Although I still have 40 IV treatments left, today is the
last of the chemo. No more pure poison after today. YAY! So today I celebrate
One. And it’s about the Unified Theory of Everything.
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| River Styx |
Sometime back I said that I believe Christianity is true because
of the Gospel of Homesickness, which is an application of Plato’s Ideals. In
other words, I am convinced that the reason I have such an ache for something more out there, is because there really
is more out there. Of course Plato
thought that the more out there was
bad news for human beings, just tragedy and Hades, so they may as well forget
about wishing for anything different. He wanted to eliminate art, eliminate
music, eliminate comedy, because they made you think there might be more than gloom and doom out there, but
there’s not. But because of Jesus,
whom Plato never met, I know differently. I know that the story ends well. That
is the Gospel of Homesickness.
The second reason I believe Christianity is true is because
of Occam’s Razor. This is also called the law of parsimony, or frugality, or
even stinginess. In other words, shave off what you don’t need. Occam’s razor is a heuristic device that
helps you choose between several explanations. (a heuristic device is a rule of
thumb, a rule of common sense, a mental short cut. For example, when a stranger
offers you a ride, as a rule of thumb, don’t take it.) Occam’s razor is a rule of thumb that says if
you have several explanations, take the simplest one. Here’s an example. Calvin’s
dad walks into the bedroom and yells, “And what’s with all these feathers? Are
you tearing up your pillows? Calvin insists innocently, “It was incredible, Dad.
A herd of ducks flew in the window and molted! They left when they heard you
coming!” Yep, incredible all right. Calvin’s dad applies Occam’s razor and
Hobbes adds, disgustedly, “Nice alibi, Frizzletop! No dessert for a week!”
One of my favorite children’s books is by William Steig, entitled
Yellow & Pink. William Steig
wrote Shrek and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, which won the Caldecott Medal. In Yellow & Pink two carved wooden figures wake up in a field
and try to figure out how they got there. Pink assumes someone made them.
Yellow starts coming up with a series of accidents that might explain their
existence. It’s obviously a creationist tale, and the American Academy of
Pediatrics as well as the New York Times don’t recommend it. It’s not in print.
But it does illustrate Occam’s Razor.
Someone, later than the Franciscan Friar
William from Occam, added a few words to the Razor so that it now said, “if you
have several explanations, take the simplest one, but don’t bring in the
supernatural.” This is how Occam’s Razor is applied today, making Yellow’s long
explanation for our existence the only one acceptable. And I can see how giving
supernatural explanations for everything isn’t helpful when you are trying to
find a cure for cancer. You have to know how stuff works. How the laws of
science hang together.
But our entire culture is suspecting that behind the laws of
science, there is more out there. The
race is on to find the Grand Unifying Theory, or the Unified Theory of Everything
. These theories try to connect the various forces of the universe including nuclear particles like electrons, magnetism, and
gravity. Scientists want these forces to come up symmetrical, like the neat symmetry
between energy and matter (E=mc2),. They aren’t there yet, but they
might find something any day. I don’t know. Meanwhile I think their title is a
bit grandiose. It connects forces. It doesn’t begin to explain love or poetry. I
suspect that the real Unified Theory of Everything is not an equation but a
Person. Someone ultimately holding physical forces together as well as love and
poetry. My personal Unified Theory of Everything, my Theory of One is far more
interesting, and bringing Him into the picture is definitely more in keeping
with Friar William’s Razor.
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