A Case for Scientific Mess
Questions about unifying theory and our beliefs about beauty.
“Einstein said that the first legitimate religious invitation was wonder and awe. That people who are willing to kneel and kiss the ground stand almost weeping at the beauty of it all. These are the religious instincts that I think are going to create the future.”
Simplicity = Beauty?
I recently read Bill Bryson, in his A Short History of Nearly Everything, express that “Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity.” And for anyone who’s paid any attention to the world of physics in the last five to 10 years, this comes as no surprise. Actually, it probably comes as no surprise to anyone who’s paid attention to physics, ever. Newton, Einstein, Greene. At least among the stories that get told and the papers that get published,¹ the idea of a simple, “unifying theory” is so pervasive throughout the history of physics that it’s almost all I’ve encountered in the last couple of years in my first foray into the field.
Every time we find a new, unifying equation, we seem to stumble upon the need for another, lying deeper beneath it. These days, the “holy grail” is quantum gravity. As Carlo Rovelli details in Reality Is Not What It Seems, physicists are in a modern race to unify Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics (the Standard Model) and Einstein’s general relativity.
There must, it seems, be one very clear, very simple equation at the basis of the universe.
But, Bryson follows up his statement about physics’ search for simplicity by saying, “…so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness — or as Lederman put it: ‘There is a deep feeling that the picture is not beautiful’” [emphasis mine].
Now, I know I’m a newbie to the physics world, but this leads me to some pressing questions:
Is simplicity the only form of beauty?
Does beauty only exist in something we can understand?
Can two seemingly opposed facts both be true at the same time?
Can something be both simple and complex?
Why is simplicity important, if at all?
For that matter, why is beauty important?
How do we experience beauty?
Does our tendency to simplify always serve us?
What might we miss out on if everything is simplified?
When is simplifying useful and when is it damaging, if not dangerous?
Hopping into the Pool
Growing up, the running joke in my family was that my dad and I were “the creative” side of the group. Which made some logical sense. Before retiring, my grandfather was a chemical engineer. My grandmother, a teacher. And now, my uncle is a Professor of Mathematics, and my aunt—also a professor—is a double doctorate in Slavic languages and philosophy.
My father and I, by contrast, paint things, write songs, play instruments, and have performed our own poetry in small, grimy basements. We love the arts. And it didn’t help that, despite an extensive track record of stellar grades, I almost always struggled in math and science. So my test scores affirmed the sentiment: We were creative, and the sciences weren’t “for us.”
It hadn’t occurred to me to question where I “belonged.”
Until a stretch of time last year, when I found myself Googling the prerequisites to become an astronaut. Seriously.
Around that same time, my father had come over to help fix a leaky dishwasher in my home. Apparently, home repairs aren’t a natural gift of mine either, even at 36. On a break for lunch, we started talking about quantum physics. (I’m a really light-hearted conversationalist, you know?) Turns out, he’s had a long history of being interested in the sciences. During the discussion, I mentioned that I’d been reading Reality is Not What It Seems and it made him pause. He wasn’t sure if he recognized the title but thought he might have recently read it. When we arrived back at my house, I pulled it out and showed him the cover.
My dad and I had picked up the same book on physics, without ever having previously talked to each other about physics.
Suddenly, it struck me. My dad is actually a computer engineer. And, I have a Master’s degree in International and Intercultural Communications with a focus on human rights and organizational management. Though I notably tend to lean toward humanities and the social sciences, neither of us — as it turns out — are mental slackers.
So I dove in.
Paradoxes Are Sexy
What led me here was beauty — the mystery of it all. (Don’t most of us start by gazing up at the skies?) When I stumbled into a love of quantum physics, it wasn’t because I understood it or could even explain it — and I still can’t. I admit, without shame, that I know very, very little about physics. I can barely understand the differences between cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, and particle physics without having to Google them (again). My brain simply doesn’t retain the core principles of special relativity without having to read Brian Greene explain them to me (again). And I know I’m not alone.
Not only is special relativity hard to grasp because we don’t noticeably experience its effects on a day-to-day basis, but science just often feels entirely inaccessible to a lot of people. That’s no surprise; it’s a lived reality for a massive portion of humans and a lot of people have directly and intentionally been kept from science.¹
It also doesn’t take long on the internet to find writers and commenters truly picking each other apart over “bad science,” what the “right kind of science” is, or whether theoretical physicists should be thrown in the trash altogether. Say something about science, it appears, and find any number of people who are clearly smarter than you outlining—with specificity—every incorrect thing you’ve said. Even, and maybe most especially when, you’re a studied scientist.
So unless you’re listening to Carl Sagan, it seems like science has a lot of “Do Not Enter” signs posted in a formidable electron cloud of smoke — probably there all the time, but harshly apparent as soon as you try to interact.
Still, here’s what I do know: I could listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about neutrinos in a tiny boat, floating in an underground silo, until the atoms in my fingernails become part of that ice-covered pool of water we just found on Mars. And, eventually, I’m sure I will read every poetic word about the nature of time that Carlo Rovelli paints onto a page. Reading Rovelli discuss how desperately science needs poets was the first time I felt welcome in a community I’d been told wasn’t for me.
And it’s the “both/and’s” that have kept me here.
Light is both a wave and a particle? Fascinating.
Gravity is 100% reality, and so is the nature of the smallest elements we’ve found (as far as we can tell), but they actually contradict each other? Like, two things are true at once but don’t agree with each other?
Now that’s interesting.
That starts to sound a lot like life, relationships, human nature.
It’s science reflecting us, back at us. It confirms that a lot of things we’ve often been told aren’t “natural,” are — actually, possibly — quite natural. People can be more than one gender? Yes. A Republican can hold some pretty damn progressive ideals? Yes. I can equally love discussing the racial politics of gentrification and Haley Kiyoko’s latest song? Yes, yes, yes.
And it allows me, a creative, to also be a scientist.
And for a scientist to be a creative.
Let’s Dance
Dipping my toes into science is allowing my brain to open in brand new ways. It’s like learning a new language. And the ability to translate across these languages, I hope, will lead to some pretty important things.
Like dialogue that helps us see more of the humanity in each other — across races, religions, economic classes, political parties, and even in our own families. Like the ability to see beauty, even while wholly immersed in complexity.
This isn’t an argument to stop pursuing particular theories. In fact, it’s an argument to keep at it. To keep searching. To keep peeling back the layers of the universe. To keep asking better and better questions, as long as they compel you (and, please, as long as they are not oppressive to anyone else).
This also isn’t an argument for shirking scientific knowledge or accuracy. If we’re sending rockets to explore space, we need more than artists who can paint the ship; we need actual rocket scientists who know how to keep the humans on board alive for the journey. So I know that to employ science in any of my work, I probably need to learn an awful lot more. It’s a commitment I’m up for. Because it lights me up.
As a self-described “generalist,” I have always loved making connections between disciplines — playing around at the intersections of seemingly unrelated fields. I want to know how engineering is related to dance. Or how farming is related to architecture. Or how planetary movement is related to painting. I want to know how all of these base elements might come together to create something truly new, exciting, and innovative. That’s magic to me. And science already has a word for it: alchemy.
We will always question why we’re here, why it matters, and what it means for our daily lives. We are always trying to contextualize meaning. This is why these questions are as much the foundation of physics as they are art and religion and just about everything else our species does here.
I just want to keep asking what it means to hold values of both mystery (something impossible to know or understand) and curiosity (a desire to know something). I am deeply curious about how creating bridges across disciplines (without flattening them all out into one, cohesive story of the universe) might lead us to even greater discoveries. And even if we don’t find a clean, simple answer lying behind it all, I don’t think it will make the pursuit a failure or a mess.
So, first and foremost, I want to keep a posture of joy—of wonder and awe. Because, just maybe, if we remember what it’s like to kiss the ground and weep, we might find ourselves in the future we all want…
One where many worlds fit.²
One where the pursuit itself is beautiful, despite what we do or don’t find.
And one where many voices are welcome.
Footnotes
¹ Not only are Indigenous and folk knowledge largely discounted as “scientific,” “real science,” or “meaningful” to the field, but these communities—along with the work of people of color and women across history—are largely missing from the stories we tell, the papers we publish, and the knowledge we value as a society. Probably more on this in a future post.
² I first heard this phrase in reading adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy, and it is credited originally to the Zapatista movement, from the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona.
And, the unedited version of the On Being podcast where I heard Rohr mention the opening quote of Einstein’s can—I believe—be found here, though it appears to be edited out of the version broadcast on the radio and transcribed at this link. It is quoted here as Rohr mentioned it and seems to be a paraphrase.
