Perhaps the Universe will Never Blink

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Perhaps nothing is what it seems

By Anwaar Hussain

space1.jpgBill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ is a truly remarkable book. It is an ambitious attempt to decipher the mysteries of universe. Genuinely enthralling, it is a unique travelogue of science. Starting from the immensity of the universe, it beams us into the heart of sub-atomic particles and then some more. It is a captivating scientific journal and an extraordinary collection of information.

From the book, I came to know of the intricate assemblage and vacillating nature of the trillions of wandering atoms that form us human beings. And that these atoms are not really interested in doing that and, given a chance, are ready to drift off again to form up something entirely different. And that survival on our planet is a pretty tricky business any way, what with 99.99 % of the billions and billions of species that have existed since the dawn of time now being extinct. And that though our planet is very good at advancing life, it is even better at smothering it.

I came to know that as far as the scientists can presently tell, we may be all there is in the cosmos. And with the way we are exterminating each other and the life forms around us, we may be the living universe’s supreme attainment and its worst horror simultaneously. It was estimated, according to the book, that by early 1990s, we were extinguishing some 600 life forms per week.

The book does give us hope though. It observes that behaviorally modern human beings, meaning us, have been around for no more than 0.0001 per cent of Earth’s history and are, therefore, at the beginning of it all. It assures us that though less than the blink of an eye for the universe, with the average life span of a living species on planet earth being about four million years, we have a chance to be around for a long time yet.

It warns, however, that to survive as just a life form, we must be able to adapt and change everything about ourselves i.e. shape, size, color, physical attributes etc. And that we don’t really know what exactly we will have to be doing to do that. Whether we will grow fins, or horns, or tails or wings or will be laying eggs or have forked tongues or be slithering on the ground or under ground or licking algae from a cave wall, all depends upon the next arrangement of atoms. An arrangement that too is likely to be as fickle as the present one.

In between, the book moves to the matchless grandeur of our universe and its unimaginable enormity. It informs that just the visible universe is a million, million, million, million miles across and the meta-universe, the invisible one, is vastly more spacious. According to scientists, the number of light years to the edge of this larger, unseen universe would not be written ‘with ten zeros, not even with a hundred, but with millions’.

The average distance between stars out there, according to the book, is some 30 million million kilometers. Though nobody knows exactly how many, stars in the Milky Way are estimated to be any where between a hundred billion to four hundred billion. The Milky Way itself is just one of a hundred and forty billion or so other galaxies, many of them even larger than ours. Carl Sagan calculated the number of probable planets in the universe at as many as ten billion trillion. The universe is a frighteningly big place.

‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ is a very informative book. It is also unnerving.

It is unnerving because it shows with sharp clarity the nothingness of planet earth in the indescribable immensity of space. It shows the pangs of its birth, the uncertainty of its being and the vagueness of its future. It shows the temporariness of the arrangement of atoms that is currently known as a human being.

The book is unsettling because it informs us that when compared to the billions of light years expanse of the universe, human life, at an average of about 650,000 hours, is not even a fleeting instant. It is disturbing because thus informed, the shenanigans of human beings with each other and the mischief they create on planet earth looks such a total waste of this fleeting moment. Above all, it is a disquieting book because despite a brave attempt, it fails to answer with a definite finality who are we, where did we come from and where are we going.

So what do we do? Bill Bryson’s book throws more questions at us than answers. The cold logic of its science is not entirely conclusive. The lulling embrace of the priest, the alternative, is too blinding.

The answer perhaps lies in a series of ‘perhapses’.

Perhaps, at this juncture, Bill Bryson’s book could not have possibly answered all the questions to every one’s complete satisfaction.

Perhaps nothing is what it seems.

Perhaps the human mind, because of its inability to decipher the universe, creates mirages as a replacement for that. Which, perhaps, become the existing realities when these work well for the hypothesis. Perhaps, let alone the universe, there is more information in one grain of matter than can be understood by a billion human brains. Perhaps the grain of matter is the universe and the universe is but a grain of matter.

Perhaps we delude ourselves too much by calling ourselves the most special of God’s species and claiming the universe as having been created as our playground. Perhaps we are not the only ones endowed with the miraculous properties of souls and morality and free will and love, some other matter forms too may have these. Perhaps our omnipotent God, to whom we tend to grant our human qualities of observation and love and vengefulness and forgiveness, has no unique interest in our progress and activities and is as attentive, if not more, to rocks and trees and plants and animals too.

Perhaps a tree calls itself a human and calls us ‘the trees’. Perhaps things will be clearer when a rock or a tree writes its own ‘Short History of Nearly Everything’.

Perhaps it is too illogical to first characterize God as all-powerful who knows everything, can create anything, can destroy anything and then encumber him with our own bigoted view of our overriding importance. Perhaps to Him, nothing in the universe would be more remarkable, more valuable, more helpful, more menacing, or more essential than anything else.

