I would like to tell a different kind of
story to talk about ripples in the
cosmic web we are in trouble just now
because we do not have a good story
let me repeat this wisdom by cultural
historian Thomas berry we are in trouble
just now because we do not have a good
story now the we is the Western world
especially America and the stories to
which Barrie refers are the religious
story on the one hand and the scientific
story on the other for thousands of
years most humans derive their sense of
meaning and purpose primarily from a
religious mythology that goes something
like this we humans were created by
divine Fiat some say 6,000 years ago
we were created in the image of God and
are therefore superior to the other
creatures we occupy the central point in
the cosmos earth in a small cosmos that
consists of a few planets and a few
thousand stars and lastly the earth is
our resource over which we are to have
dominion now the scientific story burst
onto the stage in 1543 with the
publication of Copernicus on the
revolutions of the heavenly spheres the
news story exploded the old one and in
the 500 years since Copernicus we have
learned that the universe is anything
but cozy it consists of 100 billion
galaxies each comprised of a hundred
billion stars and we don’t
Accu pi the center of the cosmos but we
rather we exist in an ordinary solar
system on one arm of a run of
run-of-the-mill spiral galaxy the entire
shebang having originated 13.7 billion
years ago in a cataclysmic event called
the Big Bang well thanks to Darwin it
gets worse
apparently we weren’t created by divine
decree at all but rather by random
mutations operating over eons and we are
no different from the other creatures in
kind only in degree well which story are
we to believe it’s like having two
parents one of whom tells us how unique
and special we are and the other how
ordinary do we really have to make the
tragic choice asked Nobel laureate Ilya
Prigogine between an anti scientific
philosophy and an alienating story now
the tragedy to which Brigid Jean speaks
is prematurely choosing allegiance to
one story over the other that is in not
mustering the courage to live in that
tension of opposites that ultimately
gives rise to a more satisfying
synthesis well in 1999 I taught my first
honours class at J mu with the intent if
at all possible of bridging this divide
between the competing stories now the
title of the course was unusual from
Black Elk to black holes shaping a myth
for a new millennium that requires some
parsing so let’s start with the subtitle
the year 1999 was on the cusp of a new
millennium the third I borrowed I
borrowed the phrase shaping a myth from
a book that had meant a great deal to me
shaping a personal myth to live by by
John Youngblood John was a mentor to me
during the last ten years of his life
Black Elk in the title refers to
Nicholas black out come a Lakota or soon
holy man whose life and vision are
chronicled and the great American
classic Black Elk speaks that everyone
should read and finally
black holes in the title refers to one
of the astounding predictions of
Einstein’s theory of relativity that
when certain massive stars collapse they
leave a residue so dense that nothing
can escape the gravitational tug not
even light well if you’re wondering how
all of this could possibly fit together
let me at least try to explain the
premise of the course was to look at the
universe from two diametrically opposed
perspectives from a mythological
perspective on the one hand and a
scientific perspective on the other and
then to see if we could find resonance
or points of nexus between these vastly
different perspectives more precisely
could we possibly create a new story
that is faithful both to the revelations
of modern science and to ancient
spiritual wisdom now my gut told me that
we can accomplish this but I wasn’t
really certain so on the first day of
the course I somewhat sheepishly confess
to the students I think I have a book in
me and I think that teaching this course
will help me to write it well that
turned out to be a true statement and it
was also incredibly naive because it was
13 years before reason and Wonder
appeared in print but the confession had
a happy consequence the students
realized that this was not the typical
course in which the professor was the
font of all wisdom and so they realized
that we were making a journey together
and that the destination was not
predetermined and I got immediate buy-in
but still in my wildest dreams I was not
prepared that the course would go as
well as it did or touch students so
deeply my favorite course evaluation of
all time simply asked is it appropriate
to write on an evaluation that this
class changed my life
it did well the course changed my life
as well and short we were able to
establish some of those connections
between the competing stories and as
individuals in as a class we were able
to begin to weave together a new myth of
meaning that is faithful to the best in
both stories that is faithful to heart
and in two head now time does not permit
us tonight to go into all of these
interconnections but I would like to
share one with you so you at least get
we first read Black Elk speaks the book
immerses one in the mythology culture
spirituality and vision of the Lakota
shaman Nicholas Black Elk now
paradoxically in 1930 Black Elk shared
his entire vision for the very first
time with a white man John Neihardt who
was a professor of English at the
University of Nebraska the result of
this unlikely collaboration has been
called an Indian rosetta stone or a
North American Bible of all tribes now
from the mythological perspective of
black yoga we learned that we are
surrounded by benevolent Thunder beings
from the cardinal directions the spirits
