many aspects of his political leanings). This was an article called “The Child in the Basement,” a commentary on Ursula Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (which you can read right here).  Brooks’ brief overview of the story is gripping itself, and his analysis has left me thinking all day. He explores the parable beneath this story—on one level, a cautionary tale about who we are willing to be as a society (a species?). And on another level, one about who we are willing to be to ourselves.

Brooks doesn’t tie this story or his commentary to any particular current event, but the connections seem clear and multiple to me: Ferguson, New York, Cleveland, Paris, Gaza, Syria. Maybe next door. Almost certainly in each of our own lives, the risk of losing the “idealism and moral sensitivity” represented by “the shivering child in the basement.” Be prepared to be stretched.

And the final piece caught me off guard. I was actually set up (unknowingly) for my strong reaction to this column by my recent struggles with orthopedic problems. After weeks (heck, months) of very distressing limitations on my activities, I’m gradually (very gradually) getting way better, and gradually coming to accept that this is the body I’ll have now. It’s actually not going to be fixed up “as good as new.” Nope. “Life miles,” in my orthopedist’s words, will mean that this is how it will be. I realize that my limitations, the consequences of my “life miles” are really quite minor. It’s just that they sometimes feel so demoralizing. So I’ve been in a funky mood about this, but I keep reminding myself that I’m in a funk about this, not in general. Or, as I said to my partner, I keep reminding myself that I’m distressed about this turn of affairs. I’m not depressed. To which she responded: Right, that’s not depression. It’s loss and grief.

So, I got a serious lump in my throat when I read this piece, “Getting Grief Right.” The column, written by a therapist, is actually about dealing with the loss (death) of a loved one—an experience that folks in my generation are becoming increasingly familiar with. This piece challenges the sometimes simplistic models of how grief necessarily happens—in stages, in sequence, with a definable ending to each and a process that brings us to “acceptance.” Preferably soon. I appreciated the openness of this discussion of grief, the space it gives to each individual's path. The story at the heart of the column put my own distress in perspective. At the same time, noticing my strong reaction to that story, I knew it was tapping into my own sorrow—about multiple recent and potential losses, including the loss of robust physical health. The invitation to deal with loss in your own way and at your own pace applies, I realized, to all forms of loss, including to losing the physical well-being that you’ve taken so for granted. Grief is what it is. There’s no “right” way to do it. The process is like a story, not an examination, and you write it yourself. The piece quotes the Danish author Isak Dinesen: “All sorrows can be borne if you tell a story about them.” So I’m now trying to craft a new story of my life that includes the the costs of glorious life miles. Maybe I'll get to acceptance as the story unfolds, but not because it's time to “get over it.” I’ll likely be writing more about it here. Meanwhile, check out this column. Worth the read, whether or not you’re currently dealing with loss.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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2015!

I’ve been thinking about writing a blog to welcome the new year, and in the process, I realized that I’ve been a bit whimpery and cranky of late (other than the post about the glorious Sound Circle concert, that is!). Hardly the way to end a year or welcome a new one! I have a friend who learned this lesson from her mom: Whatever you do on the first day of the year, you’ll do all year. So, I’d thought I’d start out on a good note here. I’d love to do a photo blog of beautiful or interesting scenes from my recent walks, but since I’ve been hobbled for about two months now (oops, whimpering again), instead, I’ll do a quick review of my recent film itinerary. Just to prove that I haven't been sitting at home with my lip hanging down for weeks on end.

My partner and I often have great intentions to go to a ton of movies over the holidays, since that’s when some of the best ones come out. But we usually don’t get around to it because the season is too wildly busy. But this year, we have managed to see a bunch of them. Plenty has been written about all these films (and you may have seen many/most/all of them yourselves), so I’ll dispense with my incisive commentaries and just do a rundown with quick comments to give the flavor of how they struck me.

So here they are, in no particular order:

Gone Girl – Really gripping, too imaginably possible, scary to imagine that folks may actually be like this with each other.

Boyhood – So different, it was hard for me to get into it at first. But imagining the reality of it (this kid is not a character; his life is actually passing like this) made it very thought provoking

Foxcatcher – Ew! Excellent acting x 3, and creepy (not in the monster sense, but in the sense of how strangely distorted human lives can become).

