Humans: From Nothing to Now

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Section One

Origin

Chapter 1

The Search for Meaning

It is difficult, or perhaps even impossible, for us to pinpoint the exact moment that human beings first began to wonder about the nature of the world and their relationship to it. Nonetheless, some of the first attempts ever made would fit quite comfortably into the category of myth. From the Greek mythos meaning ‘story’, myths are commonly believed to be nothing more than fictions concocted by our ancient ancestors to explain the unknown. There are schools of thought¹, however, that see the original meaning of the word to be something more in alignment with stories that are grounded in, or at least related in some way to, true events. Either way, myths are traditional or legendary tales — usually grand or heroic — and they are used to explain many things, for example, the origins of cultural practices, natural phenomena, and, of course, creation itself; which is to say, how all things came to be.

There are numerous creation myths, and they can be found in almost every culture on Earth. They range from simple stories involving significant characters or beings, through to others that are far broader in principle. For example, the basic idea of the Hindu creation myth² says that all things in the universe arose out of the self-sacrifice of Purusha, a primordial or cosmic giant who had a thousand heads, faces, thighs, arms, eyes, and feet. In accordance with this myth, everything in existence — including the Sun and the moon, as well as the structural basis of the Indian caste system itself — is a rearrangement of Purusha.

Somewhat less specific are the creation myths of the Australian Aborigines. These stories refer to an early period called the ‘Dreamtime’, being the very foundation of life itself. In this time, the pre-existing ancestral spirits transformed a world of things and conditions into the structures of today. The ways of life, the law, and the moral code were set down to be followed eternally. The Dreamtime was the period of fashioning, organising, and moulding an unordered world, and is the foundation of the Aboriginal world view.³

The Dao creation myth⁴ describes more of a process rather than specific characters being responsible for the formation of things. The essence of this myth says that in the beginning there was a featureless, yet complete, ‘something’. It was silent, amorphous, and stood alone and unchanging. It was called the ‘Way’, and it gave birth to unity, from which arose duality. Duality then created trinity, and this gave birth to the myriad creatures.

This myth, or way of seeing, is simple, elegant and incorporates many of the ideas that are evident in Origin as a theory — from the greatest simplicity arises infinite complexity.

Religion is another vehicle that people use to understand the world they live in and feel at home within it. Although religion incorporates mythology to some degree, it goes further to describe certain ways that people should live in order to satisfy the gods or deities (or the belief systems that support the respective religion) and live joyous, meaningful and fulfilling lives. There are more than 4,000 different religions in the world today⁵, and it is not the purpose of this work to explore them, rather merely to acknowledge them for the value they serve some people. When it comes to understanding how the universe works, however, most people these days seem to want facts, proof and evidence, formulas and equations that give tangible and demonstrable results that are beyond sheer belief.

Enter science. And although, once again, it would be difficult to say exactly when science began, it is an approach that emerged from the impulse of philosophical enquiry. The word ‘philosophy’ comes from the Greek words philo and sophia respectively from philien meaning ‘to love’ and sophos meaning ‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’, the combination of which equals a word that means the ‘love of wisdom’. In the broadest sense, then, philosophy is something that relates to us as the ‘wanting to understand all things’, and therefore encompasses everything that might help us towards reaching this goal. By this definition, myth and religion fall under the umbrella of philosophy, as do science, metaphysics, theology, and pretty much every field of enquiry towards learning and understanding. Not surprisingly, this is why those who study any subject at university to gain a high academic award, receive a Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.), no matter what the field.

The fact that philosophy underpins and essentially defines every attempt that we make to understand the world, can also be demonstrated through a fun and interesting experiment that you can do yourself right now. Think of any word you like, and enter it into a Wikipedia search. Then follow the first hyperlink in the main body of information about the word (excluding any italicised words). If you continue doing this you will, in almost every case, eventually end up on the philosophy page! This is indeed an interesting exercise and helps demonstrate that all enquiry towards understanding the world and ourselves leads to philosophy.

Considering this area of philosophical enquiry, one of the first and most famous names that humanity has some historical record of is Socrates, who lived in the period c.470 — c.399 BCE. He is usually recognised and credited as one of the major contributors to the foundations of Western philosophy, so it is valuable to consider what he did in his time.

Socrates was an enigmatic and powerful philosopher. His style was to ask questions that were challenging, and he forced people to think for themselves so that they might grow in wisdom and come to know themselves. He saw that ultimate wisdom and happiness only came through such knowing⁶ — a perspective that I, too, believe would be something exceedingly beneficial, perhaps even necessary, in the quest for us to thoroughly understand our universe and be happy in it.