And that is why, perhaps, the universe is what it is and the peculiar collection of molecules that makes us human beings will only stay in this arrangement for less time than it takes the universe to blink.

But who the hell cares? Perhaps the universe will never blink.

Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain



Comments

6 Responses to “Perhaps the Universe will Never Blink”

  1. Michelle on December 24th, 2007 3:18 pm

    Sacred Geometry
    Robert J. Gilbert | Shift
    | Shift Issue #11, June 2006 |

    In sacred geometry, the artificial split between physics and metaphysics can be healed, and the foundations for a new healing science of the future can be established.

    For good or ill, modern life is marked by our unprecedented mastery of the physical world. This mastery can take a beneficial form in harmony with nature, or more commonly it becomes a destructive force, exploiting nature without consideration of longterm damage. We have become accustomed to a steady stream of daily news reports about the human and environmental problems resulting from short-sighted applications of modern technology. Fundamental life-support systems such as the oceans and the atmosphere are quickly eroding. The stark truth is that our world is being shaped by a modern science that manipulates life’s natural patterns while often lacking the contextual understanding to do so responsibly. Yet, just as our piecemeal exploitation of natural structures and patterns has created a crisis, so can a new holistic science based on natural patterns help to resolve it.

    ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE AND MODERN SCIENCE
    Sacred geometry is a relatively modern term for the study of the archetypal patterns that create everything in the material world. The name tends to carry undertones of a secret spiritual knowledge held and used by different traditions around the world, and there is good reason for this association. Throughout human history, great spiritual traditions have gathered and cultivated private knowledge of the core patterns of creation. Sacred geometry is often associated with sacred architecture, the classical work of master architects and temple builders; however, this is only the most visible aspect of this knowledge. In reality, the deeper, often hidden, teachings apply this knowledge to areas ranging from healing sciences to spiritual initiation. The essential concept behind all of these applications is simple: Everything has a pattern, and that pattern is the key to creating a specific effect.

    From a holistic perspective, what we can call sacred geometry is in fact humanity’s legacy of pattern knowledge from all our forebears. At every scale of existence, from the subatomic to the galactic, the same key patterns bring all things into existence. It is a remarkable historical fact that many of these same patterns (including shapes, forms, proportions, and rhythms) have been well known for centuries, but within a much more holistic context than today. They are part of nature’s toolbox for effecting change and expressing itself. To give several simple examples: Nature uses the circle and the sphere as the primal container for energy and consciousness; it uses the vortex form to circulate and transmit energy and consciousness from one location to another; it uses the five perfect divisions of the sphere (popularly called the Platonic Solids) as the basis for diverse forms of matter.

    Tragically, the importance and potential of this pattern knowledge is only dimly perceived by science today. This is partly due to specialization, where scientists only learn their one subject area such as chemistry and know very little about similar patterns found by other disciplines such as physics. It is also partly due to modern science’s institutionalized dismissal of any “metaphysical” holistic connections among phenomena, which become visible at higher levels of analysis.

    Continued: http://tinyurl.com/3db87j

  2. Rowan Wolf on December 24th, 2007 11:13 pm

    Perhaps we are all made of the same stuff - humans and animals; the earth and all on it; the universe and all in it. We are all one thing which dreams itself into individual distinctiveness.

    The Aborigines believe we dream the world. As a sociologist, I know that we at least construct much of the conceptual and perceptual world we exist in. Metaphysics argues that all things are collections of matter that “agree” to stay together. One might ask “What level of all things are agreeing?”

    It is daunting how destructive (certain) human civilizations have been in such a short period of time - be that universal or geological. I believe this is because the “worldview” of some societies disconnect themselves from the certain knowledge that we are all one - or at least interconnected. Once that break occurs, then there is a blindness to many things from the destruction of the planet to the casual disregard for others that allows atrocity.

    If “we” are gone in the slow blink of the cosmic eye, it will be (in part) because of the fool hardiness of the few that took the us out of the flow of life.

  3. matt25 on December 25th, 2007 1:45 pm

    Ahh… the days of infinite “what ifs”. Reading Bryson’s book sort of reminded me of laying on the hood of my car smoking weed in highschool and looking to the sky with my friends and fantasizing for hours about the irrelevence of humanity under the great unknowable majesty of the heavens… “duuude.”

    When science begins to spark such sentiment, I must ask; what’s wrong with the world, that we can hold such poor esteem for man and science in such dim light?

    …

    We often find ourselves swept up in a crazy culture seemingly bereft of all remnants of reason. I often wonder why then do so many assume that our scientific community is somehow immune to the effects of such a deceit?

    (for an illustration of this point, refer to the thousands of ‘experts’ who have waivered their integrity to the bellowing power of the shrine of ‘consensus’ in regards to climate science- even though all evidence (and thousands of non-IPCC scientists) refute continuously the mish mash of statistical modelling. Though that number is always decreasing due to peer pressure and popular opinion. The “self-evident truth” which must be adopted before all enquiry may enter.

