Evolutions have surprisingly simple origins.
Nor is it difficult to trace the stages whereby the universe and its cosmic processes evolved from the mechanistic view of the eighteenth into the
electromagnetic perspectives of the late nineteenth century. At that time, the atom, doubtless, looked rather innocuous. Indeed, the consensus of scientists in 1930 still was that matter was made up of two elementary particles: electrons and protons. In the blink of an eye , however, that consensus was called into question. What happened was that Paul Dirac published his relativistic wave equations for the electron. It confounded all attempts to quantify the atom. The next important step came with the positron discovery of 2 August 1932. It was a
moment of high drama. Once the validation of Dirac’s theory had appeared, the composite result was the total abolition of the hypothesis of simple protons and negative electrons. “Physics as we know it,” Max Born is reported to have said, “will be over in six months.”And yet, it was one of the contradictions of the search for a single
unified field theory that, in an atmosphere thus charged, progress would be
inflationary, pointing towards ever increasing complexity. For the next seventy
years scientists set about ransacking space, time and circumstances, forcing
back the conceptual horizons of cosmological thought and achieving multiplicity
and particle variegation rather than the unification of forces which, after all,
had been the principal concern of modern theoretical physicists ever since.
One may of course insist that the relevant sciences have yet to be
born, that methods have not matured, that the inaugural utopian purpose of
solving the riddle of creation is probably as far removed from fulfilment as
ever. And yet, it may not be fanciful to say that the very science of modern
physics has been evolved out of this utopian speculation. Indeed, one could
already make a tolerable case for physic’s ongoing attempt to ground the
universe in mathematics or, beyond the limit of acceptable physical enquiry, to
propose “something that is neither subject nor object“.
But we can distinguish only by observation and, as Plato blandly but
accurately remarked, an object of perception contains both substance and form.
On the other hand, no physicist of the last fifty years is likely to be too
dogmatic about this. At very high energies all forces are predicted to
assimilate: the strong interactions are unified with the weak and composite
atomic nuclei would cease to exist. At 1016 degrees, it is
worth noting, the weak nuclear force would exhibit the same enduring
characteristics as the electromagnetic force. There is no point in adding to the
effusion of expert commentary on the supposed implications of the Big Bang. No
prediction yet made has revealed any reason for suspecting that the subjective
concepts of time and extension would not also come to an end. Indeed, the
absence of any concept at all is especially noticeable. Nor is it to be supposed
that any unified theory we might evolve was related to our own sense of identity
or to our perception of empirical measurement.
The finite cannot grasp the infinite. In the struggle towards
wholeness, towards the Original Unity, it must first dissolve and eliminate
itself. To suppose, therefore, that the universe is some nameless, unilateral
entity which can be grasped or comprehended in dissociation from the manifold
forms in which life and intelligence reveal themselves, is to express a meaning
unknown to life and to intelligence itself.
Dreamy
