The Big Picture

Just finished a couple of very interesting books, Sean Carroll's The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (2016) and Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017), which I read in that order. And while Sean Carroll's book covers more intellectual territory -- biology, philosophy, etc. -- Neil deGrasse Tyson makes similar points about our origins and what we know about them. If I had to pick just one I might choose Tyson over Carroll, primarily because I think Carroll works very hard to debunk a lot of non-scientific knowledge that can't be refuted by rational arguments, discussions, or analogies. Tyson's assertions are likely more offensive to some people, but anyone reading either of these books would be wasting his or her time if not reading with an open mind looking for the current state of scientific consensus. In any case, I'm glad I read both; they nicely complement and reinforce each other.

It is pretty amazing when you think about what we humans have figured out about our own origins and how stuff like gravity, light, elemental particles, etc., actually works. Both Carroll and Tyson are very good at explaining how we know what we know about the universe, and how we acquired this knowledge using both theory and thought experiments, as Einstein did, as well as a vast array of very expensive, complicated, and large scientific instruments and devices later employed to test and verify those theories. One of the more fascinating parts of the story is how all of these things have unfolded over time. It is also pretty amazing to consider that so many individual events had to happen in just the way they have happened for us to reach this point in our existence. In particular the scale and distances had to be just right for us even to have the possibility of existence. Of course, had things been different, I suppose we would never know what we missed. It is only natural that we wonder what it all means, if anything.

Well, I certainly don't know, and if I thought I did, I doubt I'd be willing to share that information here. Although, I suppose I may have given something away in my previous blog post about my fondness for existentialism. The thing is, as Neil deGrasse Tyson acknowledges, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. But as both of these books tend to demonstrate, there are still some things we do know, and those things should give us pause or at least foster in us some necessary humility. Moreover, it isn't a matter of what we know, or even what we still do not know, but of the acceptance of all of that in the face of what we most likely will never know or understand. And yet there are those who would confidently pluck out the heart of this mystery.