Editorial May 27, 2002 Issue

Healing without limits

Editor

Lighter , faster, smarter. The 21st century already seems to be seeking a self-definition characterized by newness, millennial grandeur, forward-thinking . . . progress.

In so many ways, our world is moving at speeds—and with a weightlessness—unimagined in earlier times. Where once populations lumbered across continents in heavy iron locomotives, or by wagon, or even on foot, today sleek bullet trains race from country to country. Winter clothing has evolved from cumbersome furs and heavy woolens to ultra-light synthetics that protect in subarctic temperature. Information systems zap billions of messages across the globe in milliseconds. In the world of medical science, which once relied on implements that more resembled a carpenter's tools than refined surgical instruments, doctors now train in laser surgery, using light to perform delicate, non-invasive procedures.

In every discipline, discoveries are pushing the frontiers of science and medicine into new perspectives on how we view matter itself. Since the 1950s physicists have known that most of the substance of matter is empty space—that if the earth were compressed to a black hole (taking away all the space), the mass, earth itself, would measure only one-half inch across. And today's quantum physics, for example, points to the universe as no longer a clocklike model of Newtonian physics, but as superceded by a mind-like model in which the creative Mind participates actively in its creation.

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