Magazine for October 2010
A MATHEMATICAL SCIENTIFIC KIND OF GOD
We recently learned in the media that Stephen Hawking believes it is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going. The Universe can and will create itself from nothing. The laws of physics are enough.
However, Albert Einstein, that great player with atoms, light, energy, gravity, mass, time, space and motion, believed in a mathematical scientific kind of God. When he talked about God, he meant a sort of simplicity in the Universe.
For instance, the fact that a simple maths formula like his famous E = mc2 describes the Universe is really a surprising thing. (This is ‘the world’s favourite equation’, according to Dr Mike Goldsmith in his “Horribly Famous” book “Einstein and his Inflatable Universe”. It means, to work out how much energy a particular object is equivalent to, you just multiply the mass of the object by the speed of light squared).
It’s this mysterious underlying simplicity that Einstein meant when he talked about God. His idea of God came in when he reckoned God would choose the simplest equations – so he tried them and they worked!
This idea reminded me of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words in his poem “God’s Grandeur”: There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. Could this freshness that G.M. Hopkins discerned deep down things be the same as the mysterious underlying simplicity Albert Einstein found behind the laws of physics?
Sheila Robinson
We’re pleased to add that Sheila has her new novel ‘Mystical Circles’ published in paperback on 6th November under her pen-name S C Skillman.
Look here for more details.