What in the World Is the Cosmos?
What in the World Is the Cosmos?
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Astronomy is our attempt to study and measure the movement of the astra or stars. Nomos means “law” and so in astronomy we at least seek to understand what governs the movements and behaviors of the stars, of the heavens. While I can think concretely (for a short moment) about a single star, I soon find myself distracted by the many, many surrounding stars, and then I am looking not at a star but the heavens.
Did the wise men of old follow a star—or was it a comet? There are many interesting objects in the skies, various heavenly bodies. Taken as a whole (and what a whole it is) all that is, whether a single immense heaven or many heavens taken together, we call the cosmos. Sometimes we call the cosmos the world (or is it worlds?) and often we call it the universe.
Chesterton notes that the sane man can gaze upon the universe (or is better to say “into” the universe?) and stay sane, even if struck with wonder. “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
The poet can sail through the cosmos wonderstruck and casting off metaphors as he tries to intuit what is beyond full expression with the words we have at hand. He puts his head through the clouds and remains sane, even if mystical.
We are at one of those rare moments when, with the help of the James Webb telescope, we can all place our heads through the clouds and look around. This time, we are pushing through clouds in space—space dust—which formerly obscured what we now can see. This eye in the sky is looking through the dust to reveal astounding new layers of heaven. Will our heads split?
The first photo released by NASA has shown us a universe within the universe. Of course we want to measure and weigh and seek to quantify all that we can. How old is the light we are seeing? 13 billion years old? Do the galaxies that we now can see even exist today? Have we indeed found the oldest galaxy we have ever seen? Question leads to question and we test our theories and perhaps posit new ones. How are stars born in the “star nurseries” we are seeing? What are these “cosmic cliffs” or “oceans” we are now witnessing?
In one article published by NASA, some pillars in the cosmic cliff are “stunning” and in another article we read of a “cosmic dance.” The NASA scientists are trained to describe astronomical phenomena in quantified, numerical terms. To this, I have no objection. But this is also a time for poetry. Seeing the latest layer of heaven is for humanity not only an analytical experience but a poetic one. The still images that NASA is broadcasting are not really dancing—and yet they do dance. The pillars we see rising on the cliff are not merely stunning, they are stupefying. They evoke an astonishing wonder beyond our comprehension—even beyond the brilliant astronomers at NASA with multiple degrees and a 200-point IQ.
Our word “desire” is derived from the stars. We take our word from de (down, from, of) and sideris (constellation of stars). Aristotle writes that all men by nature desire to know. From the beginning we have gazed at the stars with wonder and desire, desire to know.
Wonder leads us to desire knowledge, a desire that is accompanied by an awareness of our ignorance. To wonder is to be astonished and ignorant at the same time. Gazing at the stars has always done this for earthlings.
Twinkle, twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
This is a poem aimed at children, but do we ever outgrow it?
C. S. Lewis, reflecting on our experiences of beauty and wonder, notes that our desire and ignorance are accompanied by yet one more thing: longing.
The books or music or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things–the beauty, the memory of our own past–are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
As of yet, we cannot visit this country of which Lewis speaks. Stuck here on earth (and even with the aid of the great telescope) will never attain complete comprehension of the whole. All the great scientists and philosophers have admitted this. The argument for this is simple: We cannot be everywhere at the same time to observe the cosmos; nor can we be at all places at all times to observe and formulate our “nomos” (law) for the stars, for the universe, and for everything in it. We wish to study time and space–all time and space–and yet are confined by time and space.
Can we say with certainty that tomorrow all the stars will behave as they did yesterday—or 13 billion years ago? Will tomorrow necessarily be like today? In 1572 a new star appeared in the sky that startled astronomers everywhere. How could a new star appear? We now call this a supernova that blazed for a while then disappeared. We keep seeing new things, strange things, things that defy the confines of our theories, and so our theories change. Thus theories are never true or false but only strong or weak–they are all provisional and subject to change even subject to overthrow. Still, theories (theoria in Greek: seeing) can help us to see what we can’t yet see.
