E S SAY

'VITHOUTEARTH

THERE IS NOHEAVEN

The cosmos is not a physicist's equationBy Edwin Dobb

0,tinder-dry afternoon this pastAugust, a research team from the National Marine Fisheries Servicepitched camp in a stand of lodgepole pine along the South Fork of theSalmon River in central Idaho. The site overlooked a stretch of waterthat serves as the spawning grounds for one of the few surviving popula-tions of summer chinook in the region. Early the next morning the teamwould implant tiny electronic tags in several hundred juvenile fish, off-spring of the previous year's run, in hopes of gaining information abouttheir hazardous migration to the sea. I was there to watch them work.

Since my arrival, at sunset, I had been listening to a Navajo fluterecording played from the far side of camp by a fisheries techniciannamed Rich, a native of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.The music was agreeable if melancholy, reminiscent of the eveningplaint of a solitary bird and subdued, unobtrusive, borne in and out ofearshot on an intermittent breeze. But shortly after nightfall Rich re-placed the flute recording with one made in the early 1970s by theAmerican Indian Movement. He then turned the volume up. Way up.Sometimes only the vernacular will do: Rich cranked it up.

For the next hour or so Rich's co-workers and I were treated to a bed-time harangue. Against a background of repetitive drumming and chant-ing, the speaker declaimed a litany of cruelties European civilization hadinflicted upon the aboriginal peoples of the Americas and their ancestralhomelands. His voice rang through the camp like that of a wrathfulwoodland god, except that this god lacked poetry. He was noisy butuninspired. With few exceptions, his fire-and-brimstone sermon was a

Edwin Dobb is a farmer editor of The Sciences. He lives in Butte, Montana.

ESSAY 33

WEARE AS BITS OF DUST IN A

SPECTACLE WHOSE SCOPE

BEGGARS THE IMAGINATION,

WHOSE SECRETS MOCK REASON

34 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 1995

list of stone-cold cliches burdened with ponderous references to "thecaptors," their infernal machines, and the fall of Babylon, and deliveredin a tone-deaf manner. Imagine a Hallmark Card translation of a BobMarley lyric recited over a bullhorn by a disgruntled tour guide. Nowimagine listening to this weird rant in the middle of the forest in themiddle of the night.

Compounding the surrealism of the occasion was the layout of Rich'scamp, or what could be seen of it in the enfolding darkness. At that pointin the season open fires were banned by the Forest Service, so Rich posi-tioned a Coleman lantern on the ground instead and pondered its monot-onous glow from an aluminum chair. Parked a few feet away was his agingChevrolet Suburban, in which he kept his gear--eooler, propane stove,the offending tape player. Most aspects of Rich's camp, in other words,were derived from the selfsame civilization the booming voice con-demned. And that voice. It smothered every other sound in the forest-the pines creaking overhead, the stream riffling through the nearby mead-ow, the willows shifting along its banks. Worst of all, it dispelled the as-tonishing silence that at night permeates such places, superimposing onthis still relatively untrammeled patch of the natural world-immediatelyat hand, in fact pressing in on all sides-a picture of the natural world, apicture in which pristine forest is subdivided into suburban lawns andparking lots. Magritte might have been amused.

Rich surely was, though for reasons all his own. Quick to laugh and self-effacing, he apologized the next day, allowing that, yes, he had gone on thewarpath and, no, he could not explain what had driven him to such lunacy,unless it was the wide white moon itself. The crew welcomed the opportu-nity, any opportunity, to heckle their workmate, whom they obviouslyliked, but no one seemed to have been bothered much by his rhetoricalraid on their peace of mind. No one seemed to have been won over by iteither, though I wondered if some phrases were not still ringing in theirears, as they had been in mine since I first heard them.