of the east and the south and the west
and the north bring us gifts light from
the Morning Sun from the east spring
warmth from the south winds and rain
from the west and storms and snow from
the north we rest in the bosom of mother
earth and we are watched over by father
sky and we learn from the Lakota their
passphrase me Takuya o Yasin which
translates literally all my relatives
but it implies much more than that it
signifies an interrelatedness that is a
kinship
among all creations it reflects the
belief that humans are not masters of
creation but rather participants in a
web of life that includes all living
beings the ant people the buffalo people
the bird people and the people people we
learned from Black Elk that trees grass
and even stones have spirits and so
everything is connected through this
great web of life imagine then a cosmic
spiderweb that links together all of the
components of creation and where the
ripples that originated from any one
component playing its part jostle
throughout the web to influence all
other components we then studied
Einstein’s theory of relativity well at
least from a lay person’s point of view
astoundingly Einstein and black elk were
contemporaries from Einstein’s special
theory of relativity we learned that
time is not absolute that it’s its
measurement depends on the frame of
reference of the observer and we also
learned that time and space are not
distinct as we had thought but they are
woven together into a four-dimensional
space-time fabric from Einstein’s
general theory we learned that the
geometry of space-time is not Euclidian
like a sheet of graph paper but rather
warped by massive objects like stars and
black holes but the warping of
space-time is dynamic it varies in time
and so in the great cosmic dance matter
tells space-time how to warp and
space-time constructs matter how
move and in the stance the motions of
the stars and the interactions of black
holes send ripples throughout the
space-time fabric and at least this is
what Einstein predicted in 1917 fast
forward now to the beginning of the 21st
century in 2002 the laser interferometer
gravitational-wave Observatory or LIGO
for short became operational after
decades of planning and theoretical work
now LIGO was designed to detect the
gravitational waves that Einstein had
predicted ripples in the space-time
fabric but gravity waves if they exist
at all would be extraordinarily feeble
only an instrument of immense size at
least four kilometers in length an
extraordinary sensitivity would stand
any chance of detecting these miniscule
ripples with these design constraints
came the potential for colossal failure
and came normos expense despite these
odds the LIGO scientists convinced the
National Science Foundation that the
potential of LIGO outweighed its risks
and NSF funded the project to the tune
of a half billion dollars now the
physicists who proposed LIGO were
destined for either of two fates either
a Nobel Prize or the ridicule of history
operated jointly by Caltech and MIT LIGO
began collecting data in 2002 and for
eight years it detected essentially
nothing the whole venture seemed as if
it might be for not well what should the
NSF do keep fishing or cut bait
ultimately Laika went offline in 2010
for a five-year 200 million dollar
reverb to increase its sensitivity
fourfold
within days of returning to service in
late 2015
LIGO detected two nearly identical
gravitational chirps each of a fifth of
second in duration one at its facility
in Livingston Louisiana the other in
Hanford Washington now you see two
identical facilities are necessary in
order to rule out false alarms not
wanting to cry wolf the LIGO science has
spent five months verifying the signals
a telltale sign that LIGO had since the
gravitational real McCoy was a seven
millisecond delay in this in the two
signals you see Einstein had predicted
that light would travel that gravity
gravity waves would propagate at the
speed of light and seven milliseconds is
the length of time it takes for light to
traverse from Livingston to Hanford the
world shaking results were published in
February of 2016 in Physical Review
Letters under the title observation of
gravitational waves from a binary black
hole merger four days later the New York
Times reported the chirpin heard across
the universe
now analysis of the data revealed that
scientists were listening to the faint
whispers of the merger of two black
holes spiraling into one another 1.3
billion years ago one black hole of 29
solar masses the other of 36 on October
3rd of last year reiner vice berry
bearish and Kip Thorne received the
Nobel Prize in Physics for decisive
contributions to the light go detector
and the observation of gravitational
waves to conclude Black Elk and Einstein
both described a universe that is
geometrically more
like and Cartesian subtle
interconnections link every object and
every being across time and space and
through that web ripple effects from
events billions of years ago radiate out
in all directions to influence us in the
here and now and so as each of us leaves
this room tonight to walk back to our
dorms and our homes we too are sending
out little gravitational waves rippling
the space-time fabric to influence
future events nonsense nonsense the
cynics would say nonsense because the
ripples created by human of tiny mass
relative to a star black hole are
insignificant and isn’t that truly how
most of us feel about ourselves that we
are too small to make a difference all
true perhaps but then again we live in a
nonlinear cosmos in which flapping of a
butterfly’s wings today in Brazil can
affect Peoria’s weather next week so
small ripples do not necessarily imply
small effects and so my friends and
party take yourself seriously and be
mindful how you ripple thank you [Applause]
