A Couple of Thoughts on a Scientist’s Birthday

It’s the 59^th birthday of American astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose most recent and aptly named book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry was published earlier this year.

Let’s begin by realizing how lucky we are to have an articulate scientist among us who has successfully used his charisma to escape cultural irrelevance.  It hasn’t been a particularly good couple of decades for science; all these disciplines have fallen into a deep state of disregard in American popular culture, but this phenomenon hasn’t taken Tyson along with it.

My son asked me just yesterday why so many of the doctors in our hospitals here in Santa Barbara are of Asian and Eastern European descent.  I answered by asking him if could name a few popular actors, then musicians, then an athletes.  He had immediate answers, as any young person would.  Then I asked if could name a single living scientist. Crickets.

I explained, “We’ve built a culture in which Americans want entertainment directed at them; we no longer derive any sense of reward from using our minds to figure things out.  A society based on rap music, video games, beer and spectator sports doesn’t breed doctors. I don’t know what it breeds, exactly, (neurotic sloth?) but it sure isn’t doctors.”

—

Tyson said, “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you,” which is a sentence worth exploring.  In particular, the lifeform known as humankind evolved from hunter-gatherers over the last 200,000 years, armed with nothing but a brain marginally superior to what had come before it, and the ability to intuit three dimensions of space and a single dimension of time.

Will that prove to be sufficient to enable us to understand the universe around us?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  One thing’s certain; Tyson’s correct: the universe couldn’t care less.

Note the tie-in between physics and philosophy, in this case, existentialism.  Given that the universe is coldly indifferent to our satisfying ourselves, we need to ask where any overall meaning to our lives could possibly come from.  According to existentialism, it derives purely and only from us.  If our lives do, in fact, have meaning, it stems solely from what we ourselves confer onto it.

All the more reason to engage with the world around us make it a great day.  I plan to, and I hope you do too.