Walking on the Moon - 50 years on

Earlier this week there was a full moon. I was alerted to this as I travelled home by train from Newcastle up the Tyne Valley. I noticed how high the river was that afternoon. It was not that it had rained, simply that the tide was unusually high. Then I remembered that there was due to be a partial eclipse of the moon that night. The full moon explained the spring tide. Soon the train passed Wylam which marks the river’s tidal limit. At once the flow reverted to its languid summer self beyond the reach of salt water.   

We’re all thinking about the moon in this week of the 50th anniversary of the day a human being first set foot on it. “That’s one small step for a man” - surely you can just hear that endlessly-discussed indefinite article in those immortal words, a mere breathing but it makes all the difference to the sense - “one giant leap for mankind.” If you were alive fifty years ago, you will never forget what seemed like the most momentous event of our lifetimes.

The Church Times invited me to contribute a piece for a feature celebrating the landing. Here it is.  

I was nineteen in July 1969 when the first men walked on the moon. As I look back, I remember it as if we stood at the threshold of a new era in history. I echoed Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.” 

But my clearest memory is not the day of the moon walk itself. We didn’t have a TV so I followed it on the radio and in the papers. (Which made it an oddly aural and literary experience while it was the video footage everyone else was talking about.) What I recall as if it were yesterday is walking along a north London street one evening. The full moon hung in the darkening sky. My companion nudged me and pointed to it. “Isn’t it amazing that we have walked there?” he said. I distinctly remember the pronoun. We, not other people. This was about us. 

I gazed up with a kind of religious awe, experiencing a youthful version of what Freud calls “that vast oceanic feeling”. I echoed the psalmist’s ecstasy at the sight of the starry skies above: “O Lord our Sovereign how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8.1). 

Memory plays tricks. Until writing this I assumed I’d remembered the night of the moon-walk itself but I can’t have been. My 1969 diary tells me that the moon was only in its first quarter. It must have been the following week. Does it matter? 

What did matter was this mystic sense of wonder that took me by surprise. As a student reading maths, I was bound to be moonstruck by equations that laid the foundations for this dazzling achievement of science and technology. But it was more than that. I was gazing at the most familiar object in the night sky, but it looked different. I was connected to it in a new way because we had walked there. That made me a citizen of the cosmos. 

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them?” asks the psalm. As a recently baptised Christian I was pondering what my life should be for. Among the lights shed on the path I would follow was moonlight. A few months afterwards the age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18 and I became an adult. The moon-walk felt part of growing up, an unforgettable moment in a key rite of passage.

Since 1969, our horizons have been hugely enlarged. I’ve blogged at times (here, here and here) about some of the most inspiring events in astronomy in recent years. In all of them, I’m aware of a theological and spiritual response that echoes what I felt about the moon landing. It’s a cliche to talk about the “wonder” or “beauty” of creation, but that’s what it comes down to, and it’s not restricted to people of faith. If you’ve watched Brian Cox’s TV documentaries (the recent marvellous series on the solar system for example) you’ll recognise the same poetic and mystical response to the cosmos that you find in the creation narratives and the psalms. And he is, I think, a self-confessed atheist. 

What’s so beautiful about the cosmos? Why should the study of astronomy and cosmology not only stimulate our imagination but make us feel we are treading on holy ground?

It’s more than an aesthetic response. Yes, the moon looks beautiful in all its phases, or when it is half hidden by cloud, or eclipsed by the earth’s (ie our own) shadow, or when we admire those famous images of the lunar landscape with blue planet earth hanging serenely in the black sky above. How could we not be moved by the sheer artistry of what lies beyond us and which, fifty years ago, we touched for that brief moment in our story?

But I hinted in the piece I’ve quoted that there’s an intellectual dimension to it too. As a former mathematician, I’ve forgotten most of what I ever learned as an undergraduate. But not the elegance of the deep structures of mathematics, the equations that lie at the heart of how the universe is (and how other universes might be). I remember a charismatic maths teacher at school proving a theorem to us A-level students (I wish I could remember which theorem it was), writing QED with a flourish on the blackboard, stepping back to brush the chalk dust off his gown and acclaiming triumphantly, “That, my dear friends, is poetry in its highest and purest form”. Who’s to say he wasn’t right?

Immanuel Kant wrote about the two things that fill the mind with awe and admiration: “the starry skies above me, and the moral law within me”. The wisdom writers of the Hebrew Bible never tired of pointing out that one of the best incentives to live well is to emulate the pattern and order of the created world. Contemporary physics and cosmology have shown us that the universe is infinitely more mysterious than we could have imagined. Which suggests that “the moral law within” should be informed by a mystical attitude that recognises that the good life, holiness, is as much about what we don’t know as what we do, and the “awe and admiration” that comes from both knowing and unknowing. 

The moon landing fifty years ago was, for me, a gateway to glimpsing this, and finding in these new perceptions what I can only call joy. I like to think that I was taking “one small step” for a young man who wanted then, and still wants late in life, to find his place as a creature of God and a citizen of the cosmos, and learn how to inhabit it wisely. 