story to talk about ripples in the
cosmic web we are in trouble just now
because we do not have a good story
let me repeat this wisdom by cultural
historian Thomas berry we are in trouble
just now because we do not have a good
story now the we is the Western world
especially America and the stories to
which Barrie refers are the religious
story on the one hand and the scientific
story on the other for thousands of
years most humans derive their sense of
meaning and purpose primarily from a
religious mythology that goes something
like this we humans were created by
divine Fiat some say 6,000 years ago
we were created in the image of God and
are therefore superior to the other
creatures we occupy the central point in
the cosmos earth in a small cosmos that
consists of a few planets and a few
thousand stars and lastly the earth is
our resource over which we are to have
dominion now the scientific story burst
onto the stage in 1543 with the
publication of Copernicus on the
revolutions of the heavenly spheres the
news story exploded the old one and in
the 500 years since Copernicus we have
learned that the universe is anything
but cozy it consists of 100 billion
galaxies each comprised of a hundred
billion stars and we don’t
Accu pi the center of the cosmos but we
rather we exist in an ordinary solar
system on one arm of a run of
run-of-the-mill spiral galaxy the entire
shebang having originated 13.7 billion
years ago in a cataclysmic event called
the Big Bang well thanks to Darwin it
gets worse
apparently we weren’t created by divine
decree at all but rather by random
mutations operating over eons and we are
no different from the other creatures in
kind only in degree well which story are
we to believe it’s like having two
parents one of whom tells us how unique
and special we are and the other how
ordinary do we really have to make the
tragic choice asked Nobel laureate Ilya
Prigogine between an anti scientific
philosophy and an alienating story now
the tragedy to which Brigid Jean speaks
is prematurely choosing allegiance to
one story over the other that is in not
mustering the courage to live in that
tension of opposites that ultimately
gives rise to a more satisfying
synthesis well in 1999 I taught my first
honours class at J mu with the intent if
at all possible of bridging this divide
between the competing stories now the
title of the course was unusual from
Black Elk to black holes shaping a myth
for a new millennium that requires some
parsing so let’s start with the subtitle
the year 1999 was on the cusp of a new
millennium the third I borrowed I
borrowed the phrase shaping a myth from
a book that had meant a great deal to me
shaping a personal myth to live by by
John Youngblood John was a mentor to me
during the last ten years of his life
Black Elk in the title refers to
Nicholas black out come a Lakota or soon
holy man whose life and vision are
chronicled and the great American
classic Black Elk speaks that everyone
should read and finally
black holes in the title refers to one
of the astounding predictions of
Einstein’s theory of relativity that
when certain massive stars collapse they
leave a residue so dense that nothing
can escape the gravitational tug not
even light well if you’re wondering how
all of this could possibly fit together
let me at least try to explain the
premise of the course was to look at the
universe from two diametrically opposed
perspectives from a mythological
perspective on the one hand and a
scientific perspective on the other and
then to see if we could find resonance
or points of nexus between these vastly
different perspectives more precisely
could we possibly create a new story
that is faithful both to the revelations
of modern science and to ancient
spiritual wisdom now my gut told me that
we can accomplish this but I wasn’t
really certain so on the first day of
the course I somewhat sheepishly confess
to the students I think I have a book in
me and I think that teaching this course
will help me to write it well that
turned out to be a true statement and it
was also incredibly naive because it was
13 years before reason and Wonder
appeared in print but the confession had
a happy consequence the students
realized that this was not the typical
course in which the professor was the
font of all wisdom and so they realized
that we were making a journey together
and that the destination was not
predetermined and I got immediate buy-in
but still in my wildest dreams I was not
prepared that the course would go as
well as it did or touch students so
deeply my favorite course evaluation of
all time simply asked is it appropriate
to write on an evaluation that this
class changed my life
it did well the course changed my life
as well and short we were able to
establish some of those connections
between the competing stories and as
individuals in as a class we were able
to begin to weave together a new myth of
meaning that is faithful to the best in
both stories that is faithful to heart
and in two head now time does not permit
us tonight to go into all of these
interconnections but I would like to
share one with you so you at least get
we first read Black Elk speaks the book
immerses one in the mythology culture
spirituality and vision of the Lakota
shaman Nicholas Black Elk now
paradoxically in 1930 Black Elk shared
his entire vision for the very first
time with a white man John Neihardt who
was a professor of English at the
University of Nebraska the result of
this unlikely collaboration has been
called an Indian rosetta stone or a
North American Bible of all tribes now
from the mythological perspective of
black yoga we learned that we are
surrounded by benevolent Thunder beings
from the cardinal directions the spirits
of the east and the south and the west
