“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.”
This is how the Book of Exodus describes one of the most famous miracles mentioned in the Bible. In no sea or ocean in the world, neither before nor after this event, have there been winds capable of creating a walkable path through the water. Scientifically speaking, to achieve this, one would need a persistent, trajectory-controlled column of a tornado, blowing with hurricane force – a phenomenon that could only be artificially triggered on a small scale in a wind tunnel created in the 20th century. However, the parting of the Red Sea happened three thousand years ago. Moses prayed, and God sent the winds. This was a “miracle”, something that contradicts the normal behaviour of nature, a “supernatural” event that can only be explained by divine intervention.
A recent Harris poll found that 74% of Americans believe in God, while 72% believe in miracles. Miracles are usually associated with the actions of gods or divine beings, and they occur not only in Judaism and Christianity but in all major world religions. In Islam, Muhammad split the Moon. In Hinduism, when the saint Dnyaneshwar was forbidden from chanting the Vedas, he touched a water buffalo with his palm, which immediately began reciting Vedic verses. Most Buddhists believe that all living beings are in a cycle of death and rebirth, and before each rebirth into a new body, they cross various spaces that are not physical.
Miracles, by definition, lie outside the realm of science. Miracles are incompatible with a rational view of the physical world. Yet, even in our scientifically and technologically advanced society, with all its mobile phones, cars, and other technologies that science has made possible and upon which we have even become dependent, many continue to believe in miracles. Most of us do not even think about this contradiction. One of my aunts was convinced that her deceased father came to visit her every few months. She got a tape recorder – a device created by science – to record his voice. (After that, the ghostly visits ceased.)
Miracles come from the world of imagination, dreams, and desires, while science comes from practical necessity, logic, and the desire for organised control. I have always been fascinated by our ability to live simultaneously in these obviously contradictory worlds. Each of them, in its own way, reflects something deep and essential within ourselves.
Although miracles, which seemingly challenge the existing order of nature, have been mentioned throughout human history for a very long time, our efforts to systematise nature by describing its underlying principles in so-called “laws of nature” are just as old. One of the oldest examples of quantitative natural laws is Archimedes' principle of buoyancy, which he described in his work “On Floating Bodies” around 250 BC: “A fluid exerts an upward vertical force on an immersed body equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the body.”
It is customary to express laws of nature mathematically. The best example in the history of science is Isaac Newton's law of gravitation: any two material points attract each other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. (In the language of mathematics, it would be: F = Gm1m2/r2.) This law allowed Newton to explain the orbits of the planets, and it can be used to determine how two bodies at any point in the Universe will interact with each other with their gravitational force. Here is an application of Newton's law – since the Moon is approximately 4 times smaller and 100 times lighter than the Earth, on the Moon your weight would be 6 times less than on Earth. (I have not noticed this little-known fact being mentioned in any book on dieting.)
Another example you can test for yourself: let an object fall from a height of 1.22 m and measure its fall time. The fall should last approximately 0.5 seconds. From a height of two and a half metres, it should take about 0.7 seconds. From a height of nearly five metres – about one second. Repeat the experiment from various other heights, and you will discover that if you quadruple the height of the fall, the fall time doubles. This law was discovered in the 17th century by Galileo Galilei. (Mathematically: t = √2h/g.) By using this law, one can calculate the time it takes for an object to fall from any height. In this way, you can personally verify the regularity inherent in nature.
Why does nature need laws? It is easy to imagine a universe where everything happens randomly, without any justification or regularity. A universe where a wheelbarrow could suddenly lift off and remain hanging in the air. Where day and night would alternate at arbitrary moments. Of course, scientists would be out of work in such a universe. Scientists not only rely on the fact that logic exists in nature, but most also believe that an irrational and non-mathematical universe is not even possible. The fact that there is “lawfulness” in nature, and especially our ability to discover these laws – from Archimedes to Newton and Einstein – gives us a sense of power, security, and confidence.
Regardless of the personal interests of scientists, the notion of nature as one where laws exist has proven extremely useful. The regularity and predictability of the cycle of seasons have allowed agriculture to develop. The immutable properties of materials have allowed industry to develop. The development of T lymphocytes and other antibodies under conditions where they are exposed to the vaccinia virus has allowed for the eradication of smallpox – one of the most common causes of death in human history.
In addition to its practical application, science has also been able to explain and predict with great accuracy some puzzling phenomena in nature. For example, the shift in Mercury's orbit is slightly larger than predicted by Newton's 17th-century law of gravitation. The small discrepancy (0.012 degrees per century) is successfully explained by modern gravitational theory – Einstein's general relativity.