Imitation Game – Among the best, IMHO. Really fine acting, important story with vast repercussions, awful how Turing struggled under the homophobia of his day

Theory of Everything – Mostly a nice love story, remarkable portrayal of Hawking. Not enough about his astrophysics for my taste (but then I’m weird in that way)

Into the Woods – Eh (shrug). I’d go to see Meryl Streep in anything, and some of the other characters were good … but I didn’t find it really engrossing or as super-excellent as I’d hoped.

Fury – I generally hate war movies (especially of the John Wayne sort from my childhood), but this is more of the “Saving Private Ryan” sort. Excellent and awful.

Interstellar – Incredible visuals, interesting back story (or is it the front story?) about the relativity of time, often very touching.

Night Crawler – Ew (again)! Sociopathy on display, really well (creepily) portrayed.

Unbroken – Great acting by hero and villain, fascinating story, certainly engrossing, good.

Birdman – I know it’s supposed to be great. I thought it was good enough, but weird. Maybe I missed something.

And, still to look forward to, if our current pattern of movie-going persists:

Wild

Still Alice

Big Eyes

Cake

Selma

Woman in Gold

We’ll be seeing one or two flicks this next few days, then several more will come out in January that will be on the list. If all goes well, the year will start with movie-going, which means I’ll get to keep doing movies all year!

I’m not sure if this is what my friend’s mom had in mind. I think she was referring more to making your bed and being nice to your siblings. I also don’t know if she was right about this January 1 thing, but it’s probably worth thinking about.

In fact, maybe I should try to add something more substantive than movies to my plans for the day. I’ll give that some thought.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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Diana Nyad reminded me ...

As you likely know, 64-year-old endurance swimmer Diana Nyad just became the first person on record to swim unaided from Cuba to Florida. (For Robin Roberts' interesting interview with Nyad, click here.) She had tried several times before, beginning in her 20s (shortly after she swam around Manhattan). More recently, after passing her 60^th birthday, she decided to give it another go. She tried three times over the past few years, but was stymied by weather, currents, and jellyfish. She said this would be her last try … although apparently she’s said that before. In any case, she made it.

As she came out of the water, after 112 miles and 50 straight hours of swimming, she had three messages for her assembled fans (including the assembled news media, who dutifully passed her message on to us):

1.      Never, ever give up (a phrase she credited to abc’s Robin Roberts in the interview linked above)

2.      You’re never too old to follow your dreams

3.      It looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team

In interviews after her swim, she talked a lot about how being older actually helped her: the concentration, the patience, the knowledge that you can push through the tough moments. Her “mantra” as she swam: “Find a way.” She talked about the importance of stepping back, being committed, and then persisting despite setbacks. It wasn’t the athletic feat that mattered, she said; it was what it said about “the human spirit.”

Her messages were inspiring—to folks of any age, but especially to those of us who might have thought we were past fulfilling any long-standing dreams. And her insistence that even endurance swimming, one swimmer in the water for hours and miles, is a team event—this was also important for me to hear. Now maybe more than ever in my life, I am aware of how important other people are to my well-being. How life is a team effort. I learn this regularly from friends who have done a better job than I of building community. And it is something I am, honestly, working on at this very moment in my life. More on that later …

Back to Diana Nyad. In addition to my delight as I followed her last miles to shore (Online, that is. Not in the water), two other trains of thought drifted through my mind. The first was something I’ve written about here before: my concern about “bucket lists”—that designated pile of things we want to be sure to do in our lives. For me—and I know this isn’t true of everyone—what works better for keeping my life full and vibrant is to watch for the unexpected opportunities, the things I hadn’t planned that make me excited and give me a goal, even a fleeting one. I think of things like writing this blog, joining a bird-watching excursion during raptor migration season, swapping a sunny hike in the Utah desert for a photo blog of a rainstorm there, spending a week in New York taking a course in astrophysics, hiking up Storm King Mountain on an unanticipated pilgrimage. 

So, although I have huge respect—and perhaps a dose of envy—for Diana Nyad’s feat, I do not regret that I’ve had no persistent, focused, singular lifelong dream like hers. I’ve had dreams, but they’ve been far more amorphous, and they come true in small ways all the time rather than in one momentous step from the Gulf onto the shore. That suits me well, although it would likely not suit her.