Some of Socrates’ main contributions to humanity lie in the field of ethics. He held strong ideas about right and wrong and the way people should live. He believed, for example, that only philosophers — who had the greatest knowledge, virtue and ability — were the ‘right’ kind of people to govern others — a bold and challenging perspective that would ultimately bring about his demise.

Socrates lived in a period of significant political unrest in Athens, and his virtuous views and values began to clash with those held by the majority of people, especially those in power. He questioned the Athenians’ beliefs in their gods, encouraged the youth to question everything, and generally ‘stirred the pot’ by exposing the logical flaws in the thinking of politicians. Although many admired these challenges to the status quo, and the often-humorous ways in which Socrates presented them, others became angry and felt that he threatened their very way of life. Consequently, Socrates was eventually brought before the courts and charged with ‘not recognising the gods recognised by the state, but introducing novel divinities and corrupting the young’.⁷ He was sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning, although when asked to propose his own punishment, he suggested ‘a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of his life instead, to finance the time he spent as Athens’ benefactor’.⁸

Perhaps the most significant contribution made by Socrates, especially in the context of this work, was that of the ‘Socratic Method’. The philosopher, Plato, first described this method in the Socratic Dialogues, a series of discussions between Socrates and other individuals of his time. The Socratic Method is a technique which breaks any problem down into a series of questions. The idea is that through reflecting on and answering these questions, the solution a person (or group of people) seeks will become apparent. It is a process of hypothesis elimination, which finds the better or more correct hypotheses by a systematic identification and elimination of hypotheses that lead to contradictions. This approach to problem solving has been a significant influence on what is known to us today as the ‘scientific method’.

The scientific method usually begins with observing the world we live in and questioning what arises from those observations. This questioning then leads to the development of hypotheses that might explain the phenomena observed. The best hypotheses lead to predictions that can be tested or measured in some way, and depending on how well the results match the predictions, this becomes a measure of the plausibility of the hypotheses. This process may then lead to the development of a general theory.

Socrates developed a method that has helped lead to the current scientific method, and the very nature of that method is at least one of the reasons he never recorded any of his thoughts and ideas himself. He was more interested in asking provocative questions than having any specific philosophy attributed to his name. Therefore, a picture of the man can be formed only as a function of his influence and impression on others. The value of much of his work stems from its interpretation by Plato, Socrates’ most prized student.

Plato (429 — 327 BCE) is one of the world’s best-known and most widely read philosophers of all time,⁹ and the work and ideas he presented throughout his life still influence our thinking today. The idea of ‘Platonic love’, named after him, is one of the better-known examples of his influence. Platonic love is a kind of love that is nonsexual, or chaste. It is derived from the idea that the perceived or felt love for another person can inspire the mind and soul in the direction of spiritual matters. In the modern, popular sense, it is seen as an affectionate, nonsexual relationship between two people.

In the context of this work, however, and its quest to understand the nature of existence and how things work, what is interesting is that Plato considered the world we live in as ‘not real’. He called the world we observe on a daily basis the material or perceived world, and regarded it as a representation, rather, of an essential world within or beneath it, which he called the ‘World of Forms’, or the ‘World of Ideas’. In this World of Forms, things were true, unchanging, eternal, and never faded or died. It was a perfect place that had always been there, always would be, and it informed the material world as an ever-changing approximation of itself. This is a powerful concept that later we will explore in more depth and endeavour to link to the modern principles of quantum mechanics. The connection between the two worlds also forms the basis of the first hint of the body-mind connection; the body, of course, existing in the material world, and the mind (or soul) having its place in the eternal World of Forms.

Elaborating on the work of Plato was Aristotle (384 — 322 BCE), Plato’s finest student, who contributed significantly to many fields of study including logic, physics, astronomy, meteorology, zoology, metaphysics, theology, psychology, politics, economics, ethics, rhetoric, and poetics. Important in the context of this work is that he was also the first recorded person to put forward a clear and practical description of the workings of the universe — one that would evolve into the basic and agreed-upon model that we have today.

Around 350 BCE, in his work On the Heavens, Aristotle theorised that the Earth was spherical and fixed as the centre of the universe and that the observed planets revolved around it. He also regarded the spherical, celestial bodies in the heavens as having a soul.¹⁰ This was an extension of Plato’s beliefs (although, unlike Plato, Aristotle did not believe that the soul was eternal), and this idea — or the reason that ideas of this nature emerge — will become apparent in the chapters to come.

