“The physical structure of the Universe is love. It draws together and unites; in uniting, it differentiates. Love is the core energy of evolution and its goal.”
~ Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy
One of my favorite professors at Vanderbilt University was Dr. John Compton, who taught courses in the philosophy of science, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. He was a brilliant teacher whose father, Arthur Compton, was a Nobel Laureate who worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where John attended High School.
John encouraged us to engage in the dialogue between science and religion, ask tough questions, and enjoy and explore the ambiguous spaces in between. We read Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) which challenged the view of scientific discovery in which progress is generated and accelerated by a particular great scientist. Rather, Kuhn suggested, new discoveries depend on shared theoretical beliefs, values, and techniques of the larger scientific community—what he called the “disciplinary matrix” or “paradigm.”
Building upon this, feminist scholars identified attitudes towards gender and race as among those shared values and beliefs, and suggested that we need to question the way in which histories of science recount who does what, and who gets credit. Evelyn Fox Keller, writing in her book Reflections on Gender and Science, suggested that science is neither as impersonal nor as cognitive as we thought. And it is not reserved for male geniuses working on their own. It occurs through collaboration. This includes religious values, critical inquiry, and dialogue between science and religion. Having come to doctoral work at Vanderbilt as a neuroscience undergraduate major, I appreciated this reciprocal, interdisciplinary dialogue.
The year Kuhn’s text was published, the Mercury Friendship 7 mission occurred. John Glenn, piloting the spacecraft, was returning to earth when the automatic control system failed, forcing him to manually navigate the capsule to touchdown. Katherine Johnson, one of the (“Hidden Figures”) African American mathematicians working for NASA, calculated and graphed Glenn’s reentry trajectory in real time, accounted for all possible complications, and traced the exact path that Glenn needed to follow in order to safely splash down in the Atlantic.
Such stories amplify and deepen the work of Kuhn, Keller, and others who encourage us to create a future in which more and different people—regardless of race, gender, religion, class, or sexual identity—can imagine themselves as participants in new unfolding discoveries. Collaboration in a season of transition, or times of crisis, is essential to resilience, and to hope.
At heart, these narratives evoke the essentially relational nature of Creation, and God’s love, an evolving, divine, dynamic energy. As the poet Wallace Stevens said; “Nothing is itself taken alone. Things are because of interrelations or interactions.” We are reminded that nature itself is a system of reciprocal and deeply related interactions:
“Ecosystems are so similar to human societies—they’re built on relationships. The stronger those are, the more resilient the system. And since our world’s systems are composed of individual organisms, they have the capacity to change… Out of the resulting adaptation and evolution emerge behaviors that help us survive, grow, and thrive.” ~ Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
And as Ilia Delio has written, “If being is intrinsically relational (as the Trinity evokes) then nothing exists independently or autonomously. Rather, “to be” is “to be with”…I do not exist in order that I may possess; rather, I exist in order that I may give of myself, for it is in giving that I am myself.”[i] Or, as Mary Oliver said so well,
“And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world. ”
Sounds like a relational, incarnational, Trinitarian Gospel to me. I pray that in this Eastertide season and beyond, we at Holy Family find ways to live into, and out of this “matrix” of God’s unfolding Creation. This requires of us a willingness to collaborate, imagine new possibilities, and to remember our Baptism, in which we pray:Give us…an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.