In Praise of π

It was always going to be irresistible. When my daughter told me that today was a unique Pi Day 2016 (14 March, 3.14.16) I knew I would want to blog about it. Indeed, given the part mathematics has played in my life, I'm surprised I haven't blogged on it before.

I owe a lot to π. Not so much to the number itself, for all its irrational, transcendental qualities (those are technical mathematical terms by the way, not just the blogger's purple prose). But to what it symbolises and represents in the world of thought, in the structure of the universe, and not least in my own life.

For autobiography comes into things today. I can remember that even at a tender age I used to long to make sense of the arcane mathematical symbols that littered the books I pulled off the school library shelves: all those xs and ys and Σ signs and long swirly Ss which I can't do on this keyboard but which I later learned to know as symbols of integration, and dy/dx, and e and most of all, because it seemed to crop up everywhere, π. 

I think I fell in love with maths when I finally got to understand what π stood for. Calculating a circle's circumference and area was where it all began of course. But as I went on to do A level maths, it seemed to me miraculous that this innocent Greek letter could work so hard. It featured in places where I least expected it such as working out the period of a pendulum or the movements of the planets or how the hours of daylight change as we travel through the year. And more and more surprises the deeper I went.

I went on to read maths at university. There I began to penetrate the mysteries of algebra, analysis, geometry, topology, number theory and formal logic. (From this some readers will deduce that my inclinations were very much on the 'pure' side of mathematics. I was never much good at 'applied' maths or statistics, though of course π makes plenty of appearances in those areas too.) I loved what I was studying. I loved mathematics for itself, its elegance and beauty, its endless capacity to model worlds we know about and worlds we can never know. I loved it because it seemed to draw me into the deep structures of the universe itself. Was it an art or a science? I used to wonder. I still do. Maybe it doesn't matter. 

And I loved maths for how it was teaching me to think. There are various theories of what mathematics is in itself. Philosophers differ, for instance, about whether it has some 'eternal' (God-given?) existence outside ourselves, whether it is a product of the human mind and its patterns of thought, or whether it is an elaborate game played according to set rules or axioms that govern how we handle signs and formulae on the screen or page. But all agree that logic lies at the foundation of mathematics. And I was finding that my own habits of thinking and speaking, arguing and debating were being profoundly moulded by a desire at least to try to be rigorous. 

I wish that after I graduated with a (not very distinguished) maths degree, I'd kept up my love of the subject. I never did apart from reading popular books on the subject from time to time - which I still do. However by then my vocation to be a priest was beginning to change the way I was thinking about my future. So I turned to theology and took a second degree in what used to be called 'the queen of sciences'. I loved that too. (Perhaps I'm lucky enough to be one of those insatiably curious people who can love almost anything that is interesting enough.) And I realised, when I started to write my first faltering essays, that I owed a huge amount to my mathematical studies. 

When you study theology, you realise how easy it is to be careless about your assumptions and ways of working. Not all the textbooks were models of clear, disciplined, rigorous argument, I used to feel. As I said, maths taught me something of how to think. And as I now see, thought is so basic to who and what we are as human beings. There's much more to be said about Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum, 'I think, therefore I am'. There's more to human life than simply thinking. But he was on to something pretty important. And I reckon I started to glimpse it when I was studying maths as a schoolboy and a student. In that respect, π changed my life, if you'll allow the figure of speech. 

My daughter is about to marry a high school maths teacher. He loves what he does, both the subject itself, and the art of teaching it and exciting young people in their journey of mathematical discovery. I was fortunate to have teachers who lit up mathematics for me too. It's true: you never forget a good teacher. The shortage of good maths teachers in our schools today is worrying. Mathematical literacy (which is more than simply numeracy) is one of the basic foundations of education. As Einstein put it, the point of education is not to impart facts but to teach us how to think. There's no better discipline than maths for helping us to do that. Maybe Pi Day is a chance not only to celebrate mathematics and mathematicians, but also to think about how we are going to train up the next generation of children for whom π will be as alluring as it once was for me.

Gravity Waves and God

On the second day of Lent, a scientific announcement made it into the TV news headlines, right to the top. It has to be quite something to dislodge the junior hospital doctors, the EU referendum, the state of the financial markets and Syria. It was of course the discovery of gravity waves.

I'm sure I don't need to explain to the readers of this blog what gravity waves are and do. The question their existence answers is very simple: how is the force of gravity transmitted through space, the force that makes Newton's apple fall to the ground and Kepler's planets to stay in their elliptical orbits round the sun. Einstein had predicted them, but it has taken a century to spot these elusive carriers of cosmic information. It was the collision of two black holes and the colossal energies it released with the consequent distortions of space-time for gravity waves to leave a trace.

