A Stitch in the Cosmos

A few weeks back, I came across the Website for the television production of a show on the PBS science series Nova called The Fabric of the Cosmos. When I learned that the show was based on a book, I decided to read the book first, then watch the program. It's a good thing I did it in that order. As in most cases, the book is much better.

Brian Greene in 2008

The author, Brian Greene, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, espouses the theory of superstrings as the best way to describe the foundation of the universe. The theory attempts to explain all subatomic particles and fundamental forces which make up the cosmos. It tries to best Einstein by doing what the great physicist never could -- reconcile gravity, relativity, and quantum mechanics.

Albert Einstein in 1921

Greene presents stories of the triumphs of physics from Newton to Hawking. Newton thought of space as a thing, the empty stage -- eternal and unchanging -- on which everything happens. For Einstein, however, space bends and swirls, interacting with matter and energy in ways previously undreamed of. In fact, Einstein showed that space and time are inseparable, that they make up one entity he called spacetime.

For Greene and many of his fellow physicists, spacetime is the loom upon which the fabric of the universe is woven. Instead of the classic view of atoms as "dots that are indivisible and that have no size and no internal structure," Greene explains that "these particles are not dots. In superstring theory, every particle is composed of a tiny filament of energy, some hundred billion billions time smaller than a single atomic nucleus...shaped like a little string."  No longer do we have the tiniest dots of matter that can exist; instead, we have strings that act like indivisible dots. These strings vibrate, and the difference in their rates of vibration separates one kind of string from another by giving rise to their different characteristics such as spin, mass, and charge. These aspects distinguish different types of atoms which combine to form different types of molecules which clump together to form you and me and the world.

Unfortunately for the scientists advocating superstrings as the ultimate answer to questions about the Universe, reflection on their claim undermines their argument. The problem resides not in the smallest particles of matter, but in terminology. For example, in the phrase 'a tiny filament of energy', what is energy? Maybe in some obscure tome in some dusty library of some forgotten institute, there lurks a definition of 'energy.' However, even if our respected scientific colleagues provide such a delineation, their musings are just as faith-based as those of religion.

Indeed, describing the cosmos down to its ultimate particle provides in no way a measure of value. Superstring theory cannot say anything about why a person should act in a moral way. No scientific supposition can. The moment it tries, it makes a judgment, and that is beyond the purview of science. Science explains; it cannot judge.

Nothing about superstring theory can be used to say that one should not murder. Neither can it say why a person should not lie or cheat or steal. It cannot comment on beauty. There is no way to get from the physicist's is to the good man's ought. Which is not a shortcoming of science; it's simply a limitation that should be realized. The very reason for doing science can only come about because of the moral judgment that one ought to pursue knowledge.

As for the ground of existence of the Universe, science again can say nothing because it cannot go back further than the beginning. Which is where faith plays its trump card. A scientist must have faith in Science as much as a good man must have faith in the Good. Science can say nothing beyond the fact of creation; only faith can. In the face of God, science is silent.