The Davey Dialogues - An Exploration of the Scientific Foundations of Human Culture. John C. Madden

      A Visit to the Boundaries of Human Understanding

      Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,

      The mere materials with which wisdom builds,

      Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place,

      Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.

      Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;

      Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

      WILLIAM COWPER, The Task, Book VI, “Winter Walk at Noon”

      It was time for my next meeting with Davey.

      I had had a head-crunching week of preparation. Some of the models of our universe are too much of a challenge for most or perhaps even all of us humans to grasp. What, I wondered, would it be like for Davey? I was soon to find out.

      He arrived, seemingly full of vigour.

      – Well, well, well. Here I am back in the schoolroom and ready for my next lesson.

      Who had he just been visiting? Someone in England I surmised, judging from the “well, well, well”, which was a new turn of phrase for him.

      – Shhhhhh! Not so loud, or my wife will come to find out who I am talking to. If she finds I am not talking to anyone, she may have me committed to an insane asylum!

      – Ha, ha, ha! I wouldn’t worry about that.

      – All very well for you. You probably don’t have a wife, or do you?

      – Not really. At least not in your sense of the word. But don’t worry. Margaret won’t hear a word I say unless I open a talk channel with her.

      – How on earth do you do that?

      – Well, it is very easy if you know how. As I have already told you, I can locate any sounds in your universe with great precision. I can also direct my voice into your universe with similar precision, although there does tend to be a residual garble that can sometimes be heard by others.

      – That’s just great. So, Margaret will hear me talking out loud intermixed with a garbled mumble from you. She will be absolutely certain I have gone mad!

      – So, all you have to do is to speak in a whisper so she doesn’t hear you. I will still hear you quite distinctly. Or, if you like, you can go for a walk or a drive, and talk to me as we go along.

      – That won’t work. I have to refer to my notes quite a bit today. It is a tough subject for a mere mortal like me to teach. Let’s just try the whispering routine. If it doesn’t work, we will meet another day.

      – Fine. Let’s get started.

      And start I did – in a whisper.

      – There is an old story about a wise man from an Aboriginal tribe who was addressing a group of anthropologists. Like you when we first met, they were all anxious to know more about the “creation myth” of his tribe, so the man described in some detail how Earth as we know it is held up on the back of a turtle. “And what”, asked one of the anthropologists, “holds up the turtle?”

      “Well”, the man replied, “the turtle is standing on the back of another turtle.”

      “Hmmm”, said the anthropologist, who now had a bit of a glint in his eye, “and what do you suppose is holding up the second turtle?”

      The man was quick to pick up the gist of the line of questioning.

      “Oh”, he said. “It’s solid turtles all the way down!”

      So, what does a modern “creation myth”, based on extensive research by a lot of scientists, really look like?

      We believe that our Earth is a satellite of our sun, and that our sun is a part of the Milky Way galaxy, one of several billion galaxies in the universe. That’s a good start and is something we can see with our own eyes. But how was our universe created? Was it, as is currently believed, in one Big cosmic Bang? If so, might there be other universes? Are these other universes likely to obey the same physical laws as our own universe, or might they, for example, have a different value for the charge and mass of the electron, or of some other fundamental constants that have been the ultimate arbiters of the shape and structure of our universe?