11-23-05, 9:49 am

Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe