A Bit About the Elegant Universe 24 Update

by Fred Pruitt

(This version was first posted on this blog in 2010, though it was probably written somewhere around 2002 or 03. The park in the second part is Seneca Park, in the St Matthews neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. At the time I worked in a home office nearby and would take my breaks in the park. There is so much noise in the world today. I thought a bit of amazing physics coupled with a reverie on a walk in the park on a sunny warm Autumn day was for me just what the doctor ordered. Today.)

I recently watched* the first two parts of “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene on PBS’s NOVA show and was enthralled, inspired and amazed by so much of his presentation.

I don’t say this with any sort of tongue-in-cheek, but he was so good, concise, entertaining and incredibly amazingly informative all at the same time, that I thought nothing has been as good since Disney’s Jiminy Cricket taught my generation science lessons on the Walt Disney show every Sunday night in the 1950’s.

Well, Jiminy didn’t teach science every Sunday, but when he did, it was as good and informative for us then as Brian Greene most certainly is now, to me. I got E=mc² and the Theory of Relativity from Jiminy (before I was six years old), and another lesson from Greene much much later. I would not give out such a compliment lightly.

The show is built around Einstein’s unrealized dream of finding a mathematical set of interworking formulas to describe all phenomena in the universe, a “unification theory.” Einstein apparently worked toward it til his dying day, even working on formulas on his deathbed. It was his “belief” in unification that drove him to find scientific mathematical proof that it was so.

Now, according to Mr. Greene, many physicists are excited about the current “string theory” and may be coming close to a realization of Einstein’s dream, that of mathematically describing by a simple set of formulas how all reality is and works. (This is old news. Others have informed that since the “string theory” theoretical physics has moved on to other theories even more amazing that the “strings.” I haven’t gotten there, yet. But this story still serves its purpose for me.)

The very notion of it is way beyond my everyday thinking, in the first place. And I’m only a one-show TV watcher of the “string theory” so that hardly qualifies me as anything more than a water-cooler commentator.

Still, the whole idea of these physicists actually finding a scientific explanation for all reality that takes things down to their most primitive levels, the level of vibrating “strings” or “bands of energy,” each “string” like a separate musical note, vibrating at a certain rate, and the rate of vibration of that string determines what it “will be” — i.e. a carrot, a horse, a toenail — and that these “strings” are actually in the physical universe though they are billions of times smaller than the smallest particles we know of in the subatomic realm but that these strings are the actual symphonic notes of one mighty symphony — Brian Greene’s words, not mine (and also Jacob Boehme’s oft-repeated words!) — well, the notion is way beyond, no doubt.

And many other things did he say, and some are left for the final hour episode. (PBS – NOVA – 8:00 PM EST). [Which I have seen since writing this.]

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The Reverie at the Park ….

I went to the park for a few minutes yesterday. It was a record warmth day, about 80 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, beginning of November, but the result outside yesterday was just magical. The sun had that autumn cast to it, so that its brightness is somewhat sweeter and gentler than in high summer. I recoil from the summer sun, but this sun made me want to soak in it, to let the light seep into me and photosynthesize all that I am.

Everything in my sight was enveloped in its light and seemed to come from it. A mother and little girl in the middle of the field, flying kites. The girl’s kite was soaring up and down and she was running with it, while her mom was sitting on the ground still fiddling with her more-complicated-looking kite. Coming up the track from far off on the other side of the park was a girl jogging. A woman’s dog had a hard time continuing on as I passed, I guess because he was curious about me. She looked a little annoyed, but I moved to the other side and her dog forgot about me.

Two older women were side by side on a bench talking, and as the woman with the dog went walking by them, she spied a bib on the ground, and called out to another woman walking with a baby-stroller ahead, “I think you dropped your bib.”

Life was teeming about me, and all I could do was go sit on the nearest bench and be quiet. There was a wind, and you could hear it, could even tell where it had been, but you couldn’t see it or tell where it was going. You only saw its effects once it got there and moved on. But it was everywhere moving. The girl jogged by, always a welcome sight, and light filled and warmed everything with joy.

Somehow in all that momentary beauty, out of the silence and the light, everything seemed to be pulsating at once out of somewhere unseen and unheard. Cars passing on the drive and the tractor-mower at the other end of the park blended their unnatural machine sounds with human voices and with the breeze and the moving leaves — and then all that was in my vision and hearing in a moment became nothing but one chorus coming out of God and in turn praising God in the innocence of God’s Garden and the purity of His Everywhere Presence.

From that perspective there is no sense of judgment or condemnation, no wrath, no anguish, only One Love seeking the eternal manifestation of the sons of God.

Ahhhhh, the symphony, the melody, the “unification” …

 

(Rev 11:15-17)

15 And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever.

16 And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God,

17 Saying, We give Thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.