They don’t know neither do I so there you are

They don’t know neither do I so there you are

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Originally published 22 October 2006

In his 1977 book The First Three Min­utes, big-bang physi­cist Steven Wein­berg famous­ly con­clud­ed: “The more the uni­verse seems com­pre­hen­si­ble, the more it also seems pointless.”

Wein­berg’s point was this: We have dis­cov­ered in this cen­tu­ry that the human species is just one of bil­lions of species of life on a typ­i­cal plan­et near a star that is just one of a tril­lion stars in a galaxy among hun­dreds of bil­lions of galax­ies. It is no longer pos­si­ble, he implied, to think that the uni­verse was made for us or that our exis­tence is in any way impor­tant on the cos­mic scale.

In a book of inter­views pub­lished 13 years lat­er, Alan Light­man and Rober­ta Braw­er asked 27 famous cos­mol­o­gists for their respons­es to to Wein­berg’s remark. Some of the cos­mol­o­gists agreed with Wein­berg. Some emphat­i­cal­ly dis­agreed. Respons­es ranged from tra­di­tion­al reli­gious affir­ma­tion to total indif­fer­ence. Appar­ent­ly, 27 of the world’s most bril­liant math­e­mati­cians and physi­cists are no bet­ter than the rest of us at fig­ur­ing out the human mean­ing of the universe.

It occurred to me that I might con­front some ordi­nary peo­ple, kids even, with Wein­berg’s remark and record their reactions.

For my first inter­view I called Mol­ly Bloom, an old friend in Dublin, Ire­land. It was very late at night when I spoke to Mol­ly on the phone (I had for­got­ten the five hour time dif­fer­ence). We talked about nature a bit, and what it all might mean. When I quot­ed Wein­berg’s remark she respond­ed with some agitation:

God in heav­en there’s noth­ing like nature the wild moun­tains then the sea and the waves rush­ing then the beau­ti­ful coun­try with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cat­tle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flow­ers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours spring up even out of the ditch­es prim­ros­es and vio­lets nature it is as for them say­ing theres no God I would­n’t give a snap of my two fin­gers for all their learn­ing why don’t they go and cre­ate some­thing I often asked him athe­ists or what­ev­er they call them­selves go and wash the cob­bles off them­selves first then they go howl­ing for the priest and they dying and why why because they’re afraid of hell on account of their bad con­science ah yes I know them well who was the first per­son in the uni­verse before there was any­body that made it all who ah that they don’t know nei­ther do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from ris­ing tomorrow…”

Excit­ed by Mol­ly’s unpunc­tu­at­ed enthu­si­asm, I gave a call to Huck Finn, a friend of my youth from Han­ni­bal, Mis­souri. How did he respond to Wein­berg’s impres­sion of point­less­ness, I asked. Huck was thought­ful, and then answered by recall­ing some­thing that hap­pened when he and a pal named Jim were drift­ing down the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er on a raft.

It’s love­ly to live on a raft,” said Huck, his voice choked with nos­tal­gia. “We had the sky up there, all speck­led with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and dis­cuss about whether they was made or only just happened.”

That ques­tion is cer­tain­ly relat­ed to Wein­berg’s obser­va­tion,” I sug­gest­ed, “espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er the size and com­plex­i­ty of the uni­verse. There’s a heck of a lot of stars out there.”

Jim he allowed they was made,” said Huck, “but I allowed they hap­pened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many.”

Ah, yes,” I said. “Many mod­ern cos­mol­o­gists would seem to agree with you. The num­ber of stars is staggering.”

Jim said the moon could a laid them,” Huck said. “Well, that looked kind of rea­son­able, so I did­n’t say noth­ing against it, cause I’ve seen a frog lay most as many.”

I laughed: “I don’t think many con­tem­po­rary cos­mol­o­gists would accept the frog-moon the­o­ry for the ori­gin of stars.”

My con­ver­sa­tion with Huck remind­ed me of anoth­er friend of my youth, a kid from an aster­oid called B‑612, if I remem­ber right­ly. I nev­er knew his real name; we called him the Lit­tle Prince.

Now it hap­pened that he was in the neigh­bor­hood for anoth­er vis­it, so I gave him a buzz. We chat­ted for a while, recall­ing our ear­li­er affec­tion for one anoth­er. Then I quot­ed Steven Wein­berg: “The more the uni­verse seems com­pre­hen­si­ble, the more it also seems pointless.”

He laughed, and said, “Where I live every­thing is so small that I can­not show you where my star is to be found. It is bet­ter, like that. My star will be just one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to watch all of the stars in the heavens.”

I was­n’t sure I under­stood his meaning.

All men have the stars,” he con­tin­ued, “but they are not the same things for dif­fer­ent peo­ple. For some, who are trav­el­ers, the stars are guides. For oth­ers they are no more than lit­tle lights in the sky. For oth­ers, who are schol­ars, they are problems.”

Like for my twen­ty-sev­en cos­mol­o­gists,” I ventured.

All these stars are silent,” said the Lit­tle Prince, his voice so soft and gen­tle I could bare­ly make it out over the noisy tele­phone line. “You — you alone — will have the stars as no one else has them — ”

I was still per­plexed. I did not exact­ly see what this had to do with find­ing a human mean­ing in the uni­verse of galaxies.

In one of the stars I shall be liv­ing,” he said. “In one of them I shall be laugh­ing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laugh­ing when you look at the sky at night…You — only you — will have stars that can laugh!”

And he laughed again.

Share this Musing: