Introducing a new book by Hyrum Mead:
Our New Universe
Its Impact on Science, Philosophy, and Faith
Is the universe new? It is to us! Modern cosmology has revealed that our universe is vastly different from the one we thought we knew.
We once thought that our solar system may be unique in the universe and that life could exist only on Earth. Now we estimate that there are more planets than some 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. We can no longer assume that life is confined to Earth alone.
We now know that galaxies, and thereby stars, planets, and the conditions for life were created and are controlled by enormous presences that we cannot identify. We call them "dark matter" and "dark energy" because we don't know what they are and, therefore, what the universe really is.
Exotic, decades-old theories of how our life-friendly universe could have emerged from the chaos of the big bang through astonishingly good fortune have grown stale for lack of means of testing and for being of questionable viability. In short, science has given us many reasons for why the existence of a universe that is seemingly fine-tuned for us to be is all but impossible without giving us any verifiable explanation for how, against enormous improbability, it does exist.
We are left to grapple with major questions. How does our new universe change our view of ourselves? How does it affect our philosophy of reality and existence? How does it impact our concept of God and our relationship with Him? How does it fit with atheism?
This book is the story of how I have come to peace with my place in our dynamic new universe. Maybe it will help you find yours.
Hyrum Mead
Introduction
It may seem strange to compare our modern age to the times of Copernicus and Galileo, but in many ways the similarities fit. Not many centuries ago, our ancestors lived comfortably with the confidence that the Sun and the stars revolved around them—that they were the center of everything—but then Galileo looked into his homemade telescope and discovered the unthinkable, thereby shaking up the sacrosanct beliefs of the church and all mankind. We were not the center of the universe after all! This sweeping change of perspective required a major adjustment to the perception of self, to philosophy, and to religion.
It took many years of heated dispute before the world reluctantly released its obdurate grasp on an Earth-centered, geocentric universe and accepted our modern concept of a heliocentric solar system. But now we are looking through our telescopes and discovering that even our solar system is not unique. In reality, it is only one minuscule example of innumerable planetary systems in our galaxy alone, and of vastly more in the immense universe. Among those planets there is a myriad of worlds that must be suitable for life. This leads to the all-but-inevitable conclusion that just as our solar system is not unique, we as Earthlings may not be alone. Ours must be a living universe in which life exists on many more worlds than ours.
Before the first discovery of extrasolar planets (exoplanets) was confirmed by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail in 1992, the scientific community generally believed that that our solar system may be a singular phenomenon in the universe. Even if the universe did not revolve around us, we still felt we had license to argue that ours was the only planetary system in all of the cosmos. We had observed that star formation is an explosive, chaotic process, and therefore many presumed that the survival of the materials surrounding new stars that could form planets was so highly improbable that it was all but impossible. A prominent opinion among astronomers was that planetary materials would be blown far away into space with the violent birth of new stars, making our solar system a fortunate but probably solitary fluke. Searching for extrasolar planets was therefore considered "ridiculous" in mainstream science.
Five centuries after a group of adventurous sailors left safe shores in 1492 to cross an ocean and happened upon what Europeans came to call the “New World,” we made our first discovery of new worlds in the heavens. Our search for extrasolar planets has scarcely begun, yet since 1992 we have discovered thousands of planets orbiting stars in our galaxy, enough to predict that nearly all stars have planets. We can also project that there are more planets than there are stars in the universe, a universe that contains more stars than all of the grains of sand on all of the beaches of the Earth. Some would add to that all of the grains of sand in all of the deserts on the Earth. The universe is awash with planets more numerous than we have capacity to imagine. That is a colossal change of thought since 1992!
Just as our progenitors once reluctantly abandoned their happy place on their comfortable Earth that was the center of everything, we are now confronted with finding our new place as inhabitants of just one of an incomprehensible number of planets where extraterrestrial life may also reside. We now live in a new, radically different universe, where we are left to grapple with major questions. How does all of this change our view of ourselves? How does it alter our philosophies of reality and existence? How does it conform to religion and the concept of God? How does it fit with atheism?
This book follows my life’s journey as the universe has revealed itself, from what it was thought to be when I was a boy, to the far different universe that we know today. In making that journey, I have been aware that the world views the universe from different perspectives. Some see the universe through the lens of science. Others see the universe through the lens of faith or philosophy. Many see the differing views of the universe as competitors. I see them as potentially unmatched pieces of a much bigger puzzle. Albert Einstein considered science and religion to be branches of the same tree. Their common objective is the pursuit of truth. I believe that if we are to complete the grand puzzle, we need to consider a place for all of the pieces before we can have a true portrait of our magnificent universe. When approaching a subject so deep and profound as the mysteries of the universe and our place in it, I believe that we need to search for answers through all three of our grand pillars of understanding: science, philosophy, and theology.
A living universe is more than a seemingly infinite expanse of the inanimate. Life is not only a component of the universe, but it is the most miraculous thing in the universe. As such, our heart, mind, spirit, and faith are as much a part of the reality of the universe as are stars, planets, and galaxies. As Einstein observed, “A human being is part of a whole called by us the universe.” Alan Watts added, “You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.” Life, ours and all others, is not only a part of the universe, but its crowning jewel. To theists, life is even its controlling hand.
I present myself as a generalist, free to look at the universe through multiple lenses without constraint or professional obligation to choose sides, as perhaps only a generalist could. I have spent my life as a science student and enthusiast, and I have strong religious convictions. However, I am not a career scientist, a professional clergyman, or an academic in philosophy. By way of background, before I retired from industry and took up writing, I was President and CEO of a publicly traded medical company specializing in the development and manufacturing of technical products used for the treatment of cancer. But whatever our background or perspective, whether it be yours, mine, or that of anyone else on the planet, we are each confronted with the same challenge of finding ourselves anew in a universe that to us has changed forever.
This is the story of how I have come to peace with my place in our dynamic new universe. Maybe it will help you find yours.
Please watch for this book when it is published.