Finally, scientists, and to a large extent society as a whole, believe that these laws are, in principle, discoverable. This has not always been the case. When Adam asks about the nature of the movement of celestial bodies in Milton's “Paradise Lost”, the angel Raphael replies to him: “The great Architect did wisely to conceal his secrets from those who do not admire them but are in a rush to solve them.” People for centuries believed that certain knowledge, including knowledge about nature, belonged solely to God and was not accessible to human understanding. The great successes of modern science have severely undermined this view – even among believers. One could say that, thanks precisely to the successes of science – that is, a sphere of human activity – we are entitled to claim that nature possesses laws.
The above has led to what might be called the main doctrine of science: all properties and events characteristic of the physical universe are determined by laws, and these laws are true at any place and time in the physical universe. Scientists do not particularly debate this doctrine; it is simply accepted as an axiom. When I studied physics at university, my thesis supervisor never mentioned the main doctrine of science, but it was invisibly present throughout his professional work and the advice he gave students. When I began to engage in research, one of my first tasks was to understand the properties that gases in the centres of galaxies possess. If a gas is sufficiently hot, electrons and their antiparticles are created from the enormous thermal energy. In this early period, I had to write down equations that express how matter can be created from energy – this is permitted by Einstein's famous formula E = mc2, and it has been confirmed in many laboratories around the world. While performing calculations, I never doubted for a moment that these same equations work in other galaxies millions of light years away.
There is no consensus among philosophers about whether “laws of nature” are merely descriptions of nature or necessary conditions inherent to it, that is, laws to which nature submits without exception. The main doctrine of science, and this is also the view of the majority of scientists, asserts that laws of nature are necessary conditions.
Throughout all ages, human perceptions of nature have been complex and historically changing. The image of Mother Nature is found in all world cultures. In Ancient Greece, it was called Gaia, while in Ancient Rome it was Terra Mater. In Ancient Mesopotamia, it was Ninsun, in India – Gayatri. The Thais called her Phra Mae Thorani, while the Māori called her Papatuanuku. In the past, when people personified Nature, she could be angry and vengeful, loving or indifferent. Many religious traditions still link nature to deities. All 330 million Hindu gods are linked to nature. Of course, gods do not submit to the laws discovered by science – they do not submit to any laws at all. In such a worldview, the boundaries between the rational and the irrational, between the predictable and the unpredictable, the mundane and the miraculous, are quite vague.
That is how they are in the Judeo-Christian tradition. How else to explain the fact that more than two-thirds of Americans believe in miracles, but at the same time, every time they turn the steering wheel of their car to slightly change course while driving on the motorway at 100 kilometres per hour, they also believe in science? As I have worked in both science (as a physicist) and the arts (as a writer), I would like to express my view on how and why these apparent contradictions exist.
Miracles gain meaning only when we contrast them with non-miraculous, mundane, normal behaviour of nature. In the modern world, people live in climate-controlled houses, drive on asphalt highways, run on artificial lawns, talk to friends thousands of kilometres away on smartphones, and it seems that in this world, most of us have only a vague notion of what is and what is not “natural”. We observe the physical world mostly through the mediation of some artificial device. Even astronomers no longer study the sky by looking through a telescope eyepiece but work with images on computer screens compiled by digital devices.
In recent years, thanks to the environmental movement, our awareness of nature has grown somewhat. In his book “The Earth on the Edge of a Knife”, Al Gore writes: “The conflict in civilisation's relationship with the planet, which stems in part from our symptomatic addiction to consuming ever more natural resources, is now bursting forth – crises follow one after another, and each of them marks an increasingly destructive conflict between our civilisation and the natural world.” However, even the growing environmental awareness has not been able to restore the broken link between people and nature. Most of us live in cities where the stars are not visible in the sky at night. Most heat their homes in winter and cool them in summer, thereby protecting themselves from the climatic fluctuations of the seasons.
But, in my opinion, there is another, far more convincing explanation for our ability to connect the miraculous with the mundane in our minds. Many of us consciously or unconsciously believe in the existence of some spiritual universe that exists alongside the physical one. Miracles arise when these two different forms of existence collide.
I will mention two exceptions to this distinction. In the philosophy of pantheism, which was popularised in the 17th century by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, there is no distinction between the physical and the spiritual universe – the Universe is one. Nature is equated with God. Nature has no boundaries. It includes everything that is. In such a view, the so-called laws of science describe only one facet of nature. In the second facet – the divine – phenomena occur that science is unable to either explain or predict. The second exception is deism, according to which both universes exist separately, but God does not act in the physical universe. The worlds do not collide. God has only set the universe in motion and then stepped aside. Consequently, in deism, miracles are impossible. Deism, which gained particular popularity during the Age of Enlightenment, offered people a way to reconcile religious beliefs with modern science.
The hardest of both nuts is the worldview in which the spiritual and physical universes are separate but occasionally collide (hence “miracles”), breaking the boundaries of an otherwise “law-abiding” existence. In this view, beings and events that belong to the spiritual universe sometimes cross the boundary between the two worlds and break into the physical one. The parting of the Red Sea, the resurrection of Christ, the splitting of the Moon are good examples of this. Many of us also claim to have experienced “small” miracles, for example, memories from a previous life or premonitions that later came true.
