Article July 1, 2002 Issue

Consciousness and the expanding universe . . .

Physical scientists and spiritual thinkers find themselves roaming the same territory these days. Will physics and metaphysics ever merge?

by warren bolon sentinel staff

Decades ago, British astrophysicist Sir James Jeans said that "the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great THOUGHT than like a great machine." Arthur Eddington, also a 20th-century British astrophysicist, put it more succinctly when he wrote, "The stuff of the universe is mind-stuff."

Many scientists today consider such statements speculative if not mystical. A Web surfer is just as likely to find these statements mixed with the words of Sufi poets as in compilations of quotations from leading physicists.

The point is, though, scientists, like the rest of us, are searching for answers to the basic question of existence. Yet it isn't a matter of having all the answers. It's about asking better questions—questions that push the frontiers of understanding outward.

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