In an interview with C-SPAN last August, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was asked what non-lawyer, alive or deceased, he’d like to share the bench with. The swing voter in the nation’s highest court hemmed and hawed. He’d interview Plato, he deadpanned, but wouldn’t hire him. His old high school classmate Joan Didion might be a good choice. When he finally settled on two names, both were scientists, and one was UC–Santa Cruz astrophysics professor Joel R. Primack, a specialist in the formation of galaxies and the nature of the confounding, universally present substance known as dark matter.
“If, in my own lifetime and maybe in yours, we could discover the nature of dark matter, we would have a unified theory of creation for the first time in human history,” Kennedy said. “And that would solidify the bonds of humankind.”
That’s a big job for science to do. But Kennedy had read The View from The Center of The Universe, the 2006 book Primack wrote with his wife, UCSC philosophy professor Nancy Ellen Abrams. That volume, based on the popular course the couple started teaching at UCSC in 1995 (now cancelled because of budget cutbacks), addressed the idea that for the first time in the hundreds of years since science split from religion, humans have the opportunity for a unified understanding of their place in the universe. More than that, Abrams and Primack’s first book suggested that humans enjoy a privileged place in the cosmos thanks to long-ago tiny accidents of chance and substance: eons later, we really are the perfect composition and size for intelligence, and we are very likely unique in the universe. That combination of data and reassurance could add up to a new globally accepted creation story, they posited—a shared story that could “solidify the bonds of humankind,” as Kennedy put it.
Five years later, Abrams and Primack have taken the central concept of their first book and built on it. The New Universe And The Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform The World (Yale University Press, 2011; $28) addresses the shared creation story as the starting point for common global action on pressing problems like climate change and the little-known but potentially serious issue of of space debris. It also draws parallels between human evolution and the evolution of the cosmos. On a recent warm spring afternoon, the couple sat on the deck of their Westside home overlooking the bay and explained a little more about their project, starting with the fundamental proposition, sure to raise secular eyebrows, that humans are unique in the cosmos.
“We found that our students typically came into our course having this idea that they’re insignificant motes in a universe that doesn’t care,” says Primack. “But the peak of complexity doesn’t happen on the large end of the size scale.”
“We’re the perfect size,” says Abrams. “We are. It’s like a Goldilocks size.”
“This is physics and biology,” says Primack. “Once you understand it, it’s just the way it is. So we shouldn’t feel that we’re insignificant compared to the gigantic things.”
Once humans understand the cosmos and our unique place in it, the authors say, we can start making rational decisions for the long term and hopefully extend our planet’s livability. Says Abrams, “Once you understand how to think cosmically—how to understand the very long term, because we’re part of this enormous flow, this wonderful process of the evolution of intelligent life out of particles, and it’s amazing we’re here at all—if you start to think from that standpoint, you’ll see a new way of thinking about the problems you happen to be expert in.”
The need is great, the two agree—especially here in the United States, where our wealth and might multiply the influence of our opinions. On April 19, the new book’s publication date, LifeWay Research reported that 60 percent of Protestant pastors disagree with the statement that global warming is real and man-made, up from 48 percent in 2008.
“To have such a large fraction of our population ignorant is really a challenge for the whole world since we have the largest economy and military,” says Primack. “It doesn’t take that much for people to catch on if Fox News would stop telling lies. Sen. Imhoff has been claiming global warming is a scientific hoax. That’s impossible; we’re all professional skeptics.”
Abrams and Primack aren’t aiming either to convert religious fundamentalists or to provide a substitute religion. “Could the idea of a cosmic society end up being a religion?” they write. “No. It’s too free-thinking. It’s more like an ethic.” But they do believe that an understanding of cosmology could lead to a satisfying connection to the universe. “One of the things we’re trying to do here is show people there is a way to experience a personal connection to the universe that really exists, and that is a spiritual act,” Abrams says. “The thing is, you don’t have to buy into some political view—any political view—to feel a connection to the universe.”
One way the authors have tried to foster a sense of connectedness to their subject matter, which is vast an can be quite elusive, is through compelling video and imagery on a companion website, http://new-universe.org. The book contains innovative symbols (linked, in the case of the iPad version) pointing to videos on the site, several with very high production values (Pixar and NOVA are represented among the credits) and more than one featuring music composed by Abrams herself. One video, “Voyage to Virgo Cluster,” was originally made for a NOVA episode but never used; it features Abrams’ original composition “Abraham Was Listening.” (“The music has to fit not just in length but in mood,” Abrams says. “That’s the hardest thing. We listened to a lot of music.”) Other videos were prepared for the 2009 Terry Lecture series on science and religion at Yale University that gave rise to the book.
Asked who they hope will read their book, Abrams doesn’t hesitate. “I’d like high school students to read it,” she says. “I would. Yale (University Press) is putting this at the top of their list of graduation presents, which I think is just great. Because this really is a book for young people. ‘This says, ‘You don’t have to fall into the same old thinking traps as old people.’ It really is about finding a new way of looking at the universe and an optimistic but convincing way to look at reality.”
THE NEW UNIVERSE AND THE HUMAN FUTURE: How A Shared Cosmology Could Transform The World, by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack. Yale University Press, 2011. (238 pages, $28)
To read portions of the book and view videos, go to http://new-universe.org. Abrams and Primack read from their new book on Tuesday, April 26 at 7:30pm at Capitola Book Cafe, 1475 41st Ave, Capitola. Free.
