The Universe is Transcendentally Monstrous

Scientific objectification and the need to reckon with the cosmic wilderness

AI-generated image by Satheesh Sankaran from Pixabay

If a deity created the universe, the sheer fact that the universe exists wouldn’t be so counterintuitive.

We might still not know exactly what nature is, but we could surmise that the universe would be an artifact intended to test us or glorify God, or perhaps space and time and all the stars and planets would amount to God’s sprawling body. The source of nature, too, wouldn’t flummox us as an impenetrable mystery since God would be a person like us, with thoughts, feelings, and plans.

But what if there’s no God? What would nature be in that case, ontologically speaking? Could we still expect our evolved or socially implanted intuitions to be relevant to fathoming what nature fundamentally is?

Theoretical physicists and cosmologists are all over this question. Roughly speaking, according to their models, the universe is an evolving plenum of spatiotemporal accretions, shaped by gravity, electromagnetism, and other forces and elements. These scientists use exotic maths to model how the universe unfolds, and to predict what natural systems do under various conditions.

But these scientific descriptions are objectifications, and thus they’re…