Emily-Linton

It’s difficult for anyone to stay with a radically new vision of the universe.Convention pulls us back into the old world again and again.It happened with Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics.When Planck discovered the fundamental mathematical equation of quantum mechanics, he was so stunned by what it revealed he tried to talk himself out of it.It was only when other physicists argued with him that he finally came to see that his equation showed us the counterintuitive truths of the quantum realm, that all energy came in discrete chunks.Perhaps the most heartbreaking example of all such moments of doubt at the highest level of creativity is the one involving Einstein.Out of his original seeing of the universe, he had fashioned the field equations that captured the fundamental dynamism of the macrocosm.But when he saw that these very equations spoke of an expanding universe, he was overwhelmed.At this time there was no evidence at all that the universe was expanding.So Einstein had a choice to make.Or he could alter his equations, fudge them a bit, take away their radical announcement of expansion, and preserve for himself the traditional view that the universe as a whole is not changing.His fateful decision was to alter the equations in a way that removed their prediction of expansion.But this attempt to hide from the truth came to an end when he and Georges Lemaître traveled to the West Coast and looked through Hubble’s telescope and saw the expansion.If I accept your view and assume the universe as a whole ‘knew’ we were coming, why can’t I apply your insight to appropriate subsets of the universe?Why can’t your vision of things be applied to galaxies?Shouldn’t we be able to say, following your lead, ‘The Milky Way galaxy, in some sense, must have known we were coming?’ Or take this another step.Since the Milky Way is composed of billions of star systems, doesn’t it follow that this ‘knowing’ of inherent potentialities could be carried by at least some of these star systems, including most obviously our Sun?We live in an intelligent universe.A universe that knew from the very beginning that life was coming.Our situation was as Dyson described it.At the present time, we have neither the language nor the mathematics to explain how the universe operates.The closest is intelligence, but the connotations of that word include brain and nervous system. The early universe had neither.Yet even without a brain or a nervous system, the early universe had the capacity to build elegant spiral galaxies and, over time, living beings with brains.Whatever we call this power, it suffused the early universe like a primordial intelligence.The universe, somehow, knew we were coming.The shock of it filled me with wonder.This was an ancient insight resurrecting in contemporary cosmology.These cumulus clouds, the blue sky, the Douglas firs, these cars in front of me, all arose from some kind of primordial intelligence that gave birth to, but was different from, human intelligence.Though we had yet to develop the concepts that would help us identify it, we were enveloped by it.We had just begun to notice it in our mathematics.We didn’t yet know how to think it, how to name it, how to describe it.But we did realize we lived inside it.Cosmogenesis became scientific fact in 1964 when the cosmic microwave background, the primordial light, was discovered at Bell Labs.Every mathematical and observational cosmologist knew this.But how often are these facts imprisoned in an interpretation that limits cosmogenesis to knowledge about objects out in the universe?What will happen when we turn our consciousness around and realize that our awareness of cosmogenesis is also the work of the universe?How will we change when we face the universe and find the universe facing us?Mount Olympus in the Marysville Denny’sThe traffic north of Seattle was clogging up and I wanted breakfast anyway so I looked for a place to stop.I drove until I found the Marysville exit.There was a Shell gas station to the right of the stop sign and a Denny’s restaurant just to the west of that.It was a restaurant I knew well.From late high school on, it was one of the spots Joe Turner and I haunted in the hours after midnight, drinking coffee and dreaming our way forward.We were building up the energy necessary to catapult into the future, he as a novelist, I as a mathematician.These sessions devoted to stoking our imaginations took place in three different Denny’s restaurants, one in Lakewood, and another in Fife.But it was this Marysville Denny’s that had a singular meaning for me.We had once talked all night long while sitting in one of its booths.We only noticed this fact when in the middle of our escalating dreams some of the faint, gray light of morning oozed through the blinds.This seemed an impossible turn of events.The night, during which our dreaming could be openly pursued and which had led us through entire kingdoms of fabulous, imaginary, heroic adventures, had now been magically replaced.Unbelieving, I had stood up on the black plastic seat in order to reach the controls of the blinds so I could work them open.At the edge of the road was a pay phone booth, and farther on, above the evergreen trees, were the Olympic mountains.Sheer granite cliffs rose straight up into the sky and were bathed in a pink light from an unseen Sun.The peaks were covered with snow and ice.They hovered massively above the Douglas firs.Even in the moment itself, I knew it was as magnificent as anything I would ever experience.I sat down in the same booth I had sat in with Joe.I ordered scrambled eggs and hash browns.And a brown plastic pot of coffee.The waitress wore the same tan uniform as before, but when I studied her face no hint of recognition came back.My moment with the Olympics happened eight or nine years ago.I was only hoping to bring that moment back.Sitting in the booth, I felt everything linking up.Dreams of becoming a mathematician had deepened here, dreams of peering into the deepest order of the universe.Which was happening right now.