Long after Rich had turned off the AIM tape and extinguished hislantern, certain passages lingered in my mind, unbidden but insistent.Here is one of them: "We see you in your loneliness, stranded in the uni-verse, alone from the past, alone from the future." The object of the pro-noun was any descendant of the restless empire-building peoples whodisplaced, murdered, and subjugated Rich's ancestors-including, ofcourse, me. Although the observation was not original-a sense of abid-ing ontological solitude having become commonplace in Western cul-ture-hearing it under those circumstances, being singled out, as it were,by a resounding, disembodied voice while sitting in the dark along theremote upper reaches of an Idaho salmon stream, made it strangelypoignant and disquieting. WE SEE YOU STRANDED IN THE

UNIVERSE. And there I was, the only one in camp

W still awake, still outside his tent, looking up through thetreetops at the dazzling pitch of stars that is our galaxy.

ho has not gazed at the night sky, mouth slightly agape? Theexperience is so common, its effects so uniform, that a standard vocabularyhas evolved to describe it. Invariably we speak of the profound humility wefeel before the enormity of the universe. We are as bits of dust in a specta-cle whose scope beggars the imagination, whose secrets make a mockery ofreason. If there is a message to be deciphered in the vast expanses of spaceand time it is that life does not count for much in the big picture; all thatwe do and make, regardless of how noble it may seem, is little more than a"stain on silence," to borrow the unforgettable and unforgiving phraseSamuel Beckett used to describe his own doings and makings.

Confronting indifference on a cosmic scale cannot help but encouragefeelings of diminishment, abandonment, implacable solitude. There isevery reason to believe that we, the residents of Earth, are alone in the

lllustrarions by David Plunkett

universe, stranded in a night that looms larger and longer with each newastronomical discovery. And unlike our fellow creatures, who have yet tolook up from blessed oblivion, we are acutely aware of our position; weare insomniac and obsessional, anxiously searching the sky for signs ofsignificance. Despite the rhetoric that surrounds stargazing-the wonderin beholding such grandeur-this singularly human enterprise is shotthrough with dread. Think of the huge antennae we have aimed upwardin the hope that other beings, living elsewhere in the universe, will con-tact us. The alternative, that evolution is a game of solitaire, is unthink-able. WE SEE YOU IN YOUR LONEliNESS. Whatever else it may be,the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a cry in the dark, revealingthe terrible longing around which our cosmology revolves.

These days one does not hear much about dread or longing in con-versations regarding the stars. Since early in this century, when cos-mology became a full-fledged science, the subjective side of stargazinghas been relegated to the margins of serious thought, the suspect ter-rain of astrologers and aboriginal peoples who still believe in corre-spondences between heaven and earth. But that has led to an impasse.Judging from the success of popular books and films-Carl Sagan'stelevision series, Cosmos, has now been seen by more than four hun-dred million people in sixty countries-we still seek from cosmologywhat we have always sought from it, which is to say, guidance in ourattempts to construct a metaphysical map of the world, at a time whencosmology has envisioned a universe that negates such attempts, bynegating the agent in which they arise.

Take, for example, the theories of Stephen Hawking, probably thebest-known cosmologist alive today and author of the best-selling book ABrief History of Time. He says that his goal is "nothing less than a com-plete description of the universe we live in," yet his history, for all itsconceptual dazzle, is not only brief but woefully incomplete, even impov-erished. Stripped of the fanciful asides he adds to make the tale more ap-pealing to the nonscientist-traveling into a black hole is a favorite-itis an exceedingly abstract account of dumb matter expanding and con-tracting, the universe as an insensate exercise in quantum mechanics andnon-euclidean geometry. Lost in the hullabaloo over Hawking's ideas* isthe fact that his cosmos is lifeless, as are those described by most of hiscolleagues. In the creation stories told by mainstream cosmologists suchas Hawking, Steven Weinberg, and Alan Guth, organisms are accidentaldetails of such negligible consequence that they drop from view, all ofthem, including the one that concocts such stories.

To my mind this is an extraordinary omission, and it will persist aslong as cosmology is treated as a branch of physics. For decades physi-cists have served as the self-styled tour guides of the universe; they havemonopolized the bullhorn, insisting that we look upward, "out there,"whenever we wish to encounter the cosmos. But does the cosmos not be-gin closer to home, on this planet, among the living? Indeed, does it notoriginate "in here," in the age-old desire to orient oneself with respect tospace and time? The ancient Greeks, who invented the art of conversing(logos) about the order of the world (cosmos), thought so. Assumingthat earth and its inhabitants are of a piece with the heavens, they sawcosmology as the study of man's place in the grand scheme of things.Contrast this with the version promoted by physicists, a brilliant intel-lectual edifice, to be sure, yet utterly vacant, a landmark in the architec-ture of absence. Modern physical cosmology takes to extremes the mes-sage voiced in the AIM tape: for solitude it substitutes nullification; forthe unnerving condition of being stranded, the absurd condition of not

*Hawking's theories should not be confused with the Hawking phenomenon; that is, thefascination nonscientists rightly have for a mute and immobile wheelchair-bound manwho would dare to tame the heavens by force of mind alone.

