The Divine Universe

When I look into the night sky, I see a number of stars and some of the planets of the Solar System. But I am not seeing them as they are now. The image of the most distant stars that I can see with the naked eye has taken several years to get here. Light travels at a finite speed, so I am seeing them as they were several years ago. Through the Hubble telescope it is possible to see galaxies nearly ten billion light-years away. The image is ten billion years out of date. The stars that were shining ten billion years ago are not likely to be shining still. Stars don’t live that long. So that galaxy no longer exists; there is a different collection of stars from the ones visible with the Hubble telescope.

When I am observing nearby things, this problem does not seem to arise. Actually, it does, but the effect is so small that I can imagine that there is a universal now and that the things I see are exactly what they appear to be, now. But it is an illusion. Separation in space, however small, is a separation in time. There is no universal now any more than there is a universal here. Every point in space has its own unique history in time; every moment in time moves through space at the speed of light.

That brings us to Einstein, who showed that space and time are modified by high relative speeds. A rocket moving at high speed relative to an observer is shorter than one at rest, and its time moves more slowly. But can we say that the rocket at rest is more ‘real’ than when it is moving with respect to me?

Common sense decrees that something is real if you can detect it with one or more of your five senses. The existence of something that those senses can not, even with the aid of scientific technology, observe either directly or indirectly is doubtful. I would agree with that, but I would challenge the idea that the five commonly recognised senses provide the only criterion. Some other animals have much sharper senses than humans. Sometimes they are able to sense phenomena such as magnetic fields that we are completely insensitive to. We can only talk of what is real to humans. Try to imagine what a cockroach’s ‘real’ world is like.

There is also a whole range of faculties such as telepathy that only a minority have experienced. Most people, in fact, limiting their notion of observation to five senses, would deny the reality of anything of that kind. Things sometimes referred to as psychic or paranormal have proved unreliable subjects for controlled experiment, but the accumulated experimental evidence for such realities is not insignificant. The claim that all such experiences are based on fraud or illusion is ideological rather than rational. Is anything that an individual observes real, or does there have to be some kind of consensus? How many observers does it take to make something real?

No one today would doubt the reality of atoms, molecules and subatomic particles such as electrons and photons, although no one has ever seen any of these things. The reality of such objects is, in fact, ambiguous. This is not because they are impossible to observe directly. The techniques of indirect observation have proved quite reliable and a vast array of subatomic particles has been catalogued and studied. The difficulty arises because these objects are not simply particles, like a grain of sand or a baked bean. They also behave like waves. If I observe an electron one way, it is a wave; if I deliberately look for a particle, that is what I shall find. The observer decides which kind of reality the electron shall be.

The observer also determines the position or motion of a sub-microscopic object. Until it is observed there exists a possibility of it being in many places and states. Physicists call this superposition. Depending on local fields of force, some positions are more probable than others, but the electron cannot become a particle with a definite position and motion or a wave with specific dimensions in space, time and momentum until it is observed. Then, physicists say, the superposition has collapsed.

The observation of a small particle involves techniques in which it is impacted by photons or some other wave-particles. This affects the position and momentum of the particle. So observation causes change, even though this is negligible in the case of macro objects such as cats and computers.

Philosophers have asked whether an unobserved object can properly be said to exist at all. It is an interesting question. There are many objects recently seen by me that are out of view now. I saw an apple in the kitchen an hour ago but I cannot be sure it is still there. To calculate the probability that the apple is ‘really’ there I would need to take other things into account, such as young Tommy coming home from school. Without direct observation the existence of the apple is uncertain. If Tommy has eaten the apple, it will be real enough to him, but not what I have in mind. In the end, each person has their own reality; each lives in a unique world, observed only by them. Reality for each of us is in the mind, either in the imagination or as a sensory experience. If I can see the apple, I can expect agreement about its reality from anyone with me. If I can only remember it as it was an hour ago, there is less certainty.

Astronomers observe the wider universe. We have already seen that there is some ambiguity as to the reality of what they see, especially if it is very distant. The universe that humans see from Earth is different from the universe the little green men on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy see.

Can we be sure that there is a real universe around us? If there is, no one has observed it completely. Scientists have established general laws that apply throughout the cosmos, based on careful observation and experiment within our very limited range of vision and our very impressive power of reflection, intuition and rational analysis. (At least, we are impressed!) Maybe the total universe or multiverse exists only in the imagination of some transcendent mind: the Ultimate Observer who, by observing, brings everything into being.

Physicist, John Wheeler, points out that, through us, the universe is self-observing, because we are part of it, a product of its processes. But how can the universe or multiverse have a ‘self’ in total isolation? To be a person it is essential to be in a relationship with another. Personhood only exists in community. I accept the idea of the personal, self-conscious universe or multiverse, but what or who is it a person to? The Christian God is not “all alone and ever more shall be so”, as the old folksong has it. The Christian God is communal – three persons in one God. Could this be the transcendent Self. Is this the Mind in whose imagination perfection is in the process of being realised? Is this the Womb in which the cosmic embryo is being formed? Is this the Expectant Father, lovingly anticipating the eventual birth of his cosmic Child?