S CIENCE’ S C OMPASS ESSAY 65 64 ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY 63 62 61 Cosmology and 60 59 58 21st-Century Culture 57 56 e like to think of our generation in ly be true—one that can withstand the most 55 this Information Age as the rigorous tests and will still be accepted hun- 54 Wsmartest and most knowledgeable dreds of years from now, as Newton’s theory 53 that has ever lived. Yet most people in mod- remains valid for the solar system (within 52 ern Western culture have no idea what our known limitations). This is the highest grade 51 universe looks like or how to begin to think of truth possible in modern science.* 50 about the way we humans may fit into the Modern cosmology is in the midst of a 49 cosmos. Every traditional culture known to scientific revolution. New instruments are 48 anthropology has had a cosmology—a story producing the first detailed data about the Nancy Ellen Abrams 47 of how the world began and continues, how distant universe. Since light travels at a finite and Joel R. Primack 46 humans came to exist, and what the gods ex- speed, looking out in space is the same as 45 pect of us. Cosmology made sense of the or- looking back in time. We can now observe Nancy Ellen Abrams is a lawyer, writer, 44 dinary world by defining a every bright galaxy in the and performance artist, and her 43 larger context and ground- visible universe, and even husband Joel R. Primack is a professor 42 ing people’s sense of reali- “A living look back to the cosmic of physics at the University of Califor- 41 ty, their identity, and their dark ages before galaxies nia, Santa Cruz. They have been teach- 40 codes of behavior in that had formed. In the patterns ing a course at UCSC on Cosmology cosmology for and Culture for 6 years. Primack 39 grand scheme. Like mod- of the subtle temperature currently serves on the executive com- 38 ern science, it embedded 21st-century differences in the cosmic mittee of the American Physical 37 everydayness in an invisi- background radiation in Society Division of Astrophysics and 36 ble reality: Modern sci- culture will different directions we are chairs the advisory committee to the 35 ence explains by means learning to read the Gene- AAAS Program of Dialogue on Science, 34 of countless molecules; emerge when sis story of the expanding Ethics, and Religion. 33 African cosmologies ex- universe. 32 plain by means of count- the scientific The resulting origin 31 less spirits. Ordinary peo- story will be the first ever universe in which the Earth was not flat and 30 ple in traditional societies nature of the based on scientific evi- domed but a round celestial object. By the 29 accepted responsibility for dence and created by a col- Middle Ages, the Greek image of concentric 28 maintaining the cosmos it- universe laboration of people from spheres, and not the Bible’s flat domed Earth, 27 self by ritually reenacting different religions and had become the unquestioned universe for 26 the creation stories for ev- becomes races all around the world, Jews, Moslems, and Christians alike. 25 ery generation. This is how all of whose contributions Thus, on a clear night in Medieval Eu- 24 they knew who they were. enlightening for are subjected to the same rope, a person looking up into the sky would 23 The absence of a cosmolo- standards of verifiability. have seen hard, transparent spheres nested 22 gy was as inconceivable as human beings.” The new picture of reality inside each other, encircling the center of 21 the absence of language. excludes no one and treats the universe, the Earth. Each sphere carried 20 Their pictures of the uni- all humans as equal. The a planet, the moon, or the sun. Heaven itself 19 verse were not what anyone today would con- revolution in scientific cosmology today was immediately outside the most distant 18 sider scientifically accurate, but they were may open the door to a believable picture of sphere, which carried the “fixed stars.” The 17 true by the standards of their culture. the larger reality in which our world, our hierarchies of church, nobility, and family 16 Science undermined all traditional pic- lives, and all our cultures are embedded. mirrored this cosmic hierarchy. Every thing 15 tures of the universe in the Renaissance, cen- and every creature in the universe tended to- 14 turies before it was in a position to create one Religion and Cosmology ward its proper place for love of God. 13 of its own. A cosmology can only be taken In Biblical times when people looked up at a The stable center was torn out of the Me- 12 seriously if it is believable, and after the sci- blue sky, they understood the blue to be wa- dieval universe at the beginning of the 17th 11 entific revolution our standards of believabil- ter, held up by a hard, transparent dome that century, when Galileo’s telescope observa- 10 ity were forever changed. For four centuries, covered the entire flat Earth. In the King tions showed that the Ptolemaic Earth-cen- 9 scientific cosmology was not taken seriously James translation, the dome was named the tered picture was wrong.