Aristotle’s proposal was the first departure from the flat Earth belief held since the first days of self-conscious (conscious of self or individuality, or self-aware) humans. Some five hundred years later (early in the second century) a Greek scientist and mathematician, Claudius Ptolemy, consolidated this proposal of the Earth having fixed concentric spheres or shells around it, and that it is these which carry the planets. What he described is a model of the cosmos known as ‘Geocentrism’ — geo meaning the Earth, and centrism meaning the centre — and this became the collectively accepted belief for the next fifteen hundred years — no doubt in part because the Church strongly endorsed the idea.

Christian scholars associated certain passages from the Old Testament with the geocentric model, such as ‘the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved’,¹¹ and ‘let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven’.¹²

‘Firmament’ is an ancient scientific word for a structure that supports all creation. One aspect of the firmament is its appearance as a vault in the sky, rather like viewing the inside of a sphere. Interestingly this word describes something critical that will be discussed in great detail in the next chapter. In addition, the geocentric model allowed for considerable interpretation by the Church, and the possibility of incorporating a ‘Heaven and Hell’ in the unknown, outer region beyond the ‘lights in the firmament’. There are similar references to geocentricity in the Qur’an, and Islamic astronomers also supported the model for an equal period.¹³

The Ptolemaic model prevailed for a long time, and it was not until the mid-16th century that Nicolaus Copernicus put forward another idea; an idea now proven and in alignment with our current knowledge.

Copernicus was a Prussian priest, astronomer and mathematician, and is now commonly regarded to be the person who first suggested that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, as Aristotle had theorised. From his observations of the movement of celestial bodies, he claimed that the Sun was the centre (of the Solar System), and the Earth moved around it along with the other observable planets. A model of this configuration is known as ‘Heliocentrism’ — helio meaning the Sun and centrism, once again, the centre.

On reflection, it is quite surprising that this idea has been attributed to Copernicus. The proposal that the Sun was fixed, and that the Earth revolved around it, was first suggested a long time earlier by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, in 270 BCE.¹⁴ Curiously, this was around the same time that Aristotle was proposing the geocentric model, which subsequently gained traction, and Aristarchus’ ideas faded into the background.

In a time when geocentrism was the accepted model among the people — with complete support from the Church — Copernicus was hesitant about publishing any of his controversial proposals. He did not want to risk the scorn ‘to which he would expose himself on account of the novelty and incomprehensibility of his theses’.¹⁵ Consequently, he first presented the theory of heliocentrism in his major publication On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres close to the time of his death.i

In the late 16th to early 17th century, some fifty years later, two men — Italian Galileo Galilei, and German Johannes Kepler — began to study and become very interested in the work of Copernicus. In 1608, a new and very exciting invention from the Netherlands hit the scene and piqued Galileo’s curiosity. The German born, Dutch spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey, had discovered that when you put glass lenses in a tube and peer through it, it somehow made objects appear closer and larger. The invention, of course, was the telescope.

Galileo developed a special version of the telescope to peer at the skies, and began discovering some fascinating things. He observed the beauty and detail of the moon’s craters and the fact that there were many, many more stars in the heavens than anyone had ever imagined. When he focused his telescope on Jupiter one night, he saw four objects (moons) circling the planet, and it was this most famous discovery that would have major consequences for astronomy — and for Galileo himself.

From a scientific point of view, that night Galileo had gathered the evidence required to finally prove that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and that Copernicus’s theory of heliocentrism was correct. If there were other bodies in the universe in orbit, then perhaps the Earth itself could be in orbit too. When this idea was integrated with the observations and measurements of the other planetary paths and the Sun and the moon, it all began to add up. This finally spelled the end of Ptolemy’s geocentrism, and ultimately the end of Galileo’s freedom as well.

Due to the regard Christian religion held for geocentrism, Galileo’s work and the idea of heliocentrism was met with significant opposition from the Catholic Church. In fact, his findings were so confronting to the Church that in 1616 the Roman Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical, stating that it was ‘foolish and absurd in philosophy’.¹⁶ Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to refrain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas. He didn’t, however, and in 1633 he was brought before the inquisitor, found ‘vehemently suspect of heresy’,¹⁷ and was ordered to spend the remainder of his years under house arrest. Galileo slowly went blind and in 1642 died from fever and heart palpitations. It took the Church more than 300 years to clear his name of heresy, when on October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul expressed ‘regret for the Church’s treatment of the scientist.’¹⁸

Johannes Kepler, the German mathematician, focused much of his work on the motion of celestial bodies, and eventually showed that the planets orbited in ellipses, not perfect circles as Galileo had believed. To this day, and following in his name, the orbits of planetary bodies are referred to as the ‘Kepler laws of planetary motion’.