And my second train of thought was this: I am working these days on relinquishing lingering feelings of loss and regret that come from seeing other (usually younger—Diana Nyad being close to the exception) people do things that I have done but can’t any longer or that I just wish I could do. The reality is that there are places I will likely not see, hikes I can no longer take, academic subjects that I won’t master in this lifetime, bike trips that are now impossible for me, books I won’t write. And I’m trying now, with varying but increasing success, to treasure the wonderful memories I have of the times when I have done those things, or things like them, rather than getting caught in sadness and regret over the very real limits to what I will still do in my lifetime.

So, another part of my response to Diana Nyad’s wonderful achievement was to remind myself that phrases like “You’re never too old” and “Never give up” do not mean that I am a failure at life if anything remains undone. I have no absolute bucket list. I’ve had and continue to have a rich, varied, often surprising life. And that’s enough.

Well, that and being part of a “team,” which actually is lifelong wish.

The universe (as we know it)

Finally, the long-promised, long-delayed blog on all things cosmic.

As you might remember, I recently attended a weeklong course on the origins of the universe … well, to be more precise, the origins and current nature of the universe as we feeble human beings understand it. For those of you who have absolutely no interest in the origins of the universe, I’ll be back soon with other less … um … lofty topics. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of the Andromeda galaxy—the one closest to our own Milky Way—to tempt you to read on.

Rather than trying to tell you everything I brought away from my week, I’ll share a few particularly fascinating tidbits in hopes you’ll find them fun, too: Where did it all come from? Is there life elsewhere in our universe? Is there more than one universe?

How big is the universe and where did it all came from?

You’ve likely all heard of the “big bang.” The point about 14 billion years ago when the whole universe (as we know it) was created, when an unimaginably dense concentration of space/time/matter expanded with such suddenness that all of existence as we know it was created in an instant. Within seconds, time and space had expanded astronomically, spreading out enough that light could penetrate the mass, and the atoms that would become stars and galaxies began to coalesce. The atoms formed stars, the stars collected into galaxies, and the galaxies into galaxy clusters. Over a few million years, an eye blink in cosmic time, the structure of the universe as we know it had begun to emerge.

We now have the technology to see beyond our own galaxy and far, far into the distance (which is also into the distant past—nearly back to the big bang). What we see is billions upon billions of galaxies in various stages of evolution. For an idea of how many we’re talking about, try this. Hold up a quarter at arm’s length. Now, imagine a part of the sky the size of George Washington’s eye on that quarter. The Hubble space telescope stared a spot of sky that size—one eye’s worth—a part of the sky where regular telescopes saw no stars at all, and this is what Hubble saw. This is the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field or XDF. 

Here's the amazing part: each of those blurry spots and each of those pinpoints of light, even the tiniest and most faint, is a galaxy—not a star, but a galaxy containing many billions of stars, like the Andromeda galaxy shown above. Multiply the number of galaxies in this picture by the number of George Washington’s eyes it would take to cover the whole sky, multiply that by 2 to account for the southern hemisphere, and you have an idea of how many galaxies there are in the currently known universe. This picture looks back more than 10 billion light-years.

So, given those billions of galaxies, each of which has billions of stars, how likely is it that there is a star/sun somewhere with a plant that is home to life as we know it?

Is there life elsewhere in the universe?

The question of whether there is (or ever has been) life on other planets is much more complicated than it might seem at first. First, there’s the question of what me mean by “life.” Usually we mean intelligent life—someone we could communicate with, for better or worse. But bacteria and amoebas are also life. Then there’s the question of time frame. Do we mean is there life now, or has there ever been (will there ever be) life? And then we have to consider what stage of evolution we mean. Humans have taken about 7 million years to evolve to our present state … what are the odds that we’ll find intelligent life that is currently at precisely the stage of its evolution where it is able (and wants) to communicate?

