A Separation from the Stars

I have long been fascinated with looking to the night sky, finding it both overwhelming and reassuring, at the same time. I am still struck by something I read in A Stone for a Pillow, which is a biblical reflection by Madeleine L'Engle: the word disaster breaks down to mean "a separation from the stars." L'Engle goes on to reflect that it is when we are separated from the natural world, when we delve too exclusively into our humanity that we become the least human. When we are literally separated from the stars, through physical limitations such as city lights or through isolation, or ignorance, a part of us dies. We need the connection to the night sky, to the earth beneath our feet, the wind on our faces, and the stone beneath our neck for a pillow, as Jacob is said to have used in the fields.

Madeleine L'Engle was one of my favorite authors as a child, and my love affair with her writing continued into adulthood. She was the first person who awoke my interest in science, on both the large and small scale. The first person to introduce me to the idea of space, mitochondria, to fascinate me with both the macro and microcosms. And she was the first person to make me seriously think about faith, what I believe, if I think there is a divine order to the universe. She made me feel like it was OK to question those things, and to not have an answer. And she made it OK for science and faith to coexist. Because she was open about having those some questions and occasional doubts. My own religious beliefs aside, for I am still on the fence about many things, I find reassurance in knowing there is something of order and design to all life. I can find the patterns and they repeat, showing me that things are purposeful and work for a reason. L'Engle wove together science, art, poetry and personal introspection. She made me think, as all great artists do.

Being outside at night has long been of comfort to me. When we fear the darkness, we fear not the dark itself, but what sits just outside our circle of light. But when we embrace the night, and look to the stars, there is a feeling of connection. I feel both important and insignificant in the universal design and flow. After an evening run, resting in a swing on the local playground, head tipped back, watching the stars flow back and forth as my body sways, I feel connected. L'Engle awoke a need for understanding in me as a child, and I've fed that need over the last few decades.

Science, be it biology, physics, astronomy, or geology, has long been studied, and the importance never underrated.  But science, outside of school, has remained a mystery through much of the last century.  Now, however, there is a surge of need to understand.  Through online blogging, and posting of photos on Instagram, a need to know has been awoken in many who would, in the past, never have thought to question.  Science has become accessible to the common man.  There’s a new ilk of scientists, rock stars of astronomy, of chemistry and medicine.  Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Bye, Richard Dawkins.  Through books, blogs, tweets, Instagram, podcasting, and television, they have brought science into everyone’s lives.  We live in what is, no doubt, a very exciting time.  I was born after man had been to the moon, but before the Challenger disaster of 1986.  I was a child when space travel was exciting, but accessible.  Yet, I knew very little about the travel itself, the process, or what was beyond our atmosphere.  What I did know, I learned in school.  The launches were televised, but the physics and mechanics were glossed over.  I suppose it wasn’t something the media felt was important for the general population to know. 

 

Now, my daily e-mail, Facebook wall, Twitter feed, news logs are filled with articles on space, astrophysics, genetic research, climate theory, and much more.  In short, we are accepting the science into our lives as something we have a right to know.

When Pluto was demoted from a planet several years back, so many people were up in arms.  What I had learned to call the ninth planet, was not a planet at all.  It made everything we had learned in school be questioned.  It rocked what little we knew about the solar system, made our own knowledge about how the universe is arranged and how it works, or doesn’t work, seem even smaller and less reliable.  Neil Degrasse Tyson, largely unheard of previously outside of the science community, became the most hated man in science.  Or at least by school children.    But he was classifying the  universe into like sets of celestial objects, and science is without empathy at times.  What this did, however, was make Tyson a household name.  I know that I started paying more attention to him after reading about Pluto being labeled as a “dwarf planet.”  I picked up Tyson’s book Death by Blackhole and fell in love with the night sky all over again.

