Powers of Metaphor

 

"Four electrons make up the outer shell of the carbon itself.  They appear in quantum motion as a swarm of shimmering points.  At ten to the minus ten meters, one angstrom, we find ourselves right among those outer electrons.  Now we come upon the two inner electrons held in a tighter swarm.  As we draw toward the atom's attracting center we enter upon the vast inner space.  At last the carbon nucleus.  So massive and so small.  This carbon nucleus is made up of six protons and six neutrons.  We are in the domain of universal modules.  There are protons and neutrons in every nucleus, electrons in every atom, atoms bonded in every molecule out to the farthest galaxy.  As a single proton fills our scene we reach the edge of our present understanding." - Charles Eames, Powers of Ten (1977)

"'The universe is not only queerer than we suppose but queerer than we can suppose.'  Which reminds us that the universe so vividly described in the Book of Revelation is queer enough; but with the help of symbols not beyond description.  Whereas our universe cannot even be stated symbolically... [Artists] have always responded instinctively to latent assumptions about the shape of the universe.  The incomprehensibility of our new cosmos seems to me, ultimately, to be the reason for the chaos of modern art." - Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (book)

I am always on the lookout for good metaphors.  More precisely, good scientific metaphors.  By and large, science has failed to fuel the artistic imagination beyond a few spare images taken from space and of space.  The problem with so many comparisons that I have come up with is that they themselves are already arcane to the average person.  Take, for instance, two homemade metaphors that I've become rather fond of but which require explanation in themselves.

Oxidative metabolism - Panov et al. (2014)

The first is that of oxidative metabolism and capitalism.  Oxidative metabolism is the process by which complex molecules are broken down and some of the energy in their bonds converted into the modular chemical form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).  It is a process present in the vast majority of multicellular organisms and is required for their functioning, yielding as it does approximately sixteen times as much energy as glycolysis alone.  Yet it has crucial downsides: in the process of splitting oxygen to use as a final acceptor for electrons it produces what are known as free radicals, or highly-reactive oxygen species that will cause damage to any nearby molecules, including DNA.  One of the primary theories of aging involves accumulated cellular damage as a result of this process.  There is no way to stop it entirely, but we do defend ourselves various antioxidant materials to help ameliorate the worst of it.

Right now capitalism's name is mud within many circles, identified as it is with rapacious greed and exploitation of natural resources.  However, so far as I can see, our entire civilization yet depends on it to also fuel are greater intellectual and moral endeavors.  In the last few decades it has managed to, almost against its will, lift a billion people out of poverty throughout China.  We just don't like the side effects.  This has led many people to suggest that it be replaced entirely, although with what I have no idea.  The parallel here is clear: I do believe corrective measures must be taken or else we will be thoroughly harmed by the byproducts, but to suggest that it be simply excised will result in extinction.

Kanai Glacier - US
National Park Service

The second is that of post-glacial succession and cultural accumulation.  Glaciers are one of the most ecologically devastating events, as unlike fires or floods they not only affect the topsoil but grind the surface layers down to the underlying bedrock.  This removes not only the life that was there but also the accumulated nutrients and structured soil.  After a glacier has retreated it takes an exceedingly long time for a complex ecosystem like a forest to reestablish.  The area must go through stages of first colonization by hardy species such as lichens and mosses, which along with the roots of some of the first plants begin to break down the exposed rock and release its nutrients.  Given thousands of years the combination of decomposed rock and organic detritus become full soil horizons with a complex structure that are capable of supporting large trees.

I see the efforts of the Twentieth Century as something like a cultural glacier.  We became disillusioned with everything that came before, believing nothing on faith, and so in a frenzy of deconstructive activity tore through our entire cultural heritage in an attempt to find the bottom of it all.  I believe this was necessary and do not bemoan it, but nonetheless I do believe the effect of this project was to also remove all the interwoven meanings, relationships, and ideas that nourish a civilization.  Since WW2 there has been precious little art that feels remotely important or timeless; instead it is, as one book I read once put it, exceedingly self-aware of its own arbitrariness and transience.  I believe it will be some time again before we are able to produce the cultural and spiritual loam required to grow large trees.

