A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design by Frank Wilczek
A Book Review
Awe-inspiring and humbling, A Beautiful Question is an extended meditation on beauty and its embodiments. Does the world embody beautiful ideas? Is the world, at its core, a work of art? Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek takes us on a journey through scientific history from Pythagoras to Plato, Brunelleschi to Newton, and Maxwell to Einstein, demonstrating how their work provides answers to these questions.
Beauty as an expression of truth builds a bridge between science and art. The objective of art is beauty or the exploration of the meaning of beauty. If science can be approached from the standpoint of beauty as well, as the author explains it can, then science and art are not so different after all and can be unified. This idea of unity is not only the most profound aspect I gleaned from the book, but also the most fundamental aspect of reality and therefore a very deep truth.
Physicists have discovered these seeming contradictions to be true as well: “From dynamics, permanence. From continuity discreetness.” Although there is change and fluctuation (dynamics), there is always that which is eternal and does not change (permanence). From what is continuous and whole (continuity), there are individual parts (discreetness). How can this be? It seems that at the most fundamental level, contradictions indicate where the deepest truths can be found because at the deepest level, everything is connected.
Science is discovering the true unity beneath the illusion of opposites, which is something that many ancient wisdom traditions have known for thousands of years. Although I’m still relatively young and have a lot more to learn, I can say that from my lifetime of seeking knowledge and synthesizing ideas across different disciplines, I don’t think there is a deeper truth than unity — the fact that everything and everyone is connected. In fact, unification is a primary goal of physicists — to discover the unifying theory that connects the four forces of nature (electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force, and gravity). The underlying intuition here is that there should be such a unification because ultimately everything is connected. I find this truth to be profoundly beautiful and even awe-inspiring.
The theme of yin and yang is a recurring theme in the book and an idea to which the author returns several times. The concept is so central that the opening artwork is a depiction of the yin / yang symbol that was prepared especially for the book by the artist He Shuifa. The symbol represents the idea that opposites contain their opposite within them and although on the surface they look different, at a deeper level they are reflections of the same thing. Only in knowing separation (duality), can we truly know unity. This is a profound spiritual truth, and now it is becoming a scientific one as well.
I greatly respect and admire the author’s intelligence — not just his incredible knowledge of physics but his ability to bridge multiple perspectives and distill the nuggets of truth from complex scientific pursuits. There is a heavy amount of very complicated theories and equations explained in this book, and although I have some knowledge of physics, much of the explanations of equations and elementary particles went over my head because I don’t have the deep understanding that the author has, especially in the area of particle physics. I focused on the big ideas and did my best to understand the minutia. While I don’t feel that my experience of the book was lessened too much by a lack of full comprehension of the mathematics, I still wouldn’t recommend this to someone who has no background in physics or who finds physics boring or inaccessible. There are other science books in the same vein that are more accessible to the layperson, such as The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.
Besides the technical breakdown of the equations and concepts, there is the more theoretical and easier-to-absorb exploration which is the central point of the book: Examining scientific discoveries in their ability to “display beautiful ideas deeply embodied in the world…(whose beauty) derives from many sources: from the way they were discovered, from their shape, and from their power to inspire other good ideas.” The goal of this meditation on beauty is to “harmonize ideal and real and to see things whole”.
He goes on to say that “our question asks us to discover beauty and our understanding of reality…for the beauty of Nature’s deep design…is as strange as its strangeness is beautiful.” Could this apparent “strangeness” of nature’s design be a result of our inability to comprehend reality in its entirety? This was something I wondered multiple times throughout the book. Are we, as human beings, even capable of understanding the underlying reality of existence? Does our embodied consciousness have that ability? We can see only a small slice of reality and in many ways even that small slice itself is a watered-down version. For example, the electromagnetic spectrum contains multitudes but we can only see a very tiny portion (the visible color spectrum).