Which raises the problem of distance. A signal travelling at the speed of light from (or to) the nearest known planet that might host life would take about 2,700 years to reach us (or vice versa). That’s a long wait for a reply. Actual space travel seems unimaginable. The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet, Voyager I, has covered 1/600th of a light-year in 30 years. That means it would take a spaceship almost 50 million years to get to the closest known planet that might be able to harbor life. I’m guessing it would be hard to find volunteers for the trip.

Still, despite all this, folks are looking for other life in the universe. In our own solar system, they’re looking for signs of past or present life on Mars and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This search won’t yield “intelligent” (i.e., human-like) life, but it could tell us some interesting stuff about the history of our own solar system.

And then there’s the search for life on planets circling other stars, i.e., extrasolar planets or exoplanets. The first sighting of such a planet happened in 1988. Now, nearly 900 exoplanets have been confirmed, and almost 3500 other observations have been identified as likely exoplanets. (For a running count, click here.). Still, virtually all of these would be uninhabitable—too gassy, too hot, too cold, too massive.

The hunt for a planet that could sustain life—one of reasonable size located in a star’s so-called “habitable zone” (also called the “Goldilocks zone”)—continues. Over 250 “candidate” planets in the habitable zone have already been identified in the relatively few solar systems that have been studied to date. Considering that there are estimated to be about 100 billion planets in our Milky Way alone (one of billions of galaxies in the universe), it seems very likely that life exists somewhere out there.

An important question (even for non-astronomy buffs) was raised during the Q & A after a talk at my course. The questioner asked whether we should be “excited or afraid” at the prospect of contact with other life. The speaker, an astrophysicist who hunts for Earth-like planets as her day job, answered, “Maybe they should be afraid.” After the chuckles died, she said, more seriously, “We’d better get our house in order, because we’re going to have company.”

Hearing the question, I was first struck by the sort of xenophobic assumption it conveyed. Why would we assume that another civilization would be frightening instead of friendly, enlightening, helpful, wise? Also, why would we assume that another civilization, should such a thing exist, would be interested in contacting us? If they’re advanced enough to get here, they’d likely know a lot about us before they arrived. You have to wonder how eager they’d be to visit a world where the supposedly "intelligent" residents kill each other and destroy their own home planet. Indeed, maybe they should be afraid!

Are there multiple universes?

Physicists are on the hunt for a unifying theory that would join currently incompatible models of how the cosmos works—a so-called “theory of everything.” That search has led to complicated new theories (about strings, ‘branes, etc.), which have led, in turn, to suggestions that ours may not be the only universe.

Over the years, I’ve heard several arguments for the possibility that more than one universe exists. On one level, this seems nonsensical—how could there be something else outside of everything that is? Don't worry if you find it baffling. Famous physicists have publicly agreed that the notion is incomprehensible, if mathematically logical. Our brains, my astrophysicist teacher said, just don’t seem to be the right tools for understanding this notion. But “the math,” as physicists like to say, “is clear”: multiple universes are definitely possible.

During my week-long course, I heard a talk by Brian Greene, author of (among other things) The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and  the Laws of the Deep Cosmos. Greene’s candidate for a unifying theory is string theory. Whole books have been written about this, and although I learned a ton from his talk, I remain deeply confused and won’t even pretend to explain it here.

But this much I got: For string theory to work, a few things must be true. Most importantly, there have to be 11 dimensions (plus time) instead of the three dimensions we’re used to. These additional dimensions are not visible to us because they are so tiny. Greene uses the analogy of a wire that, at a distance, looks like it has just one dimension–length. But to an ant crawling around its circumference, it has three. The extra 10 dimensions, he says, are rolled up inside the ones we know, much as the ant’s path is rolled up in what we see as the “length” of the wire. These various dimensions exist as strings, and these strings vibrate at different frequencies. In fact, what we understand to be different particles (electrons, neutrons, quarks, etc.) are just strings vibrating at different frequencies.

And what, you may ask, does this have to do with multiple universes? Couldn’t those little ant spaces just exist here? Well, not exactly. If other dimensions are curled up as invisible strings, these strings could have an infinite number of potential shapes, each of which would have a different vibrational frequency. This infinite variety of vibrational frequencies would point to an infinite number of possible particles and an infinite number of possible laws to govern them.

