Scientists do not "believe" as much as they "look, test and see" and this is not simply a visual matter. This is why Math exists. Mathematics is the natural language of things. This may be disloyal and disrespectful to the vanguards of poetic verse, but I think if Lucretius knew Math, his poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) would not have gone that long. In fact, if I could do Math, the topic of this column would have been dealt with in one blow, and not in three. But unlike what most Math-challenged students like myself used to think, Math was not invented to humiliate learners like me. It came up because it was necessary to adequately capture the nature of the thing it is trying to explain. It is the only way to express what is "observed" with the precision the thing itself being observed reveals. The scientist’s dedication to observation, of conceptually setting things apart from themselves, is a professional habit from which the world has immensely benefited. But it has also sometimes caused others to see scientists as being trapped in minds already too dense to have room for the soul. This has to do with many physicists being uncomfortable with what so far, the universe has shown them, that indeed some values are givens, like unchangeable padlock combinations, and that the universe somehow knew that there would be species like us, with lives and characters that would contemplate it. This is the anthropic principle that has caused queasiness among many scientists who would rather work on finding out the mathematical equation that would explain, with elegant cutting precision, from the infinitesimal to the grandest scale why things are the way they are.
The last of my chosen cities from an empire of fifty-five, I think affectionately and quaintly paints the scientist’s world of personal and professional paradoxes, as they confront the anthropic dead-end, so far. This is the city of Baucis where the inhabitants live on stilts and have never set foot on the ground. They hover about observing things with their binoculars and spyglasses. Several theories exist on why they chose life on stilts. First, they detest the ground so they chose not to have anything to do with it. Second, they revere the earth so much that they feel they would stain it if they touch it. Third is they love it so much that they exhaust all means to study each detail, at each level, the nature of things, "contemplating with fascination their own absence."
It intrigues me as a writer to know that the word universe contains the word verse from the Latin versus, meaning the furrowed lines drawn by the turn of the plough. As verses are to the universe of pen and thought, strings seem to be to the universe of particles and stars. Verses, furrow, line, strings. Reflection and immersion are inherent hazards in the writing life. And I guess to the scientist’s life, the hazard is that perhaps, one day he has to confront his own unmistakable absence in the way things work in the universe. Then, perhaps at that point, the writer can save the scientist’s life – a life that has been carved out of the empire of his mind – by folding up her city-stories like Marco did with Kublai when at the end, it was revealed that all 55 cities were descriptions of the same place. And perhaps, the writer can teach the scientist to endure the absence and perhaps, even to enjoy it.