This lead me to another question: Is beauty lessened by understanding? If we could know everything, would we perceive it as less beautiful or awe-inspiring? And does understanding always come from the intellect? Is there not a different kind of knowing that we can have that doesn’t come from our sensory experience or from intellectual enlightenment? Is there not a deeper, intuitive, or as some would call it — spiritual, understanding available to us as humans? Because if the world is a work of art doesn’t that mean that there is an artist who created it? Could we not call that artist God or Source or the Creator? Forms of beauty — profound beauty — are intuitively associated with the divine, with a higher intelligence that far exceeds what we are able to understand. This faith in such a higher being is not based on concrete proof or anything that can be measured. Because of this science does not directly explore such spiritual notions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of exploration.
Newton himself wrote extensively on theology and said “the initial conditions (of the universe) had been mindfully arranged.” Anyone who studies these ideas will have no choice but to at least consider the question. Could such a perfect design be accidental? Newton also said “The most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” Is there really a separation between science and spirituality or, like science and art, are they really different languages that translate to basically the same thing?
An important caveat here is that I am not saying that the differences in physical reality don’t exist. They do. Blue clearly is different from red (they have different spectral wavelengths — blue has a much shorter wavelength than red). To deny that would be incorrect, but there is also the fact that they both arise from the same spectrum and can all return back to pure light. Yes, there is a physical world with real differences and there is also a deeper truth where we are all connected, where we are all one. We can acknowledge and accept the real differences while also knowing that at a more subtle level, unity is the core truth.
Two other ideas in the book that resonated with me as particularly beautiful aspects of reality are symmetry and the underlying musicality of atoms. Symmetry is defined as “change without change”. For example, our perspectives may be different (change) but the actual thing viewed stays the same (no change) as in the following example: You can view a shoe from one angle and then move to a different position and although your perception of it changes based on your vantage point, the shoe itself does not change. Or if you rotate an object along a line of symmetry the position changes but the object itself still looks the same (no change). Another example of symmetry can be found in the following example: when a train moves at a constant speed all the laws of physics remain unchanged just as when the train was stationary. Change without change = symmetry. Symmetry is a fundamental truth of reality, which embodies the fact that perspective matters. Yes, perspectives are different, but the holistic, fundamental reality remains unchanged. Seeing only a piece of the puzzle does not negate the whole puzzle nor does the whole puzzle’s existence negate the fact that each of pieces are differently shaped from one another. As the author explains, “to do full justice to reality, we must engage it from different perspectives.” This is both a physical reality and a lesson in wisdom.
He goes on to beautifully explain “The themes of connection, symmetry, and light come together in the art of the mandala. Mandalas are symbolic representations of the Universe. They are used as tools for meditation and trance. They typically display large-scale symmetry among connected, intricate parts, and are often colorful…Worthy images of atoms will share, in their mixture of regularity and variation, the qualities of mandalas. They will offer, too, an awe-inspiring perspective on the assertion at the heart of mystical spirituality: That Art Thou.” This basically means that despite all the changes in the universe, there is an element that is unchanging and everlasting. There are many names for this: God, Source, Creator, etc, but this eternal being is present in all things, including us. This is another beautiful connection between present scientific discoveries and ancient bodies of wisdom.
No discussion of beauty and truth could be complete without discussing music. And the author makes clear that the heart of reality is musical. How beautiful an idea is that? And how touching to know it to be true! I am so awed to learn that the same concepts and equations that govern atomic physics also govern music. As the author explains: “Atoms are musical instruments, and the light they emit makes their tones visible…Matter is built up from atoms that are, in a rich and precise sense, tiny musical instruments…From the heart of matter, music.”
So, does the world embody beautiful ideas? The book’s answer is a resounding yes! A comprehensive and unexpectedly humble meditation on beauty and science from a gifted mind, A Beautiful Question provides this answer: “The world, insofar as we speak of the world of chemistry, biology, astrophysics, engineering, and everyday life, does embody beautiful ideas…A pure and perfect Music of the Spheres really does animate the soul of reality… and the world’s deepest truths are the ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls.” I can think of few things more deeply profound, more deeply true, or more deeply beautiful.