Even some scientists believe in the possibility of such border-crossings. Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and the History of Science at Harvard University, told me: “I believe that the physical universe is surrounded by a wider and deeper spiritual universe in which miracles are possible. The scientific worldview is important, but it does not capture everything that is happening.” I estimate that 3–5 percent of scientists would agree with Gingerich's view. These scientists, who are clearly in the minority, believe that science and the laws of nature are true for the most part, yet sometimes God intervenes in the physical world in ways that do not submit to scientific analysis.
In my opinion, belief in a spiritual universe largely stems from human longings for significance and meaning on the scale of both their personal life and the universe. Even though science provides a person with a sense of psychological comfort, telling him that the world is ordered, rational, and subject to control, it is silent on the question of meaning. Science has no answers to such deeply philosophical questions as “Why am I?”, “What is the meaning of my life?”, “Does this strange universe in which I find myself have any purpose?” and to such moral questions as “Is it right to kill an enemy soldier during wartime?”, “Is theft justifiable if I do it to feed my family?”. However, these questions are essential to our emotional and spiritual lives. We seek answers in the spiritual universe – a world in which eternal truths and guideposts exist, a world that possesses a permanent existence – in contrast to the transience of our mortal lives. In such a world, logic, rationality, and regularity are words that are not mentioned at all.
A spiritual universe does not necessarily include God, though it is often linked to religion. In his monumental work “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature” (1902), the Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James described religion as “the belief in an invisible order and that the highest good for man is to be reached by his fitting his life to such an order”. This “order”, in the understanding of religion described by James, gives the world meaning. It must be invisible, because a large part of what we see in the world, and especially in “human affairs”, seems chaotic and, rationally speaking, difficult to understand. This hypothetical order creates a sense of security; it leads one to think that the Universe has some purpose. This order comes from the spiritual Universe that exists outside the physical one. Paradoxically, in the eyes of believers, this very invisible order sometimes chooses to violate the order embodied by the laws of nature, causing what are called miracles to occur.
I myself do not believe in miracles. Sometimes I have wondered why this disbelief has always been so strong in me, even in my early youth. The formation of my views, it seems, has been determined at least in part by the evidence I myself obtained that laws rule the world. (This, however, does not apply to the “human world”, which has always puzzled me with its irrationality.) I remember when I was 12 or 13 years old, I conducted various scientific experiments; I made pendulums using a string and a fishing sinker, which I tied to the end of the string. I made pendulums of different sizes and measured their oscillation times with a stopwatch. I read in “Popular Science” or some similar book that the period of a pendulum – the time in which the pendulum completes one full oscillation – is proportional to the square root of the length of the string. I personally verified the correctness of this formula and, using this equation, calculated the periods for new pendulums that I had not yet made. It seemed amazing to me that this simple formula worked always and everywhere – at my home, at friends', anywhere. In contrast to the unpredictable ups and downs in the behaviour and moods of my brothers, mother, and father, nature could always be trusted.
As the years went by, I learned more and more about the laws of nature, about what scientists do, and I saw no evidence for the existence of a supernatural world. It seemed to me, and still seems, that everything we experience in the physical world can be explained with the help of universal and experimentally verifiable laws of nature. We do not, of course, possess the full set of these laws, yet I join the majority of scientists in the view that such a complete set of natural laws exists. The history of science is a vivid testament to constant progress in the discovery of the laws of nature.
At the same time, it seems highly unlikely to me that there is some other reality, some Intelligence or Being, that exists outside the physical universe and is capable of entering our time and space when it wishes. I simply have not seen anything that would confirm this.
In this regard, I have always preferred the principle called Occam's “razor”. If there are several hypotheses that explain an event, choose the simplest one – the one that requires the fewest assumptions – until this hypothesis has been proven false. If events in the physical universe are explained by laws of nature, why turn to the supernatural? As far as I know, the parting of the Red Sea and other miracles are neither documented nor confirmed. Furthermore, they are in contradiction to the understanding of reality that I have reached through countless personal experiences, from my childhood experiments to scientific research in physics and the experience of everyday life.
My wife and I spend our summers on a small island in the state of Maine, far from cities. At night, the sky there is very dark. Sometimes, when there is no wind and the ocean is completely calm, you can see the reflections of stars in the water by our boat dock. At such moments, the water resembles a dark carpet, upon which a million tiny lights are scattered, which, stirred by a gentle ripple, sway and flicker. Although, scientifically speaking, everything is clear to me here, I still stare in awe, frozen and enchanted. To me, it is a miracle.
Translated by Oskars Jansons
Alan Lightman. Splitting the Moon. Guernica Magazine, September 15, 2015