Now, as proud as I am of these two metaphors, the fact that they require paragraphs of explanation and likely strike most readers as utterly unintuitive means that they fail as tools of popular education.  That's the problem, really: science is the means by which we assess how the world is, but it has so far exceeded the default human perspective that to simply grasp it is a task, let alone use it to in turn interpret our experience once again.

However, when I woke up this morning I was thinking again on an issue of spirituality.  The sense I have, the metaphor that is most evocative to me, is that it feels like there are somehow layers to experience in traveling inward.  First we have our everyday experience, and it is a cluttered, frenzied sphere of activity.  It demands continual attention and yet also seems to have that quality of noise, an irregular sound that we want to find a pattern in but until we do it is vaguely irritating.

Underneath this one finds a strange ill-defined silence and depending on disposition it can mean many things.  If of a rational bent of mind, which is most of us, this space is completely terrifying.  It is the coming apart of all the conceptions, the realization that all that fuzz that you had been trying to sift through has no logical basis.  That the whole edifice of one's mind, the structure of it and the experience, floats like a castle in the sky and underneath it there was only a deep abyss waiting for it to realize it is impossible for it to defy gravity like that and fall.  But I also think that there is another way to appreciate this space, and it comes about in certain spiritual practices.  That, yes, everything has been stripped away and there is a sort of fundamental disorientation... but there is also a longed-for silence.  After we're done panicking (if we ever finish panicking) we realize that the noise is gone.

Then, at long last, somehow in the center of this infinite non-space, there is... something.  Don't ask me to define it because that is absurd; the only reason we're here is because we've found ourselves in a place where definitions have failed.  Instead I will simply quote what I wrote years ago for the conclusion of my Gnosis:

This is where the seeker's path leads
Beauty and compassion and divinity
Yet escaping these
For they are words
And are given rest
Before the holy

For now I pass by such things and return to the metaphor.  Without a metaphor, without a structure with which to somehow organize an event, it has a way of fading from most of our minds.  We often don't even know it has happened because it is so outside our regular experience that it blurs without conceptual aid.  Perhaps the Zen monks might disagree with me, but I think that a healthy religion requires these supports.  Which returns us to Powers of Ten.

As I said thinking this morning on this progression, I had this section of the film come back to me.  It is rather appropriate, for while I said that little art had been inspired by science, Powers of Ten is an exception.  While it is strictly educational, it has nonetheless captured in its simple progression of images a sense of scale, of staggering difference throughout the world, and, in just a small piece, its mystery too.  The words at the end, the sudden stumbling into describing the nucleus as, "So massive and so small" is almost a perfect religious paradox.  I think Charles and Ray Eames really did feel something there, and though it need be expressed through a scientific lens nonetheless conveys their own awe at the depths of the world.  It's the sort of skill that made Sagan such a figure; it wasn't his mastery of all science but the dimension to which he appreciated the world, and how science managed to fit into it in a way it fails to do so for so many people.

So I find myself thinking that the above portion of the film is perhaps one of those metaphors I have been searching for.  Unlike my attempts, the image of the atom is much more universal, and any human shown this film will forever have a visualization (albeit of the unvisualizable) of what this means.  And in its treatment, there is that same sort of breathless anticipation.  We have passed down through layers upon layers of the world, through our concept of the man, of his hand, of his cells, of his molecules, and now we are... where?  We have penetrated that last layer of electronic noise and there is simply nothing.  Is that it?  Is it just a vast nothingness underneath it all?  Was everything we just passed through an illusion?  There's a strange sound in the void that somehow emphasizes the space, a sort of breathing that replaces the cosmic Om yet nonetheless performs the same role of letting us know we are inside somehow.  

We wait.

We wait.

And then the nucleus comes into view, and it is what we were searching for.  We are in the realm of universals, and what we have stumbled upon is neither large nor small.  It is present here at the finest of scales and yet is self-same with that which creates the most unimaginably vast galaxies.  There was something underneath and it somehow united it all.