Physics is Good for Your Brane

As I continue my reading of Greene, I find myself enjoying the precision with which he uses language.   That precision makes him really quite accessible, but it has another collateral benefit.   The way in which he articulates the dynamics of quantum theory, general relativity, and the bridge theories that attempt to unify them lights them up in ways I've not had them lit up for me before.

In particular, the way he expresses string theory has allowed me, for the first time, to get a feel for why that theory is so compelling.  It's always seemed a bit on the precious side before, an odd amalgam of awkward imagery and mathematical abstraction.

But as Greene expresses it, the dimensionality of strings has popped.  Strings are...objects/energies that exist in one dimension.  Branes, which are the membranes within m-theory, can be zero-branes (singularities), one-branes (strings), two-branes (membranes), three-branes (three-dimensional), and on up through the ten-dimensions that comprise being.

Yeah, I know, I'm not totally capturing it.  But as Greene describes it in detail in the two chapters dealing with both string theory and it's more robust offspring M-Theory, it presents a compelling story of the foundation of things.

In fact, it's a more elegant vision of the underlying structure of our universe than atomic theory.  Those periodic table elements are just too cluttery...and, in fact, if you go back to what "atom" was originally supposed to mean when Democritus came up with the word, the "atoms" in the periodic table are not "atoms" at all.

If atom means "it can't be divided," then something you can split just ain't it.   But branes?  Those might well be.  M-Theory feels intuitively right.

Another fascinating tidbit in Greene comes when he explores the Many Worlds concept, which is how he terms the concept of the multiverse.  Working off of the writings of physicist David Deutsch, Greene notes that just as M-Theory resolves the tension between quantum theory and general relativity, it also seems to potentially resolve the tension between proponents of free will and proponents of determinism.

As Greene understands it, the idea of a functionally infinite array of multiverses means that free will finally has a place in the structures of spacetime.  Reality at the quantum level simply does not resemble a series of little gears and cogs, but is far more dynamic, energetic and generative.  While retaining a multiverse that is solid-state in it's completeness, this renders a radically mechanistic determinism meaningless.

This meshes with my intuition.  Unlike Greene, though, I see this through the theological lenses of free will and predestination.  If God's creation is what M-Theory describes, there's suddenly plenty of room for Pelagius and Augustine to sit down with a beer on a nice fall afternoon and just chill.

Which, I think, might just be a good thing.

Songs of Void and Emptiness

As I reflected on the violence of organic life yesterday, and how oddly incompatible it is with the love of God and enemy, I found myself looking upwards into the refracted blue of the sky and thinking about all that which is not life.

Creation itself is mostly nothing. Even I, as I write this, am mostly nothing. Yeah, I'm an organic life form. But if you drill down to the atomic and subatomic level, the physical form that is currently typing this contains far more emptiness than neutrons and electrons. The keyboard onto which this is typed, for all of it's clackity solidity, is also mostly nothing. But we miss this, because our perception is so limited.

As we look out into the immensity of the cosmos, that emptiness finally strikes us. It is at a scale that we cannot grasp, of a vastness of temporal and spatial measure that goes well beyond our ability to conceptualize. We can get a bit of it, through metrics and analogies. But the reality of it is well beyond the capacity of our minds to grasp.

And it isn't just empty of mass. It's empty of measurable feeling. It is, to us, both terrible and beautiful...but is completely oblivious of those categories. Love and hatred and loss and joy are not words that have any relevance to the lives of stars, or in the aeons over which a nebula dissipates. Though the mechanics of physics govern this immensity, and they can be grasped rationally, those natural laws are not themselves "reasoned." They simply are.

The resultant interplay of those forces also cannot be meaningfully described in terms of interpersonal or social morality. When tectonic plates shift, and a city crumbles or vast waves scour the land, and hundreds of thousands die, it is not malicious. Or cruel. Or hateful. It just is. When atmospheric conditions produce intense tornadic activity, and a town is razed, it is not that creation is feeling peevish, or is angry with the town for not being tougher on crime. It simply is what it is.

The vastness of the heavens and the interplay of matter and energy aren't moral or ethical. The music of the spheres is atonal, jarring, and disinterested in the needs of it's audience.

This poses an interesting paradox to the contemplative person of faith. Why?

Because when one spends time emptying self of self, and letting awareness of all things silence the endless internal jabbering of thought for a while, when you return from that peak state you return changed. But you are changed in a way that does not seem to reflect the great cool amorality of physics. Mystics are not hard-nosed pragmatists, or mechanistically utilitarian in their approach to other creatures. It has a rather different effect.

Confronted with creation's vast, near-chaotic dynamism, one becomes calm. Immersed in it's amorality, other beings suddenly matter more. After embracing that which knows no care or love, deep compassion for others is stirred. It is...paradoxical.

St. Augustine once famously called creation the First Book. As he and Calvin both affirmed, it's a nearly impossible book to read and comprehend...thus the need for our sacred texts to guide our understanding.

But perhaps it's not a book the way the Bible is a book, written in symbol. Perhaps it's more like a song, which is best understood not through analysis and deconstruction and debate, but by simply being still and listening.

Will You Will or Will You Won't Be Mine?

"There is no deadlier weapon than the will! The sharpest sword is not equal to it! There is no robber so dangerous as Nature...yet it is not nature that does the damage: It is man's own will." Chuang Tzu

Sin is, at its essence, a corruption of the will. The orthodox Christian position is that our desire is flawed, not our bodies. Sin is a matter of software, not hardware. Our flawed desire takes the form of that "blind self-love" that Calvin describes, or the pride that Augustine condemns. Whenever love of self is placed above love of God and neighbor--we sin. That is at the heart of what Paul speaks about when he describes sin as living kata sarka, or "in the flesh." (Romans 8:5) We orient ourselves towards our own physical desires, and allow our own needs to rule over the needs of others.

That can't be understood to mean that the fulfillment of physical needs itself is evil. It isn't wrong to be hungry, or to eat. But the Ultimate Colossal Burger at Ruby Tuesday's has more calories than most sub-Saharan-Africans get in a day...and that's before your side of fries and half-gallon of soda.

It isn't wrong to feel sexual desire. Sharing that intimacy with a partner is good, and the potential for the creation of new life is a blessing. But when other human beings become just a means to our own pleasure, and all we think about all day is bangbangbangbangbang, then we live not according to our physicen kresin, our "natural functions" (Romans 1:17), but according to sin.

So now I'll weave this thread into my prior musings--where does this leave us relative to homosexuality? The condemnations of the "homosexual lifestyle choice" that arise from many Christian leaders have at their heart this understanding of sin as a flaw of the will. That's why the emphasis on homosexuality as a choice must be vigorously repeated and defended. This, of course, flies in the face of what science and our God-given ability to examine our world shows us-but so what?

Common sense on sexual identity seems to have a sharper edge here. Take me, for instance. I'm a heterosexual male. I have always been attracted to women. Sometimes--sophomore and junior years in high school come to mind--that attraction has been so intense as to be almost a form of madness.

I could no more choose to be attracted to another man than I could choose to be a duck. It isn't how God made me. If you're similarly heterosexual--ask yourself the same question. Could you make that choice? Didn't think so. Choice, volition, and will have nothing to do with orientation itself.

If that is so, then how is homosexuality itself a sin?