No wonder the scientific community is excited. I share it, insofar as I understand these things. I suppose I am a superannuated scientist in that I read maths for my first degree, though it's debateable whether mathematics is a science or an art. I've always enjoyed reading that genre known as 'popular science' to help me wander round the foothills of scientific enquiry and be able at least to ask sensible questions when talking to scientists. When I was studying A-level physics in the 1960s, I learned about conjectured 'grand unified theories' of the universe (GUTs we called them). One of the clues, I remember, was going to be the proven existence of gravity waves. At that stage no-one had heard of 'dark matter'. So presumably we are one step closer than we were to mapping the GUT-instinct of the cosmos. (Sorry.)

I was fascinated in the reaction on social media. It ranged from the excited to the baffled. There was a lot of exhilarated chatter: 'wow! this sounds amazing even if I haven't a clue what it means'. And there was some sighing with disbelief that such things were occupying valuable news time: 'what's all the fuss about?' grumbled one tweeter 'when it cost a fortune, makes no difference to anyone & most people don't understand it anyway'. Or words to that effect.

So here's my take on why all the fuss is worth it.

First, we should celebrate curiosity. It's a fundamental aspect of being human, this instinct to probe and explore and discover. It's inconceivable that humanity might one day give up on pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. When I was a child I had a big and much-cherished book about how the continents were progressively discovered. Each chapter was introduced by a coloured map entitled 'The Unfolding of the Clouds' (or was it unfurling?). The known world as it was down the centuries was mapped in colour with dark grey clouds lapping the edges. By the end of the book, the clouds were gone, banished by the sunshine of knowledge. A classic case of imperial optimism striding out to conquer ignorance? Maybe.

But it left a lasting image. Even aged eight or nine, I could see that it was a metaphor of other kinds of progress: understanding the past, overcoming disease, devising technologies to better the human condition. In the Hebrew Bible, King Solomon is remembered as a man who was curious about the animal and plant life that surrounded him. It was associated with his legendary wisdom. I think that remains true of good science, wherever we find it. And to me, one aspect of scientific curiosity is the very capacity we discover in ourselves to articulate such extraordinary concepts. It's as if we are helping the universe to come to a kind of consciousness through our very ability to understand and articulate its mechanisms.

Secondly, discoveries like this enhance the sense that we live in an amazing universe that is 'fearfully and wonderfully made' as the psalm describes the human person. Every so often, there are breakthroughs that make us stop and think about who and what we are, maybe glimpse aspects of our life that we are normally too much in a hurry to notice. The first man into space was one such moment, the first moon landing another ('one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind'). For a moment, we saw ourselves in a new way. In some ways these are as significant as the taming of fire and the discovery of the wheel, and a lot later on, depth psychology, relativity, vaccination, anaesthesia, the splitting of the atom and antibiotics. The human genome may be another parallel. The invention of the internet is another likely candidate, as is the promise (threat) of artificial intelligence. Crossing these thresholds changes the nature of human consciousness. Or it should.

But how? Once upon a time, scientific and technological research might be justified in terms of the mandate given to humanity at creation in Genesis: 'be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.' Back to that imperial (not to say imperious) domination of things. But I'd like to think that each threshold we cross as a human race ought to make us more reverent before creation, more humble towards it. Mother Julian of Norwich spoke about 'courtesy' in our relations with the natural world. The more complex the cosmos reveals itself to be, the more we should regard it in this way. That too is an aspect of wisdom, to be able to contemplate the created order and recognise our place in the grand scheme of things. The cosmos was here when we arrived, and it will still be here when we have gone. How many other sentient beings has it seen come and go in 14 billion years?

Of course so much depends how science and technological advance is put to use. I am not so naïve as to imagine that it will inevitably do us good. Science can have a dark shadow as we know from its being harnessed to destructive ends such as the capacity to make nuclear and biological weapons, engage in genetic manipulation, allow digital pornography to enter every home. Nor do I imagine that being exposed to the wonder of the universe makes a person religious (though avowed atheists like Brian Cox do convey an almost mystic sense of ecstatic awe in the face of the beauty of the cosmos and the physical laws that govern it).

But for people of faith, natural science has a religious aspect. The borderlands between knowability and unknowability straddle both science and theology: there is that which is disclosed to us, and that which remains mysterious and hidden whether we are talking about the universe or its Creator. 'Truly thou art a God that hidest thyself' complained the prophet, giving Luther his beloved phrase Deus Absconditus. Yet at the same time, the monotheistic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - all affirm that God desires to be known as well as remain mysterious, and has revealed himself to humanity in his prophets and in sacred texts. For Christians, the supreme and final revelation is in Jesus, the incarnate Word of the Father in which he utters his decisive Yes to the whole created order for time and for eternity. Ultimately, a theologian believes, the scientific enterprise is a way of honouring that divine Yes.

So to me, gravity waves have a religious as well as a scientific aspect. It's another activity in which faith is always seeking understanding. Which is why this latest penny that's dropped is a moment of recognition in a theological sense. To that act of seeing and knowing and loving God in all his works, the human heart as well as the human head will echo: Amen!

(For an acclaimed physicist's view on science and religion, see Tom McLeish's recent book Faith and Wisdom in Science.)