FOR DECADES, PHYSICISTS HAVE

SERVED AS THE SELF-STYLED

TOUR GUIDES OF THE UNIVERSE,

MONOPOliZED THE BULLHORN

ESSAY 35

IN THE GUISE OF COSMOLOGY,

A LITTLE SOPHISTRY GOES A

LONG WAY-TO THE OMEGA OF

EXISTENCE AND BACK AGAIN

36 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 1995

being present at all. THERE IS NO ONE HOME. Why listen to thisweird rant? Why sit in silence, enduring a creation story that over-

looks the part of the cosmos that lies within reach of our

C senses-the part that includes life, intelligent organisms,stargazers?

ertainly one reason we allow ourselves to be taken in by the talesHawking and his fellow cosmologists tell is the pleasure provided by mentaljourneys. The mind delights in its own movement, and the action is mightythrilling in the worlds conjured up by science popularizers. It is no accidentthat almost every commercially successful layman's account finds a way totransport us to places where, happily, anything is possible, including timetravel, interstellar travel, and excursions through alternative realities. Nev-er mind that, like the endless permutations of Star Trek, all of this is make-believe-that the only release from the present is death, that the possibilityof visiting another solar system before the species expires is so exceedinglyremote as to be nonexistent, that such exotic realms as black holes anduniverses of more than four dimensions are by definition closed to embod-ied life forms. Never mind, in short, that we are earthlings.

We also seem prepared to applaud a creation story that overlooks life ifat some point during the drama a deity is rolled onstage. Two years ago, ata press conference to announce the detection of faint fluctuations in the ra-diation left over from the Big Bang, astrophysicist George Smoot declared,"It's like looking at Goel." Hawking, for his part, concluded A Brief Historyof Time by saying that discovering why the universe exists will be equiva-lent to knowing "the mind of God." Even in clear-cut cases of metaphoricalextravagance-remember "the God particle," the discovery of which was tohave shed light on how particles acquire mass?-the use of religious lan-guage in otherwise scientific discussions regarding the foundations of realityor the fate of the universe reinforces the impression that physicists enjoyprivileged access to domains of ultimate importance, that they are the secu-lar equivalent of the priest or shaman, capable of interceding between meremortals and the beyond, with the exception that their approach holds outthe promise that one day eternity will be subject to public demonstration-no small attraction in an age when fewer and fewer people seem willing tomake the leap that faith requires. Recently this trend reached its apotheosiswith the publication of The Physics of Immortality, in which Tulane Univer-sity physicist Frank J. Tipler puts forward his Omega Point Theory, a math-ematical model of the end of the universe that he insists proves the exis-tence not only of God but of heaven and the resurrection of the dead aswell. It is hard to say what is more pitiful here-the arrogance in the claimthat one can reason one's way to immortality or the silliness in the notionthat any deity worthy of respect would consent to appear as the outcome ofa mathematical equation. If Tipler has proven anything, it is that in theguise of cosmology a little sophistry truly goes a long way-in this case, tothe omega of existence and back again.

No matter. However vulgar or frivolous or downright fraudulent theyare, explicit theological enticements give popular accounts of cosmologysomething we very much want them to have. Our pantheons may be emp-ty but our hearts are not, and in our terrible longing we are quick to fall foranything that so much as smells of divinity, even if the scent comes from abottle and wears off by morning. But there is another, far deeper sense inwhich this longing operates, one that cosmology has always addressed,though in its present, highly compelling form only since the 1970s.

Back then theoretical particle physicists were casting about for ways totest the idea that three of the four fundamental forces in nature (electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces) are manifestations of amore fundamental force. Although incomplete-gravity is excluded-thedifferent versions of this notion are thought to be necessary steps towarddeveloping a grand unified theory that governs everything in the universe,

a goal that has long been the holy grail of physics. But there was a hitch:to test such sweeping theories with particle accelerators extremely highenergy levels are required, levels that have been reached only once-atthe dawning of the universe. So physicists turned to cosmology for evi-dence, albeit circumstantial, that would confirm their hunches, therebymerging the search for a unified theory with the attempt to describe theuniverse as a whole-two monumental ambitions made one. The allianceis best represented today by Hawking, who explores the cosmic implica-tions of quantum mechanics, which concerns the vanishingly small, andgeneral relativity, which concerns the staggeringly large, in the hope offinding a single law to explain why everything is the way it is.

The quest for unity long predates science, of course, having been centralto the monogenetic myths of prehistoric and aboriginal peoples as well asto the monotheistic religions that followed. In the Western intellectual tra-dition it can be traced back to the pre-Socratic philosophers, who believedthat there exists a universal stuff of which everything is made, and to Plato,who envisaged the eide, or Eternal Ideas, of which everything in existenceis but a pale and perishable reflection. Theoretical physics, then, in whichthe latter approaches have been employed to great effect, is a modem wayof pursuing a perennial interest: the quark, the most fundamental subatom-ic particle discovered to date, is our version of the universal stuff whereasthe yet-to-be-realized unified theory, call it the final equation, stands as theeternal template upon which all of nature's transient multiplicity is based.

But the empirical vocabulary in which discussions of the quark and theequation are couched tend to obscure the extent to which the idea of asimple, unifying order underlying all of existence is exactly that: an idea,one whose persistence reveals the force of desire as much as it points to afeature of the world. In any form, the promise of unity engages a widelyheld, deep-seated longing. As manifest in physical cosmology, whichcombines the search for the universal with the exploration of the uni-verse, it engages us in spectacular fashion. Specifically, cosmology hasaligned itself with what was once the exclusive task of religion-tran-scendence, of the world at hand, the world we actually inhabit-because

that is the only route to everlasting unity. Proving the

H existence of heaven is much beside the point; physicalcosmology will escort us there.

ow the modest device known as the scientific method couldlead to so immoderate a project as transcendence may not be obvious, butall that is needed is a willingness to push the method to extremes. Scientistsare required to erase themselves from the pictures they construct; at thescene of the perfect inquiry there should be no telltale fingerprints, no tracksleading back to the inquirer. Ideal science is a text without an author. Theconventional way of putting this, of course, is that scientists aspire to objec-tivity. They strive to produce descriptions of reality that are independent ofthe biases of the individual scientist-to reveal the world as it is in itself.And the method works remarkably well. No one familiar with the accom-plishments of twentieth-century science can deny its effectiveness.

Problems arise, however, when the scientific method is considered in-trinsically superior to all other ways of coming to grips with the world, be-cause when elevated to that status the sleight of hand that makes it possi-ble becomes a liability. And what sleight of hand is that? Disguising theorigins of the inquiry itself: pretending that it is something other than auniquely human enterprise, that its very existence is not a manifestation ofinterests and values reflecting rarely examined prepossessions about the na-ture of truth and the nature of man. Although the whole of science is im-plicated in this masquerade, it is easiest to detect in physical cosmology,where the most rigorous of the so-called hard sciences is placed in the ser-vice of attempts to apprehend the universe in a single glance.

Imagine: in a single glance. To do that, one would have to remove one-

COSMOLOGY HAS ALIGNED

ITSELF WITH WHAT WAS ONCE

THE EXCLUSIVE TASK OF RELIGION:

TRANSCENDENCE AND UNITY

ESSAY 37

THE DEEPER ONE LOOKS INTO

THE UNIVERSE, THE LESS ONE

ACTUALLY SEES; THE OBJECT OF

INQUIRY IS LOST TO SIGHT

38 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ FEBRuARY 1995

self from the biggest picture of all-to back up far enough to view the cos-mos from the outside, In effect one would have to become the ultimateoutsider, the eye that sees everything, If truth is knowledge of the worldunto itself, then to aspire to the truth of the entire universe is to aspire tonothing less than the position of God. Small wonder that the creation sto-ry told in physical cosmology exercises a powerful hold on the imagina-tion. The usual ways the deity is invoked in contemporary territorial dis-putes between science and religion-Does she exist? Did she have achoice in the way she set up the universe? Is she intervening at this rno-ment?-pale alongside a god conceived as truth; for if one can, courtesy ofcosmology, achieve transcendence, this is a god a human being can hopeto become. Meanwhile, awaiting blissful ascension, one can take comfortin the belief that out there a divine point of view exists.

