Are we mini replicas, arguably hologrammatic, of the universe? We come from the stars. Maybe there is much in ourselves that can tell us about the origins of the universe and about the cosmos?
Astronomy tangibly augments our view of our position in the cosmos. How to relate it to our perspective on ourselves? In our minds a montage of impressions coalesces into an image. That impression might be nowhere in particular to be seen. We have, say, an image of ‘London’ or ‘Vienna’. It is how a myriad impressions of these cities have coalesced in our minds. Much the same can be said of so many of the concepts we have of the physical world.
We can describe and map the biological system of inception, whether of ourselves or the cosmos, but that does not mean we understand it from within, let alone what power started the process, and much besides. We don’t know our own essence any more than we at present can understand the animating spirit of the cosmos or how it started. We have accumulated much astronomic evidence about the universe and biological evidence about ourselves but we are no closer to fully understanding consciousness than we are to getting the full story on Dark Matter.
If so, as a possibility, we might as well train a microscope at ourselves as well as a Webb or Hubble telescope at the further reaches of the physical universe if we want to see into the essence that is behind it. If we want to know more about what Being created us, and what is ‘there’ to be understood, we can consult our own thinking – not that we will necessarily find the answers there, but it may be a good place to look.
David Deutsche, credited with originating the theory about a Multiverse said in conversation with Jim Holt, as reported in ‘Why does the World Exist’:
‘A quasar out there in space, billions of light years away. And in our brain, there’s a model of a quasar – a structural model with the same causal and mathematical relationships. So here you have two objects that are physically as dissimilar as they could possibly be – a quasar which is this black hole with jets, and our brain, which is chemical scum – and yet they embody the same mathematical relationships.
Science through for instance the discovery of the Higgs particle is familiarising us with the concept that a thing can be invisible but interpermeate and affect everything in the cosmos as part of the natural order without a need of its being riven solely to the requirements or wishes of humanity. What of the circularity of time that is increasingly respectable as a theory in physics? We can see what this may mean in personal terms even if it is not our familiar way of thinking about the world. It can seem as if no sooner than something is thought of, it happens. We plan events and our consciousness or mental world – a leitmotif through our life – stays much the same. The planned event takes place and then it appears to happen at almost the same moment in time. It is as if time collapses in on itself. In a biblical turn of phrase, In the end is the beginning.
Then, why assume that emotions are unique to our consciousness? Why assume that our consciousness is a thing unique when we cannot or do not yet understand enough of what actuates the rest of the Universe? Emotions like anger may be perceived by our conscious minds as unique but this may be only a medium – the filter that we see – rather than a true message. In physical terms, a human may in some ways be akin to a planet with for instance a volcanic gaseous core moving through space in different dimensions. Anger, say, may not just be a trait of the animal kingdom in which we are included. A volcano may be said in a sense to be ‘angry’ though we doubt – without knowing – that it is conscious of itself as we have self-consciousness. It was scientifically established by Masaru Emoto that water reacts adversely to angry words. There is no suggestion that water is a sentient being.
We each play host to billions of inter-connected cells and each of these cells has its own existence, a life form looking out on the world from inside ourselves. Apart from the New Age idea of treating our body as ‘a temple’, deliberately ingesting nutrients and so forth, we pay those life forms in us scant heed. They go their own sweet way inside us and are taken for granted. We think little of these dependents of ours. They played their part in setting us up, making our bodies what they are, but as usual we feel no call for gratitude at what is ‘The given’ still less are we moved to appreciate the infinity of possibilities of what could have gone wrong. Under immense magnification the nano building blocks inside our bodies do not look in any way human; they seem more like serried ranks of waving coral. Their being our springboard from which we take action plays no part in our decision-making. If we take risks with our lives, we do not remotely worry that we may jeopardise the existence of all these myriads of our dependents.
If a microscope comes before a telescope and if there is a way to understanding the cosmos that includes an understanding of microcosms, we are entitled to look at the internal basis in a human being in terms of his smallest components. Telescopes and microscopes are so powerful these days with some able to detect the light and heat of a candle twelve miles distant. Instruments probe untold light years into the what we can detect of the universe – it is estimated by some as but 4% of the total, assuming indeed there is a ‘total’. Instruments trained into the deepest sub-strata of our bodies reveal nano-matter of which we are composed. Under this mega-magnification serried ranks of gently waving, coral-like ‘building blocks’ greet our eyes. There are billions of them apparently outnumbering the stars in the universe. When observing them, they do not in the remotest degree seem ‘human’ and yet there they are, inside of us making us tick. A fantastic story! It is a small leap to go from there to describing it as a miraculous one.
***
Is this just an analogy to help us try and make sense of a world which we are unable to do because we have not been granted an apparatus of sufficient outreach by the five senses? Even the next world without the hindrance of our limited physical apparatus might have us stumped, to go by a Wittgenstein dictum: ‘Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one?’
In ‘The Machine Stops’ by H.G. Wells, a dweller in one of the identical homes that cover the globe must leave home – not a normal thing to do in the story – and fly to the other side of the world. In the course of this flight, a mountain range is seen through the plane’s porthole. After a cursory gaze the traveller asks for the blinds to be drawn, commenting “I’m not getting any ideas!” Is it new ideas that should come to mind or a sense of wonder at the immensities of an alien landscape? We surely won’t be able to understand the panorama to the extent that it yields up the secrets of the universe even if some ideas are bound to present themselves.
We cannot be a part of anything that is not in the universe. There are billions of cells in each of us, more than all the plants and stars in the cosmos, scientists say. A vast blow-up picture of the smallest nano cells of matter within us reveal coral-like plants waving gently as if in the sea; save that they are in ordered, almost geometric lines or files. There is nothing recognisably ‘human’ there.
All this immensity and the tininess by comparison with myself! But then, a planet cast adrift in a colossal firmament is also tiny. A world unto itself it may be but everything is relative. A planet to itself may seem vast, and so, too, you and I. We are worlds unto ourselves, ‘A drop in an ocean and an ocean in a drop!’ Two ways of looking at the situation, neither exclusive.
We ‘stand on the shoulders of the Greats’. How much we have learned from the scientific community! An accumulation of facts has served us well; we know that the earth is not at the centre of the solar system let alone the universe. We have an inkling of how much there is still to discover, for instance the import of Dark Matter. But the great mystery at the heart of it all remains. The fact that we don’t have final conclusions and may or may not ever have them doesn’t mean that the questing should stop. As some thinkers and believers in the Afterlife might say: ‘While there is death, there is hope.’
Scientists test theories, shake phials, perform mathematical prodigies, a metaphoric towel round their eggheads, awe-inspiring work, grounded in reality. We are still back to ‘What is ‘reality’? We are reliant on allusion, if not illusion; we must hang our hat on ellipsis rather than on a solid hat stand. Some scientists see this quandary. NASA didn’t send up a poet to the moon simply to rid planet earth of a noodle-head! We wish to understand more of the mystery yet, how even to define the mystery?