Tuned into the deepest mysteries

Originally published 2 October 1995

Pinned to the wall above my desk is a quote I found many years ago. I can’t remem­ber where it came from, or any­thing about the author except that his/her name is Dixon:

“If there be a skep­ti­cal star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in com­plete astonishment.”

A per­fect epi­graph for this col­umn, which this week marks its tenth anniversary.

A fine epi­graph for sci­ence, too, which is found­ed on the twin cor­ner­stones of skep­ti­cism and astonishment.

Skep­ti­cism, in this con­text, is a crit­i­cal reluc­tance to take any­thing as absolute truth, even one’s own most cher­ished beliefs. Aston­ish­ment is the abil­i­ty to be daz­zled by the commonplace.

The two qual­i­ties might seem in oppo­si­tion. The skep­tic is often thought to lack pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment. The eas­i­ly aston­ished per­son is some­times seen as gullible.

In fact, rea­soned skep­ti­cism does not pre­clude pas­sion­ate belief, and aston­ish­ment is only enhanced by knowledge.

“Noth­ing is too won­der­ful to be true,” said the 19th cen­tu­ry physi­cist Michael Fara­day, and that is aston­ish­ment. But every­thing won­der­ful need not be true, and that is skepticism.

For ten years this col­umn has tried to walk the line between drop-jawed amaze­ment at the won­der of cre­ation as described by sci­ence, and cau­tious skep­ti­cism about the cor­rect­ness or final­i­ty of our knowledge.

More than any­thing else, the pre­sid­ing theme of these near­ly 500 essays has been this: Sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge deep­ens and affirms our sense of awe.

One day last week, I walked to work through mead­ows made misty by the heat of the ris­ing sun. As I round­ed a copse of trees and stepped onto the foot­bridge over Que­set Brook, I star­tled a great blue heron that stood not eight feet away.

The heron also star­tled me. It heaved into the air with bed­sheet wings — push, push — I could feel the whoosh of air. Neck crooked, head feath­ers fly­ing like pen­nants, legs dan­gling behind like loos­ened moor­ing lines. The size of it — our biggest bird! The fierce eye. The ptero­dactylian beak. The effect was prehistoric.

It was like a scene from a movie—Dinosaur Island or Juras­sic Park. I stood on the bridge and applauded.

I’m no ornithol­o­gist, but I know cer­tain things about herons that any­one might know, things accu­mu­lat­ed by gen­er­a­tions of ornithol­o­gists work­ing patient­ly in the field, and by zool­o­gists, anatomists, pale­on­tol­o­gists, DNA experts, and aero­nau­ti­cal engineers.

I know, for exam­ple, that the heron feeds on fish­es, frogs, rep­tiles, even small mice. I know its bill shoots out like a spear from a gun to zap its prey. I know its croaky voice in alarm.

I know that our great blue heron is dif­fer­ent from its Euro­pean cousin, although to my inex­pert eye they look much the same. I know also they are dif­fer­ent from the cranes one sees in Japan­ese prints and bronzes, although the del­i­cate grace of East­ern art has helped me see these birds in new ways.

I know too that the heron, like all birds, is a close rel­a­tive of the dinosaurs, and that the first bird flapped feath­ered wings in Juras­sic times.

There is noth­ing eso­teric about this knowl­edge, noth­ing that requires a train­ing in sci­ence. It can all be found in places like Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, or the Mass­a­chu­setts Audubon Soci­ety’s Sanc­tu­ary mag­a­zine, the sci­ence pages of the news­pa­per, or tele­vi­sion nature shows.

All of what I have learned about herons was sub­sumed in that mag­ic moment when the bird lift­ed into the air, trail­ing its toes in the still, black water of the brook. The bird was feath­ered by knowl­edge. Its six-foot wings spanned con­ti­nents; their beats marked eons of geo­log­ic time. In every cell in the heron’s great bal­sa-light body, coiled strands of DNA per­formed a dervish dance that can only be imag­ined in the mind’s eye, spin­ning, unrav­el­ing, copy­ing them­selves — the mir­a­cle of life.

In ear­li­er times, a web of myths and totemic reli­gion would have giv­en the bird a con­text of time and space, a human mean­ing. But the ancient myths no longer com­mand our belief. Today, only sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge can weave the heron into a larg­er tapes­try of mean­ing that includes our­selves. For bet­ter or worse, sci­ence is the defin­ing knowl­edge of our time.

And what knowl­edge it is, grander and more God-struck than our ances­tor’s anthro­po­mor­phic myths! A sto­ry of sub­lime dimen­sion. Ten­ta­tive, evolv­ing, and not always com­fort­able, but car­ry­ing us in our imag­i­na­tions to the fur­thest reach­es of space and time. That is the abid­ing theme of these ten years of Mus­ings: Sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge enlivens our every expe­ri­ence, and tunes us into the deep­est mys­ter­ies of creation.

That morn­ing I stood on the foot bridge and gaped as the dinosauri­an relict pound­ed the air, see­ing deeply into a world not alto­geth­er my own, com­plete­ly astonished.