Be prepared to wait a long time, though. There is an unwritten rulethat applies to those who aspire to knowledge, one that has been illustrat-ed with shocking force by performance artist Annie Sprinkle. Duringmock stripteases in the early 1990s Sprinkle produced a speculum and in-vited audience members to take a closer look-at her cervix. Obviouslyconvinced that the times call for extreme measures, she left no doubtabout her message: prurient interest is a type of abstraction by which thecosmos that is a human being is reduced to a body part or a facet of be-havior. Moral issues aside, the lesson is that a speculum will not help oneget to know Annie Sprinkle, no more than a microscope will, or, for thatmatter, a superconducting supercollider. Just the opposite is true: thedeeper one looks the less one sees; the object of inquiry is lost to sight, asit is for those who would fathom the universe by laying it bare. Thegreater their insistence on uniformity, simplicity, permanence, the morethey are compelled to ignore what lies at hand: diversity, complexity, im-permanence. To gain unity they must forsake the world. Reaching for thecosmos, they capture instead the quark.

The second strategy favored by physicists, patterned after Plato's pre-scription for entering the realm of Ideas, requires an equally heavy sacri-fice. Assume for the sake of argument that other women have joinedSprinkle onstage but that the intent-to get acquainted with her-re-mains the same. Unlike his aggressive counterpart, the idealistic suitorprefers to contemplate his interest from afar, stepping back for a view thatwill encompass the others as well. He wants to discover the fundamentalquality all women hold in common, the feminine principle, and by doingso also identify what, to his mind, is most real about Sprinkle-thatwhich is timeless. But she will remain a stranger to him. In shifting his at-tention from the particular to the general, the theoretician alienates him-self from what makes Sprinkle Sprinkle-her individuality, her specifichistory, her ambiguity and fatality, everything that distinguishes her fromother women, other people, other creatures, other phenomena. Settingout to possess the world, he acquires instead an Idea of the world, the en-tire kingdom of existence in exchange for a meager equation.

In practice, then, the quest for unity produces not transcendence but es-trangement. And it could not be otherwise, because wherever one standsone occupies a position inside a worldview as well as inside the cosmos,creature of a twofold creation. We can no more climb outside our ownminds than we can travel to an Archimedean point beyond the edge ofthe universe. The belief in transcendence is perhaps the most subtleworldview yet contrived, because by pretending to be something otherthan a worldview it suggests the prospect of a picture that paints itself, acenterless cosmology-which, however, is no less fictional than the geo-centric cosmos Copernicus overturned some three hundred years ago. De-spite claims to objectivity, physics is a sophisticated, highly specialized at-tempt to humanize the world, and that suggests why the creation storytold in mainstream physical cosmology remains compelling despite itssterility. Earth, organisms, people-these may receive little or no notice,

but just the same we are very much present, in the idea of unity, a sure signof human authorship. The story assumes the exact shape of our longing.We, alone among creatures, wake to a world gone to pieces, and we alone

try to put it back together again-in our maps and"E metaphors, in the way, essentially, that we talk about it.We, you must admit, are an odd bunch.

very anomaly seduces us," writes E. M. Cioran, "life in thefirst place, that anomaly par excellence." In fairness it must be pointed outthat science wisely sidesteps questions it cannot answer, especially those re-garding the singular event and the one-of-a-kind object, because they arethe least amenable to its methods, which hinge on repeatability. This iswhy physics, were it to try to apprehend the likes of Annie Sprinkle, wouldavoid the fluid and multivalent middle range of phenomena and move to-ward the extremes-the quark or the equation. This also is why biology, as-piring to the condition of physics, would focus on, say, this or that gene se-quence in trying to explain Sprinkle's stage behavior or, better still, theway audience members respond to her behavior. Knowledge of the kind sci-ence seeks does not come by way of seduction. Science knows well its ownlimits, although some scientists, bless their hearts, seem not to.

Take the handful of renegade physicists who have tried to restore life toa position of importance in cosmology. Two of their scenarios warrant con-sideration. Design is central to the first scenario, called the anthropic prin-ciple, which makes much of the fact that the universe displays exactly thecharacteristics necessary for the existence of beings like us. To proponentsof the anthropic principle, like Tipler and John Barrow, this suggests thatlife was meant to be, that organisms were part of the plan from the start. Tome it suggests that dogs are not alone in chasing their own tails. What kindof a universe could we occupy except one that is fine-tuned for our exis-tence? One might as well claim that salmon are latent in seawater.