† Galileo ridiculed 8 because the ratio of theory to data was almost “firmament.” According to the first creation the prevailing cosmology in his Dialogue 7 infinite. However, science now appears to be story at the beginning of Genesis, by creating Concerning the Two Chief World Systems 6 closing in on an origin story that may actual- this dome on the second day, God divided the (1632), but the Catholic Church forced him 5 waters “above” from the waters “below” and to recant and held him under house arrest for 4 held open the space for dry land and air. the rest of his life. This was a frightening and 3 N. E. Abrams and J. R. Primack are at the Physics De- partment, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA At about the same time as the Genesis sobering event for scientists all over Europe. 2 95064, USA. E-mail: [email protected], story took the form in which we know it, Eventually, following the lead of Bacon and 1 CREDIT: ALLAN BURCH [email protected] Greek philosophers were living in a different Descartes, science protected itself by enter- www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 293 7 SEPTEMBER 2001 1769 S CIENCE’ S C OMPASS 65 ing into a de facto pact of noninterference dieval hierarchical universe was used to creasingly dubious because such theories 64 with religion: Science would restrict its au- justify rigid social hierarchies? Will news conflict with the new observations of the 63 thority to the material world, and religion of new discoveries about the universe just cosmic background radiation—or else 62 would hold unchallenged authority over spir- be entertainment for an educated minority gravity must have had some differences in 61 itual issues. By the time Isaac Newton was but, like science fiction or metaphysics, density to work with from the beginning. 60 born in 1642, the spoils of reality had been have little to do with the “real world”? Cosmic Inflation could have caused such 59 divided. The physical world and the world of All possibilities are still open because primordial differences. 58 human meaning were now separate realms. the meaning of this new cosmology is not The theory of Cosmic Inflation was 57 The new picture portrayed the universe implicit in the science. Scientific cosmolo- proposed two decades ago by Alan Guth, 56 as endless empty space with stars scattered gy, unlike traditional cosmologies, makes Andrei Linde, and others. It is the only ex- 55 randomly in it. It never fully replaced the no attempt to link the story of the cosmos planation we have today for the initial con- 54 Medieval universe in people’s hearts, partly to how human beings should behave. It is ditions that led to the Big Bang.# It says 53 because it felt so incomplete. There was no the job of scholars, artists, and other cre- that for an extremely small fraction of a 52 particular place for humans, no place for ative people to try to understand the scien- second at the beginning of the Big Bang, 51 God, and no explanation of the universe’s tific picture and to perceive and express the universe expanded exponentially, in- 50 origin. In the mid–17th century, Blaise Pas- human meanings in it.‡ A living cosmolo- flating countless random quantum events 49 cal [Pensees (1670)] expressed a sentiment gy for 21st-century culture will emerge in the process, and leaving the newly cre- 48 unheard of in the Middle Ages: “engulfed when the scientific nature of the universe ated spacetime faintly wrinkled on all size 47 in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof becomes enlightening for human beings. scales. All large structures in the universe 46 I know nothing, and which know nothing This will not happen easily. The result today grew from these quantum fluctua- 45 of me, I am terrified…The eternal silence of centuries of separation between science tions, enormously inflated in scale. 44 of these infinite spaces alarms me.” New- and religion is that each is suspicious of the Inflation is also the controlling metaphor 43 tonian cosmology was the first that had other infringing on its turf. In 1999 the of our culture in the present epoch.