Muriel Rukeyser once said that the universe is made of stories, not atoms, but I tend to think it may be composed of something like little haikus, short strings of syllables that whisper and exclaim, or maybe the universe is like a line of scat that grooves and bebops along. For as scientists plumb the fine structures of the cosmos, they are coming to the conclusion that the fundamental units that compose our world are not protons or neutrons or anything fixed or solid. Rather the world seems to be made of transient creative episodes, fleeting eruptions from a primordial emptiness based on underlying symmetries of matter and energy that defy any strict logic but proceed according to internal requirements that are like nothing so much as the artistic necessities of an unfolding poem …
… or a tone poem, or melody. Frank Wilczek, who received a Nobel prize for pioneering the theory of quantum chromodynamics, explained in a lecture where he teaches at M.I.T. that in his field, “atoms appear as musical instruments, not in a metaphorical way [he emphasizes], but in a very precise” manner, because each fundamental particle, from photon to neutrino, is the expression of some particular tempo, beat, or rhythm. When Neils Bohr introduced his model of the atom based on planetary orbits, back in the 20’s, the formulas that described the steps between those orbits were so reminiscent of orchestral scales that Einstein called it “the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought.” And as we learn about physics, the counterpoint grows. So Wilczek says, “the different particles we observe correspond to the vibration patterns that occur in the dynamical void,” an insight that strikes him as supremely poetic, in that the “masses of particles are the tones (frequencies) of these basic vibration patterns.” Not that the masses of particles “are like” the tones, he stresses, but they are the tones produced. The ancient dream that there was a music of the spheres, he proclaims, has achieved quite rigorous confirmation.
Or as Emerson has it, “In the mud and scum of things, always, always something sings.” And there is an intoxication in that music, so powerful as to make itself incarnate. The world rhymes itself into being. The chanting becomes enchanted, so that all becomes manifest, from quark to cosmos. As Emerson again says, “God has not made some beautiful things, but beauty is the creator of the universe,” a statement might have been made by any modern physicist for whom elegance is the precondition of Creation.
(excerpted from Gary Kowalski's 2010 Berry Street Lecture)