Thinking that Changed the World

Following on closely after the lives and work of Galileo and Kepler — and also somewhat inspired by them — came Isaac Newton, who is regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time.¹⁹ He made major contributions in the fields of mathematics, light, and motion, but is best known for his work on gravity.

Isaac Newton was born on Christmas day 1642, three months after the death of his father, after whom he was named. He was an unusually brilliant man, yet despite his genius — or perhaps because of it — he was also troublesome, argumentative, and capable of extremely odd behaviour. It is recorded that at one point in his life he stuck a long needle into his eye just to see what would happen, and on another occasion, he stared at the Sun for as long as he could bear to see what effect it might have on his vision.²⁰

Throughout his life, Newton was well known for his outbursts of temper and vitriolic attacks upon his contemporaries. One of the more famous was his carefully orchestrated campaign to destroy the reputation of Gottfried Leibniz, the German polymath, whom he (wrongly) believed had stolen his discovery of calculus (the mathematical study of how things change). Newton discredited Leibniz’s work in any way he could, claiming that it was plagiarised or that his discoveries revealed nothing new. Similarly, he had ongoing arguments with the English polymath, Robert Hooke, who was also a major contributor in understanding the nature of light. One of the biggest disagreements between them arose over whether light was a particle or a wave. This question, as we will discover later, is still a mystery and an area of much confusion and debate. The journey towards understanding the different perspectives and apparent dual nature of light has also contributed a great deal to the emergence of the modern physics of quantum mechanics.

In 1687, Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica [The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy]. This work presented a science that exceeded anything that had come before. In it, Newton formulated the laws governing the motion of bodies and gravitation, and laid the foundations for classical mechanics. He described the workings of a universe that ran as predictably as clockwork and could be explained and represented mathematically. Even today, Newton’s laws and equations still hold true for most practical applications.

In the context of this work, it is gravity that we are most interested in for reasons that will become clear. Newton’s hallmark law of universal gravitation states that all bodies have mass and attract each other in a way that is proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the distance between them, i.e. the further away from each other they are, the less the force of attraction between them. Although this law does not define what gravity is, it does explain and describe the movement of the planets and how the universe is held together.

What is not so well known about Isaac Newton is that he was also a deeply religious man and wrote more on religion in his time than he did on science.²¹ An essay appended to his Principia (the General Scholium) deals mostly with his religious views. In it he revealed, for example, that he saw a ‘monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation’.²² Perhaps one of the most remarkable of his analyses in the General Scholium concerned his view that our power to freely move our bodies at will could give us insights into God’s relationship with creation. This is an idea I will explore and use to help explain the conditions that birthed us as creative beings in the second section, ‘Being Human’.

For the next 200 years or so, the Newtonian worldview prevailed and provided the framework for the emergence of the industrial revolution. These were exciting times, and throughout the 18th and 19th century physicists began to think that most of the laws of physics were now understood, and that it wouldn’t take long to reach an understanding of how the universe worked. This is accurately reflected in the words of Scottish mathematical physicist, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), when in the year 1900 he said: ‘There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement’.²³ But five years later, along came a 26-year-old patent clerk with a wild new idea. He had been developing a theory based on a synthesis of Newtonian mechanics and the relationship between electric and magnetic fields as espoused by the mathematical physicist James Maxwell. Together this synthesis indicated a completely different perspective on space, time, and light. That young man was Albert Einstein, and what he presented to the world in 1905 was the famous special theory of relativity that shook the foundations of physics to the core.

Relativity

Today, Albert Einstein’s name is one that is often linked with the word ‘genius’, and he was certainly a man capable of thinking outside the square. Isaac Newton’s model of the universe had claimed that ‘space’ was a three-dimensional absolute, that ‘time’ was also an absolute, and that there was little or no relationship between them, except that together they formed an arena in which events could take place. Einstein, in contrast, argued that space and time were not separate entities at all, but were inextricably entwined. Hence, he coined the phrase ‘space-time’ as the representation of a single, four-dimensional continuum (three dimensions of space, and one of time). Further, Einstein had realised that the speed of light always appeared to be constant, no matter what the speed of the observer.

As a 16-year-old, the young German-born Albert had entertained an extraordinary question; ‘What would the world look like if I were sitting on a beam of light?’²⁴ Contemplation of this question led him to the discovery that unlike the speed of anything else we know, the ‘speed of light’ is entirely unusual. Our familiar experience of speed is that it is a cumulative phenomenon, not something independent and constant. To explain; if you throw a ball straight out from you at, say, 50 km/hour, then the ball is travelling —