and the north bring us gifts light from
the Morning Sun from the east spring
warmth from the south winds and rain
from the west and storms and snow from
the north we rest in the bosom of mother
earth and we are watched over by father
sky and we learn from the Lakota their
passphrase me Takuya o Yasin which
translates literally all my relatives
but it implies much more than that it
signifies an interrelatedness that is a
kinship
among all creations it reflects the
belief that humans are not masters of
creation but rather participants in a
web of life that includes all living
beings the ant people the buffalo people
the bird people and the people people we
learned from Black Elk that trees grass
and even stones have spirits and so
everything is connected through this
great web of life imagine then a cosmic
spiderweb that links together all of the
components of creation and where the
ripples that originated from any one
component playing its part jostle
throughout the web to influence all
other components we then studied
Einstein’s theory of relativity well at
least from a lay person’s point of view
astoundingly Einstein and black elk were
contemporaries from Einstein’s special
theory of relativity we learned that
time is not absolute that it’s its
measurement depends on the frame of
reference of the observer and we also
learned that time and space are not
distinct as we had thought but they are
woven together into a four-dimensional
space-time fabric from Einstein’s
general theory we learned that the
geometry of space-time is not Euclidian
like a sheet of graph paper but rather
warped by massive objects like stars and
black holes but the warping of
space-time is dynamic it varies in time
and so in the great cosmic dance matter
tells space-time how to warp and
space-time constructs matter how
move and in the stance the motions of
the stars and the interactions of black
holes send ripples throughout the
space-time fabric and at least this is
what Einstein predicted in 1917 fast
forward now to the beginning of the 21st
century in 2002 the laser interferometer
gravitational-wave Observatory or LIGO
for short became operational after
decades of planning and theoretical work
now LIGO was designed to detect the
gravitational waves that Einstein had
predicted ripples in the space-time
fabric but gravity waves if they exist
at all would be extraordinarily feeble
only an instrument of immense size at
least four kilometers in length an
extraordinary sensitivity would stand
any chance of detecting these miniscule
ripples with these design constraints
came the potential for colossal failure
and came normos expense despite these
odds the LIGO scientists convinced the
National Science Foundation that the
potential of LIGO outweighed its risks
and NSF funded the project to the tune
of a half billion dollars now the
physicists who proposed LIGO were
destined for either of two fates either
a Nobel Prize or the ridicule of history
operated jointly by Caltech and MIT LIGO
began collecting data in 2002 and for
eight years it detected essentially
nothing the whole venture seemed as if
it might be for not well what should the
NSF do keep fishing or cut bait
ultimately Laika went offline in 2010
for a five-year 200 million dollar
reverb to increase its sensitivity
fourfold
within days of returning to service in
late 2015
LIGO detected two nearly identical
gravitational chirps each of a fifth of
second in duration one at its facility
in Livingston Louisiana the other in
Hanford Washington now you see two
identical facilities are necessary in
order to rule out false alarms not
wanting to cry wolf the LIGO science has
spent five months verifying the signals
a telltale sign that LIGO had since the
gravitational real McCoy was a seven
millisecond delay in this in the two
signals you see Einstein had predicted
that light would travel that gravity
gravity waves would propagate at the
speed of light and seven milliseconds is
the length of time it takes for light to
traverse from Livingston to Hanford the
world shaking results were published in
February of 2016 in Physical Review
Letters under the title observation of
gravitational waves from a binary black
hole merger four days later the New York
Times reported the chirpin heard across
the universe
now analysis of the data revealed that
scientists were listening to the faint
whispers of the merger of two black
holes spiraling into one another 1.3
billion years ago one black hole of 29
solar masses the other of 36 on October
3rd of last year reiner vice berry
bearish and Kip Thorne received the
Nobel Prize in Physics for decisive
contributions to the light go detector
and the observation of gravitational
waves to conclude Black Elk and Einstein
both described a universe that is
geometrically more
like and Cartesian subtle
interconnections link every object and
every being across time and space and
through that web ripple effects from
events billions of years ago radiate out
in all directions to influence us in the
here and now and so as each of us leaves
this room tonight to walk back to our
dorms and our homes we too are sending
out little gravitational waves rippling
the space-time fabric to influence
future events nonsense nonsense the
cynics would say nonsense because the
ripples created by human of tiny mass
relative to a star black hole are
insignificant and isn’t that truly how
most of us feel about ourselves that we
are too small to make a difference all
true perhaps but then again we live in a
nonlinear cosmos in which flapping of a
butterfly’s wings today in Brazil can
affect Peoria’s weather next week so
small ripples do not necessarily imply
small effects and so my friends and
party take yourself seriously and be
mindful how you ripple thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: