A globe is on one of the twin towers of the Knightstown Academy where I attended grade school, and a telescope is on the other. Ever since I was a girl, I’ve been fascinated by the stars and the planets.
During summer evenings on the porch swing, my parents used to speculate and converse about the great questions: “How many stars do you think there are?” “How old is the world?” “Do you think that there will be interplanetary travel?” “Do you reckon that there are other beings out there?” “I don’t suppose that we’ll ever know.” “Well, it just seems to me that out of all those thousands and thousands of stars and planets there would be other Earths and other beings.” Mother believed in the possibility of flying saucers and hoped that she would see one.
When I was at Ball State I enrolled in Beginning Astronomy, figuring that we’d spend a lot of time looking through the telescope located on the roof of a Ball State building. I expected to learn about the galaxies and planets and delve into the great questions of the universe.
Also, it fulfilled a math requirement. Duh! That should have told me something. Math is not one of my skills, and I was lucky to get out of the boring class with a “C.” The prof scheduled only one time to use the telescope, but left the building locked behind him so that some of us couldn’t get in. Sigh . . . I still haven’t looked through a powerful telescope.
Some say that scientists don’t know what they’re talking about when, for example, they estimate the age of the Earth and the beginning of human history. However, when I consider that we landed men on the Moon and the little machine that they sent all the way to Mars — think of it 140 million miles! — I have to conclude that they’re correct about the physical universe. Also, they can estimate the age of anything that once was alive by measuring the residue of radioactive Carbon 14 which has a quantifiable half life.
The spiritual realm cannot be quantified, but scientists use logic and immutable laws of nature and mathematics to explain the physical nature of the Earth and the universe. I believe that humankind was meant to use the marvelous brain with which we were endowed. Bit by bit, by persistent thought and experiments, geniuses with curious minds have built up a body of knowledge, using technology and tools that weren’t available in ancient times.
Sometimes thinkers paid a heavy price for their ideas. Giordano Bruno said that the stars were surrounded by planets. In 1600 he was accused of heresy and burned at the stake. Galileo had to recant his belief that our star, the Sun, was the center around which the Earth revolved, rather than vice versa. A popular story says that Galileo recanted, but muttered, “But the Earth does move around the Sun!” Newton, Einstein, Hubble all added to the body of knowledge that scholars have painstakingly assembled.
I’ve read a few articles about astronomy, but my mind isn’t science and math oriented enough to understand relativity, quasars, quantum mechanics, black holes and so many other things.
Enter Stephen Hawking, a cosmologist who studies the beginning and structure of the universe: Next to Einstein, I suppose that Hawking is the most famous scientist of my generation. When he was a young man he came down with a form of the neurological disease ALS. Independent in nature, he fought determinedly against the limitations that it imposed on him, such as using a wheelchair. Now he is totally paralyzed and unable to speak. He uses a computer to write and a computerized speech synthesizer to communicate.
It strikes me that he has become, basically, a mind. But what a mind! Next: From the Earth to the stars — Stephen Hawking teaches some ordinary people to answer some of the great questions. wclarke@comcast.net