The Grinch that stole mystery?

Originally published 22 December 1986

I have a friend who speaks of sci­ence as an island in a sea of mys­tery. It is a love­ly image, and it seems to me an accu­rate one. We live in our par­tial knowl­edge of the world as the Dutch live on pold­ers claimed from the sea. We dike and fill. We dredge up soil from the bed of mys­tery and build our­selves room to grow.

And still the mys­tery sur­rounds us. It laps at our shores. It per­me­ates the land. Scratch the sur­face of knowl­edge and mys­tery bub­bles up like a spring.

And occa­sion­al­ly, at cer­tain dis­qui­et­ing moments of his­to­ry — the time of Coper­ni­cus and Galileo, the quan­tum-rel­a­tiv­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion of our own cen­tu­ry — a tem­pest of mys­tery rolls in from the sea and over­whelms our efforts, reclaims knowl­edge that has been built up by years of patient work, and forces us to retreat to the surest, most secure core of what we know, where we hud­dle in doubt and antic­i­pa­tion until the storm sub­sides. and then we start build­ing again, throw­ing up dikes, pump­ing, fill­ing, extend­ing the perime­ter of our knowl­edge and our security.

The Holiday season

These thoughts are prompt­ed by the sea­son. This week Chris­tians and Jews cel­e­brate the deep­est mys­ter­ies of their faiths. It seems an appro­pri­ate time to con­sid­er the mys­tery that sur­rounds and per­me­ates sci­ence. Many times in the past year, as I have chron­i­cled what we know about virus­es, or snowflakes, or galax­ies, or the neur­al net­works of the human brain — in short, sci­ence — I have been struck by the fact that what we have learned only deep­ens our won­der at what we do not yet know.

This is the week when wide-eyed chil­dren will open pack­ages, when mys­ter­ies wrapped in col­ored paper and rib­bons will be unrav­eled. Ein­stein once said that sci­ence is a sphere of activ­i­ty in which we are per­mit­ted to remain chil­dren all of our lives. “What I mean,” he explained, “is that we nev­er cease to stand like curi­ous chil­dren before the great Mys­tery into which we are born.”

It is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion about sci­ence that it is some how inim­i­cal to mys­tery, that it grows at the expense of mys­tery, and intrudes with its brash cer­tain­ties upon our sense of won­der. How many times stu­dents have said to me that sci­ence “takes the mys­tery out of the world.” In reply, I refer to the metaphor of sci­ence as an island in a sea of infi­nite mys­tery, and point out that the pal­try exten­sion of our knowl­edge hard­ly depletes the sea. Rather, the growth of sci­ence extends the shore along which we might encounter the thing that Ein­stein spelled with a cap­i­tal M.

To Queen Eliz­a­beth of Bel­gium, Ein­stein wrote: “It gives me great plea­sure to tell you about the mys­ter­ies with which physics con­fronts us. As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intel­li­gence to be able to see clear­ly how utter­ly inad­e­quate that intel­li­gence is when con­front­ed with what exists.” This was pro­found humil­i­ty from a man who spent his entire life using his intel­lect to extend the perime­ter of our knowledge.

Einstein’s humility

Ein­stein had no use for those who sought mys­tery in spir­i­tu­al­ism, theos­o­phy or para­nor­mal fads and super­sti­tions. Nor did his deeply reli­gious nature lead him toward any sort of per­son­al God fash­ioned in the image of man. His reli­gion was “humil­i­ty” in the face of the mag­nif­i­cent struc­ture of nature that can only be imper­fect­ly comprehended.

Christ­mas and Chanukah are feasts of light, light that comes in dark­ness and illu­mi­nates the world. Not a bad time to con­sid­er the ways in which the light of rea­son illu­mi­nates real­i­ty. Sci­ence illu­mi­nates nature, but does not deplete its mys­tery. Sci­ence at its best, as prac­ticed by a New­ton or a Fara­day or an Ein­stein, is an almost reli­gious activ­i­ty, a delib­er­ate effort to engage intel­lec­tu­al­ly, pas­sion­ate­ly with the mys­tery that per­me­ates every par­ti­cle of existence.

It was the encounter with mys­tery at the shore of sci­ence that inspired Ein­stein’s life work and rein­forced his sense of the wor­thi­ness of human life. “Mea­sured objec­tive­ly,” he wrote, “what a man can wrest from Truth by pas­sion­ate striv­ing is utter­ly Infin­i­tes­i­mal. But the striv­ing frees us from the bonds of self and makes us com­rades of those who are the best and the great­est.” Ein­stein was proud of his Jew­ish­ness, but open to the purest lights of every faith. The fol­low­ing let­ter he once wrote is self-explanatory:

“Dear Chil­dren,

“It gives me great plea­sure to pic­ture you chil­dren joined togeth­er in joy­ful fes­tiv­i­ties in the radi­ance of Christ­mas lights. Think also of the teach­ings of Him whose birth you cel­e­brate by these fes­tiv­i­ties. Those teach­ings are so sim­ple — and yet in almost 2000 years they have failed to pre­vail among men. Learn to be hap­py through the hap­pi­ness and joy of your fel­lows, and not through the drea­ry con­flict of man against man! If you can find room with­in your­selves for this nat­ur­al feel­ing, your every bur­den in life will be light, or at least bear­able, and you will find your way in patience and with­out fear, and will spread joy everywhere.”