The other scenario turns on what is sometimes called the observer effect.According to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, in a sub-atomic system quantities like position and momentum lack definitive val-ues until they are measured. Paradoxical, yes, but it works remarkably well.The goofiness starts when this special-purpose mathematical tool is used tobuild an entire metaphysical framework, as John Wheeler, who coined theterm "black hole," has tried to do. In the absence of an intelligent observer,the reasoning goes, said physical system has no observable traits; it reallydoes not exist. And if this is so then we, or some other beings or Being,must be necessary to the existence of all physical systems-indeed, the uni-verse overall-because it is only through being observed that what does ex-ist could exist. Whoa. But for the jargon, this view would be indistinguish-able from sympathetic magic. One of the most sophisticated ideas of mod-em science is here debased to New Age malarkey, providing aid and com-fort to the reality-is-what-you-think-it-is crowd.

Physical scientists who set foot on the shores of life tend to view theirnew surroundings through the lens they know best, which in their casemeans in terms of the rules and requirements of the physical sciences. Ifthis is a flaw, however, it is an unavoidable one. To ask physicists to leavetheir conceptual prejudices at home would be to strip them of their prima-ry means of seeing. But it is crucial to remember that most of the cosmosthat is available to direct experience consists of exceptions to those rules,not in the sense that they contradict the rules-they most certainly donot-but in the deeper sense that they could never be predicted or evenminimally explained by them. Where we reside is a shifting sea of anom-aly. If we desire from cosmology something more than trivial intimationsof divinity or an ancient religious impulse reflected back to us in abstractform-that pallid god, oneness-we must make room for organisms, histo-ry, consciousness. We must allow ourselves to be seduced. That will re-quire an inversion of the present arrangement: no longer would astronom-

IF WE DESIRE FROM COSMOLOGY

MORE THAN INTIMATIONS OF

DIVINITY, WE MUST MAKE ROOM

FOR ORGA ISMS, HISTORY

ESSAY 39

WHEN WE GRASP THE

VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE,

WE GLIMPSE THE EQUALLY

VAST INTERIOR OF THE SOUL

40 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 1995

ical findings and ideas in theoretical physics set the boundaries of cosmol-ogy but instead they would be subsumed within a larger, extrascientific ap-proach. At the same time, physicists would be stripped of their bullhornsand special vestments, their reign as reality brokers at long last brought toan end. We would shift our emphasis from trying to discern the structureof the universe to trying to reckon our place within that structure,

the stargazer becoming the starting point in the quest

L to apprehend the stars. This is not as far-fetched as itmight seem.

ate that night on the South Fork of the Salmon River I under-went an experience at odds with the Big Bang and black hole script thatusually rings in our ears when we ponder the night sky. Like anyone underthose circumstances, I was impressed most by the sheer scale of what laybefore my eyes, but at the same time I was made aware of something else, astirring inside my chest that was no less real, no less inspiring than thestars overhead. What I felt was not diminishment but dilation. My wholebeing expanded; I felt intensely alive, on the verge of a momentous revela-tion. And I think I know why. Precisely when we grasp the vastness of theuniverse we also glimpse an equally vast interior, the enormous geographyof the soul, so to speak. Words may fail us afterward, forcing us to rely onhackneyed descriptions that emphasize our insignificance, but what we ac-tually sense, if only for an instant, is largeness of spirit.

At that moment I began to appreciate another intriguing passage fromthe AIM tape: WITHOUT EARTH THERE IS NO HEAVEN. By giv-ing up the vain attempt to achieve a god's-eye view of the world, we findthat the most pressing fact of existence is not that we are alone in thedark but that we are alive; not that the cosmos is empty but that it is in-carnate, right here, in this garden among the galaxies we call Earth.What's more, we realize that who we are and where we find ourselves aretwo sides of the same coin. We are aware of the stars only because wehave evolved a corresponding interior space-the domain of mind andlanguage-in which stars can be reflected, and in whose absence the cos-mos would exist but cosmology would not. WITHOUT EARTH THEREIS NO HEAVEN. We now know that we do not occupy the center of theuniverse, but we sometimes forget that we will always stand at the centerof our picture of the universe. That is our lot as conscious beings. Therightful axis of cosmology is therefore the human mind and, by extension,the plexus of life from which it arises. As language-using organisms, weparticipate in the evolution of the universe most fruitfully through inter-pretation. We come to grips with the world by drawing pictures, tellingstories, conversing. These acts are our special contribution to existence-we make cosmologies. To have a workable cosmology is to be at home inthe cosmos. To be in the process of creating a cosmology, a more com-mon situation in a secular age, is to be traveling toward home.

