The beauty of the cosmos

On clear warm dark nights I sometimes like to sit outside for a while before going to bed. We live high in the mountains, away from air and light pollution, and the stars are so sharp and clear that they seem almost be within arm’s reach. What always comes over me at these times is how vast, how unimaginably vast, the cosmos is, and by comparison how completely insignificant we humans are.

Two dim little stars that sit side by side in my field of view, perhaps seeming only as far from each other as the width of my fingernail, are probably in reality each one a vast galaxy of billions of stars, so distant from each other that light would take longer than the age of the earth to go from one to the other. And for every star bright enough for my limited human vision to see, there are billions and billions more in the sky that I can’t see. I keep Hubble telescope photos as wallpaper on my computer screen to remind me of this vastness every time I get too focused on human concerns.

I find the massive scale of the cosmos truly exciting. It stirs my blood to think of the intricate workings of all those elemental forces driving the nuclear furnaces of stars and binding the wheeling galaxies together in a unimaginably complex cosmic dance. Surely if anything was ever made in the image of a deity it is the massive galaxies, or perhaps the even more massive superclusters of galaxies. That some people would think, in the face of the incredible scale and majesty of the cosmos, that a small, weak recently-evolved mammal on a minor planet around a very ordinary star buried toward the periphery of a galaxy in a minor spiral arm would be the central focus of attention for whatever intelligence created all this vastness simply shows how unbelievably self-centered and egotistical we humans can be.

The writer of Psalm 8:3 understood: “When I look at thy Heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him….”

There are those who think science is cold and heartless, and that scientific study removes the beauty and magic from life. To get even a glimpse of what the natural world is really like, and of the incredible efficiency and complexity with which it operates, is to be filled with wonder and passion. Frankly, I feel sorry for those whose view of the natural world is constrained by the narrowness and unimaginativeness of human myths. The real world revealed by scientific study is so much more complex and beautiful and inspiring than any man-made myth could ever be.

I am reminded of the story of Thomas Becket, onetime Archbishop of Canterbury before he was murdered by followers of King Henry II. It is said he was much discomforted by being made archbishop until one night when he had a dream and saw himself as no more than a single drop of water in the ocean, and then was at peace with himself. I find something of that story in the realization that we humans are such a small, insignificant part of such a vast system, and yet we are endowed with the amazing ability to see (if we will only trouble to look) and appreciate the vastness and beauty of that whole system. Don’t tell me that science doesn’t have passion!