    …or think on the economic system- long seperated from the realm of the physical universe when the Bretton Woods was destroyed in 1971- now responsive only to the whims of market sentiment and statistical modelling. “Globalization is here to stay” they say- though it has left us bankrupt and doomed.

    Think on the great debates in the 1927 Solvay conference where the propoganda machine declared Einstein a foolish quack for supposing the universe is harmonic and KNOWABLE, while the new breed of statisticians heralded by Niels Bohr were in fact CORRECT in their assertions that the universe was infinetly chaotic- destroying all causality… all intention. 32 versions of string theory are not enough to clue us in here?

    Think of the optical Biophysics that sat upon the shoulders of such great men as Louis Pasteur, V.I Vernadsky, and Alexander Gerwich which aimed at measuring the scientific properties of life- and called for cures to AIDS throughout the 1980s. Now reduced to Gene sequencing and modelling for pharma companies. Forgotten from memory are the days which man persues and DISCOVERS causes, as we cater only to symptoms.

    A reading of Kepler’s original works is all it takes to refute all of Bryson’s ridiculous popular assumptions. You want to know science? then for the love of reason don’t consume the pop culture fiction of the aggregate garbage which some popular writer unrigorously popped out of his ass over the course of a year. Especially not a writer who has not exhibited the least bit of his own sovereign cognition in investigating Social control, group dynamics, oligarchism, etc.
    Let alone the roots of science which he rhetorically heralds the undisputed cliff notes upon.

    I would highly recommend taking several evenings to read through Plato’s Parmenides, the Republic and the Timaeus. The founding fathers did so.

    I might also encourage a healthy contemplation over why an occultist who also worked as first officer of the Mint for the BANK OF ENGLAND is credited for having ‘discovered’ those formulas which were actually made many years before him by people like Kepler (gravitation), Liebniz (the calculus) and Fermat (light defraction)… to name but a few. All of whom in TURN were devout Platonists.

    Newton of course was nice enough to turn those physical discoveries into mathematical and statistic models which break down upon entering the macrocosmos (3 body problem) and microcosmos.
    Unlike the discoveries of Kepler and his successors leading up from Liebniz to Gausse’s Complex Domain, to Bernardt Riemann’s Hypergeometries. (of which Einstein later accurately points to as the sole thread of real science which all human progress has since depended… whereby again- the world saw him as a crazy old man)

    Perhaps the empiricist school of science to which we accredit so much today never actually discovered anything at all?

    Perhaps Newton was a puppet for the Oligarchy who never felt it necessary to share his method for making discoveries. Opting instead rather to destroy the very necessary cognitive quality of mind with his famous ‘Hypothesis Non Fingo’.

    Perhaps true science and technology are actually reflections of humanity’s capacity to discovery universal principles and increase his power to self organize, develop and change the universe for the better.

    Perhaps the development of man as a power which may discover universal laws creatively in a creative universe is our true potential? Unexcercised though it may be.

    Perhaps without mind (which Newton rejects in favour of empiricism)- science becomes statistical mysticism and sacred geometry for cattle and cabalists… while economics joins suit to embrace a magical “hidden hand” of free markets- which our Founding Fathers refuted.

    Perhaps we need to wake up to much more than an economic, and political crisis, and get subjectively acquainted with the question of epistemology and cultural warfare.

    The question of intention and change are the fundamental questions at the base of the human condition which must be raised in any honest persuit of truth. Our own conception of the nature of mankind’s relationship with the creator rests upon such reflection… of course- subjectively the question of our relationship to that of mankind as a whole is also thus brought to the fore.

    Best regards
    -Matt

    (a few links for any who would care to be rigorous and sift through some of the provokations in my comment a little fuller…

    http://www.larouchepub.com/eir.....c_toc.html

    http://www.larouchepub.com/eir.....udies.html

    http://wlym.com/~animations/

    http://wlym.com/tiki/tiki-dire.....iteId=6658

    http://wlym.com/tiki/tiki-dire.....iteId=6633

  4. Don on December 27th, 2007 4:04 am

    Dear Anwaar,

    Thanks for turning me on to “A Short History of Nearly Everything”.

    The ideas you recount in the article seem to have already been covered by the Buddha ,without the scientific underpinnings but with astounding insight and accuracy. The World Honored One even has us covered if we turn into robots. His wisdom/philosophy is for all “sentient beings”.

    I can tell I will be spending some serious time at “The Royal Society” site. Wow!

    Thanks,

    Don

  5. Jonathan Stephenson on December 28th, 2007 8:54 am

    In fact all incongruities in science and mathmatics will be resolved once we connect time itself to structure and mass.

  6. Vincent on July 1st, 2008 12:35 am

    Please visit my website.

    Best Regards,

    Vincent

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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