The story told by physical cosmologists is only one of many interpreta-tions of the universe, powerful under certain circumstances but scarcelyexhausting all of the ways we might profitably describe reality. No lessfertile are the worldviews of life scientists whose sensibilities have beenshaped by the study of natural history and ecology. Despite a decades-long process of capitulation, during which biology, striving for certainty,largely abandoned fieldwork among organisms and ecosystems for labora-tory experiments on genes and cells, some fearless life scientists continueto struggle with the big mysteries of the universe--eontingency, individu-ality, transformation, time, any of which makes corralling a quark seemlike child's play. Consequently, they have a great deal more to say aboutbeing alive in the cosmos than do those who call themselves cosmologists.

And scientists are far from alone in developing valid ways of "feelingthe total push and pressure of the cosmos," as William James put it. Poetsand plumbers have as much right to speak for the world as do physicists

and paleontologists. Indeed, in certain instances-facing death, say, orwhen the water is rising above one's knees-adopting the poet's orplumber's view of the cosmos makes much more sense. Not all world-views are equally useful or uplifting, of course, but that in no way justifiesa hierarchy in which science is considered intrinsically superior to otherways of apprehending reality. To take leave of science is not necessarilyto take leave of the facts, for there is no fact that is not also the work ofdesire. In theoretical physics the ideal fact accords with our longing forunity-a sublime ambition, yes, but one whose satisfaction entails thesacrifice of all that is tangible, all that we hold dear.

Today we live under a prohibition against the wanton commingling offact and desire, and understandably so. In the past this unholy alliancebred paralyzing superstition and, when vested with power, enslavement,pain, and death. But it is no less superstitious to think we can separatefact and desire. Besides, the difficulty lies not with the way we come byour worldviews, a process that always will be problematic, but with theway we make them felt, whether we employ force or persuasion. What ismost exemplary about science is that at its best it proceeds by meansof discourse and justification, an approach all human beings should

encourage. What we should resist, however, is the belief

Win absolute truths that can be grasped whole, a fictionthat has outlived its usefulness.

hat is the alternative? I wish to suggest something that mightbe called enlightened anthropomorphism, by which human thought ismeasured primarily by how widely it ranges, not how closely it approxi-mates the truth, by its amplitude instead of its verisimilirude. In cosmologythis would seem to give credence to any crackpot who wants to hold forthon the universe, no matter how cockamamie his ideas. And in a sense itdoes, because the only credential that should be needed to enter any con-versation about the nature of the world is one's humanity. Who's to saywho is a crackpot? None of us is qualified to make that judgment. None ofus is capable of pronouncing the last word on anything but the furnishingsof our own minds, and even that is debatable. This is why we best servethe cause of truth by expanding and defending the domain in whichthought is free to roam, by opposing any attempt to restrict human expres-sion, from outright persecution to arbitrary initiation rites and member-ship rules, like those imposed in the name of scientific objectivity.

Picturing the search for knowledge in this way-in pragmatic ratherthan epistemological terms-may seem odd at first, but the switch inperspective leads to a liberating cosmology. By admitting that all cre-ation stories are in significant measure anthropomorphic, we finally as-sume full responsibility for what we say, no longer pretending that ourutterances have the blessing of an extrahistorical authority. In effect,we transform the cosmic quest from the elitist, solitary contemplationof the stars into a free-for-all conversation about the stars with otherhuman beings, scientist and nonscientist alike. No gods, no priests, noconclusions, but-and this is the best part-everyone has a place at thetable, an aluminum chair before the campfire, or, if you share my tastefor Irish whiskey, a stool at the bar. The heart of this cosmology is aheightened sense of our shared condition and fate, our singular and pre-carious place in the universe. We need not love, much less understand,other human beings to realize that they too suffer, that they are con-scious of their mortality, that a longing burns inside them, that theyhave their own maps and metaphors.

For the moment, and perhaps only for the moment, we find ourselvesat the center of all cosmologies, not because the species is more intelli-gent or more powerful or more significant than any other but because wealone are capable of giving voice to the cosmos; it is our immense goodfortune and grave responsibility to sing the songs of creation. _

NONE OF US IS CAPABLE OF

PRONOUNCING THE LAST WORD

ON ANYTHING BUT THE

FUR ISHINGS OF OUR OWN MINDS

ESSAY 41