So what? Well, Greene asks, why are we only aware of three dimensions if there are so many? Why only a finite number of elements and a finite number of laws to explain them? His answer: because this particular universe, with this particular set of laws is the one that allows us to exist. All the other possible types of existence—the other possible dimensions, frequencies, and laws—exist because there are other universes where those particular forms of reality operate.

Again, making sense of this may simply be beyond the ability of the typical human brain. Although Greene and his colleagues seem to get it, I, for one, am left scratching my head. So rather than belabor it further, I’ll just leave it to you to imagine how exciting it was to hear this from someone who explained it really well (with great visuals). And who sent the audience away not stuck in confusion about the science but instead wondering at the anthropocentrism that allows us to think that our universe is the only universe. Why would that be the case?!

Which takes me back to an earlier blog about reflections on being and nothingness, also evoked by this course. I refer you to that discussion for further mind-numbing exploration of who we are in the cosmos.

And with that, I’ll wrap up the topic of astrophysics with a grateful nod to the joy and privilege of retirement. It was such fun to be able to dedicate a week to the sheer joy of learning more about a life-long avocation. And as a bonus, I figure it may have helped to keep my brain lubricated.

On being and nothingness, which are enough

We just got home from a funeral service for a friend who died last week while we were at Chautauqua in New York. On Friday, we’ll be attending a memorial gathering for another friend who died on the same day. Not surprisingly, matters of mortality are on my mind. I’ve awakened the last few days feeling off balance, and songs about living and dying have been running through my head. I realize that this is likely how my life will often look from here forward—at least until it’s my turn. It is my peers who are dying now, not our parents (mostly) but ourselves. Despite my outwardly sanguine approach to the end of life, I think I have to consider that these events not only feel sad, they also feel frightening.

This is not a new train of thought for me. You’ve seen bits of it before in my discussions of aging and the meaning of death. But it came up again, big time, this past week. First, unexpectedly, during my course on astrophysics, “The Elegant Universe.” And then again with the news of these friends’ deaths.

Last time I wrote, I promised blogs about three topics from my trip to Chautauqua: the experience of Chautauqua itself, thrilling stories of the universe, and musings on Being and Nothingness (to borrow Sartre’s capitalization). I’ve actually started writing blogs on the first two topics, planning to save Being and Nothingness for last. But events of the past week and the encouragement of some friends prompted me to get on with it. So here you have it: musings on the meaning of Being and Nothingness, life, death, and community.

It all started with a speaker who got stuck in Chicago. First, some back-story: Chautauqua in New York has programming all day, every day, some of which follows the theme for the week. During the week I was there, the theme was “The Elegant Universe,” so several speakers addressed that topic from various perspectives. One of these speakers was Jim Holt, a philosopher, whose topic was “Why Does the World Exist?” I was excited to hear this talk. It promised an exploration of weighty matters of existence, chance, and purpose, and I’m an old philosophy buff, so I love this hyper-abstract stuff. But severe weather marooned him in Chicago. Still intrigued, I went to the local bookstore and bought his book by the same title.

The early chapters considered a series of positions on the question of why the world exists (as opposed to not existing—i.e., Being vs. Nothingness). Most suggested that without a divine entity to create reality, eternal nothingness (the void) would prevail. I skimmed the next  few chapters, which were full of “ps” and “qs,” attempts to answer the question of why the world exists through formal logic: Is there a logical reason for the world to exist (or not)? Old philosophy buff or no, my eyes glazed over during this part.

But then, reading around in the last part of the book, my attention was caught by this line:

“Although my birth was contingent, my death is necessary.”

And this:

“The world got on quite happily for eons prior to that unlikely moment when I was abruptly awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, and it will continue on quite happily after the inevitable moment to come when I return to that night.”

Holt’s talk was to be Wednesday morning, and by Wednesday evening, I was deeply into the book and reflecting on these ideas. Then, Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, we learned about our friends’ deaths. The near-simultaneous news of their deaths flashed against the background of these lines from the book, and I started thinking a lot about death. The song “May I suggest” (which I have talked about here before) played and replayed in my mind. Clearly, it was time to think again about existence—mine and ours.

Another speaker had made a point that got me thinking anew about a very old question, and these thoughts seemed especially important as I reflected on mortality. The question: How it is that the universe has precisely the characteristics that allow for and sustain human life—not just life, not just intelligent life, but the particular form of life that we embody? Why, in other words, does this particular world exist in this particular form, and what does that have to do with us?

