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By Root 747 0

wasted away, waiting for their demise in the heat of a cosmos becoming ever narrower. Ever so slowly the economy recovered, until after several billion years the upturn was finally guaranteed thanks to the surplus of energy in a universe once again warmed up. Technology and the economy, adapted to the old drought, nearly boiled over and produced unknown riches. Now, finally, the civilizations were able to use to the fullest the knowledge developed in the turbulent but long-ago expansion of the world’s youth, then saved through the critical collapse. The few daily inconveniences were easily taken care of by highly sophisticated machines, and sufficient energy was readily available. A golden age commenced in which humankind was all but free of work, with culture and science blossoming to unforeseen extents.

All this happened in recognition of the finiteness and perishability of all life in the shrinking universe, as people decided to use their remaining resources as a cultural buoy, in the possibly pretentious opinion that their knowledge could be of importance to the universe—or something in it. Cultural achievements as well as molecular and anatomical details of the surviving civilizations were, following the example of the legendary capsule Kruskal, encoded in a strong gravitational wave signal to save, if not life, at least the thoughts through the dense universe—as long as time itself existed …

Once theory pushes forward to a possible understanding of the big bang and the remaining universe, the temptation to explain the emergence of the universe itself becomes overwhelming. Interpretations of theories and their mathematical solutions concerning entire worldviews indeed offer a high degree of fascination. But in too direct and supposedly generally valid an interpretation there lies, especially in this case, a great danger—not least because theories relevant for such questions will for all foreseeable time remain in their infancy. Physics is, after all, even if we disregard its big sister philosophy, not alone in this business. And yet a comparison of different worldviews offers a certain charm, and certainly some knowledge, too.

One should not underestimate myths and what they can teach us about ourselves and the progress we have made. Take the Summer Palace in modern Beijing (figure 30), a beautiful sprawling park built as the summer retreat of Empress Dowager Cixi. On a small island in a man-made lake, facing the Tower of Buddhist Incense and the Sea of Wisdom Temple on the slope of Longevity Hill which rises from the shore, stands the Hall of Embracing the Universe. It is a small, humble building in the style of its time, the fringes of its roof rising optimistically upward to aim at the sky. The Hall of Embracing the Universe tells us everything there is to know about humanity and the world: It was initially called the Hall of Watching the Moon Toad to honor its role in observing the moonrise; nowadays, the Hall of Embracing the Universe is a souvenir shop.

Surprisingly often, one can find parallels between ideas stemming from the most diverse traditions, an observation probably not hinting at an ember of truth but rather traceable back to the fact that the range of human imagination is, despite its excesses, actually quite small. Analogies listed in this chapter as examples are not at all intended to suggest strict relationships between the different approaches; for all their superficial similarities, these ideas differ in their details, let alone their messages.

30. The Hall of Embracing the Universe in Beijing’s Summer Palace.

ANALOGIES:

DECEPTIVE SIMILARITIES

Analogies prove nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

—SIGMUND FREUD, Introduction to Psychoanalysis

In several ways, scenarios for the emergence of the world have a role similar to that of the atomic picture of matter. As is well known, the name and the concept of atoms was introduced 2,500 years ago by the pre-Socratic philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, to be verified by physics only in the early twentieth century—not