The new eye in the sky is seeing for us. But it cannot see everywhere, and there is a lot of everywhere to be seen. We looked into a single speck in the night sky, and within that speck found another heaven. How will we get the next telescope into that heaven so that it can focus on yet another speck there—to reveal yet another heaven?
No one can see the whole. No one can even see the whole pencil he holds before his eyes. He can rotate the pencil and turn end to end and peer down its length but he never sees it whole, but sees it piece by piece, weaving together a sense of the whole in his mind (wait--does a mind exist?). Not even the James Webb telescope can do this. The telescope can move (very nifty) but it cannot rotate even one galaxy before its immense lens. And sadly, there is one more way it is inferior to we humans. It sees with one eye–we see with two. We see, as Chesterton says, with two eyes and thus we are a walking stereoscope. As I hold the pencil before me, I see two images of the pencil (different images!) and weave these together in my mind and see all the better for it, with depth perception. I see in stereo. James Webb does not.
Of our surprising eyes (how did they evolve, really?) Chesterton remarks,
Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes. Those rolling mirrors made alive in me, terrible crystals more incredible, than all the things they see.
I am giddy and grateful for the James Webb telescope and what it is giving us. Yet I am reminded we still must see its images with our own two eyes. We humans are the ultimate see-ers and so far the only ones proven to exist. We alone perceive, see, understand, wonder, muse, and write science papers, theories, and poetry.
We know we can’t know everything yet still we voyage on with enthusiasm. Since all humans by nature desire to know, we continue to gaze at the heavens. Aristotle himself desired to know and so he also gazed at the heavens (with his two naked eyes, alas) and noted the movements of the stars. He reasoned that every movement is an effect, and that every effect has a cause. This reasoning is straightforward and was followed by astronomers for centuries: there cannot be an infinite chain of cause and effect and so there must exist an uncaused cause that moves the stars. Robert Jastrow, in 1978, wrote an article entitled “Have the Astronomers Found God?” Aristotle was perhaps the first to say 2400 years ago, that, yes, we have found God (theos in Greek) whom he also called the Prime Mover. Is it surprising that this reasoning to an uncaused cause disturbed many astronomers and scientists?
In his article, Jastrow traces the evidence astronomers collected for the singular creation of the universe–a primordial explosion that has come to be called the Big Bang (today, 44 years later, the Big Bang still reigns as theory for the beginning of the universe). In the 1930s, astronomers were hesitant to accept the theory of the Big Bang. Even Einstein resisted it when others showed that his theory of relativity confirmed an expanding universe. But even he was convinced after he visited Edward Hubble in Pasadena and looked through his telescope. Hubble showed that galaxies and stars were moving out and away from each other very fast (millions of miles per hour) and increasing in velocity. Jastrow notes that for many scientists, it has been difficult to admit that the scientific method is blind to whatever happened or existed before the Big Bang. He writes:
Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the universe? Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre‐existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion. An entire world, rich in structure and history, may have existed before our universe appeared; but if it did, science cannot tell what kind of world it was. A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is. The scientist's pursuit of the past ends in the moment of Creation.
Scientists are often hesitant to write or speak poetically or talk about God or even the Uncaused Cause. Perhaps the James Webb telescope will remove some of this reluctance as the sheer beauty of what we are seeing leads us to poetry as well as prose and elicits the impulse we all have (even if latent) to praise and extol. I wonder what Einstein would have said if he could peer through the telescope created in honor of James Webb? Would he not exclaim and praise?
Are the astronomers once again collaborating with our poets and theologians? Jastrow notes that the scientist has “scaled the mountains of ignorance” and as “he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” There is Augustine, Aquinas, there is C. S. Lewis. But there also is Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton. We all can come together at the Beginning.
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