For many people, the answer lies in an appeal to a higher power: Clearly, they say, a universe so precisely attuned to us must have been created by a supreme being who intentionally brought both the world and us into existence, who made the world explicitly for us. But my thoughts on this question took me in a different direction entirely. It seems to me that, framed this way, the question circumvents a profound (if perhaps uncomfortable) possibility: It’s not that the world was made for us at all. Why the world is this way has nothing to do with us. Instead, the point is that if the world were any other way, there would be no “us” to wonder about it why it’s here. We humans are an accident, I think, of the particular physical events that arose when the stuff of the universe came together in this particular way. To assume that it happened with a purpose—especially, with the purpose of being perfect for us—seems to me inescapably anthropocentric. Holt paraphrases one philosopher’s position, “Our universe arose by chance from a quantum fluctuation in the void”—and, I would add, it emerged with properties that, by chance, resulted in us.

The latter part of Holt’s book (parts of which are quoted above) spoke directly to these reflections. If neither the universe nor we were created for a purpose, then what is the meaning of Being? And does this mean that the end is simply Nothingness? Remarkably, Holt dared write about the struggle to name the Nothingness we fear (his words are in italics, mine aren’t):

“The dread of death goes beyond the fear that the rush of life will continue without us.” Yet, I must admit that when I read this line, I acknowledged (perhaps for the first time) that some part of my fear is precisely this—the awareness that the world will go on when I die, barely missing a beat.

“It is the prospect of nothingness that induces in me a certain queasiness… How to envision this nothingness? From the objective standpoint, my death, like my birth, is an unremarkable biological event, one that has happened billions of times to members of my species.” Again, he nailed it. How distressing to be reminded that on one level, my death will not be at all special, that it will have no more significance than that of billions of other people.

“But from the inside it is unfathomable—the vanishing of my conscious world and all that it contains, the end of subjective time.” Exactly. How can we grasp, how can we even imagine the end of consciousness. The fact that all experience will simply stop.

It seems to me deeply, personally, albeit painfully, true that our being here—collectively and individually—is a quirk of cosmic chance. Our individual existence is, in Holt’s words, contingent—it might never have happened. But once born, our death is inevitable. And, since I believe that my death will be simply the end of my experience and nothing more (OK, I’d like for my cells to feed some trees or worms or fishes or something), my Being becomes a fortuitous happenstance and my slide into Nothingness an inevitable winking out of that happenstance. Describing the moment when his mother died, with him at her bedside, Holt writes, “I had just seen the infinitesimal transition from being to nothingness. The room had contained two souls; now it contained one.”

Some folks might hear in this a fatalistic, even morbid perspective. But for me, it is the most hopeful possible one, because it reminds me every time I think about it that what happens in these moments between the fluke of my birth and the certainty of my death is my opportunity, my responsibility. I have this time—however long I have between chance and inevitability—to give meaning to my existence. It didn’t come with my birth, no agent had a plan for my life; meaning is mine to create or to squander.

This perspective and the reminder it brings has new substance in the aftermath of these friends’ deaths. Each of them in her own way lived well and fully, gave much to others, thrived on the challenges of a complicated world. And each gathered around herself a broad and deep community. The woman who was memorialized today had already lived a full, productive, generous professional life when she decided, late in her life, to come out as a lesbian and work for the betterment of the LGBT community. She left a remarkable legacy that’s expressed in the work she did and the people whom she loved and who loved her with equal depth. The woman who will be celebrated Friday loved to travel the world, and she always performed good works en route to “spend her privilege” well. The folks who will be singing in her honor Friday know well the importance of community and the gift she was to theirs.

From where I stand, theirs were lives that enriched the world while they were here, and those of us who knew them are the better for their time with us. I have no need to seek an extraordinary origin for them or for the world they inhabited. Nor do I need the reassurance that they continue in some way, other than in the impact they had while they were here and its continuing echo in the people they touched.

For me, the amazing miracle—quantum fluctuation though it may have been—that gifted them to us was enough. And the thought that they were once and will again be star stuff suits me fine.