What makes Tyson so undeniably well read and respected is that he’s not just another science geek with a telescope.  I mean, yes, he is that.  But he’s more.   I joke a lot that anyone who understands how great a mystery the universe is and seeks to understand it while dressing with such flair (just think of his awesome waistcoats), can dance like Michael Jackson and wrestled like a badass in college, well, he’s got my respect.  He’s got the respect of many people – he’s a cool guy, who likes science. A  rock god of astronomy who’s made it cool to want to study science.  We’ve come a long way, baby.  Tyson was encouraged in his early years by Carl Sagan and has said that Sagan didn’t just make him want to be a better scientist, but gave him a clue about the kind of person he wanted to be.   Someone who treated others with respect, spoke calmly and clearly about things that matter, someone who sought knowledge but also sought to enjoy life.

Tyson is not like Madeleine L’Engle, my earlier influence in looking to the stars.  She was unabashedly Episcopalian, solidly aligning her love of science and the natural world and her firm belief in a creator.  Tyson identifies himself as agnostic.  Not an atheist, because he “doesn’t care enough” to consider himself such.  He looks to the spirituality of science.  He does not discount scientists who firmly believe in a higher being – he says the high percentage of people who are well educated and still have strong faith tells him that he might be wrong, but he still holds fast to what he feels is the truth.  He does, however, speak with feeling about blind faith, because blind infers ignorant.  Ignorance is the enemy.

Tyson’s peer, Richard Dawkins, looks also to the universe, to the matters of the physical world, both seen and unseen.  Dawkins is an unashamed atheist, using science to debunk religion.  I read both authors, neither completely agreeing or disagreeing with most of their points.  They have their own views, and I have mine – confused though they often are.  L’Engle showed me there is a place for both.  I can look to the mathematical order of the world, see the patterns, and know there is some kind of design to the universe.  Some kind of force driving life.  I don’t pretend to understand it or label it.  But I know it is there, and I feel connected when I stand under the stars, and feel how alone and small I really am in the universe, and then feel the contrast that I do matter to so many other people on this planet.

Today I could open my Facebook feed, and read a dozen different articles just from this morning on the universe, the natural world, research into medicine and genetics, technology and engineering.  Website such as Star Talk and I Fucking Love Science collect articles and share them.  My favorite is IFLS’ weekly summary column that details the ten best scientific articles of the week.  This week in science, look what we have done…

We live in exciting times.  They’re not the first exciting times, though.  The philosophers of the natural world, the masters of the ancient world – they were the first to not only observe, but to share.  While Chinese naturalists, early Greek philosophers and the Vedic philosophy of India all predated them, it is the Classical Greek philosophers and those who followed shortly after who most easily come to mind.  Because they not only observed and theorized, but also wrote and shared with the masses.  While Socrates did not write many of his own observations, his student Aristotle recorded much of his teaching.  Aristotle himself was a student of the natural world, studying physics, biology, zoology, ethics, poetry and language.  While Plato was more of a narrative writer, Aristotle observed and wrote. He influenced the philosophy of many other cultures.  In his wake came others, such as Archimedes. Those who saw the order in the natural world, the greater adventure in the stars, and they shared with others.  Imagine what they could have done, if they’d had Twitter and Tumblr at their fingertips.  Alas, the smart phone was not yet at hand.

Today, scientists have the means to communicate with the larger population.  They are represented by those like Tyson, Nye, Hawking – household names, with big personalities and personal stories they are willing to share.  They’ve connected their humanity to the understanding of the universe and welcomed us into their world and their thoughts through social media.  Through them, we are experiencing a new age of enlightenment, if only in understanding how little we really know.  How much there still is to discover, on both the universal and the microscopic levels.

And what I find is that knowing more about the universe, understanding how a star is formed and what stage of life it might be in, and trying to fathom the incredible distances in space, well, none of that takes away the magic I feel standing under a sky full of stars.  The way I hold my breath watching a shooting star.  Or the way I imagine I will be overwhelmed someday when I finally do see the Northern Lights.  Understanding science doesn’t diminish the wonder – it increases it a thousand fold.  So, I thank these pioneers of scientific wonder – those who dared to bare themselves a bit to invite us into this world and open our eyes just a little bit wider.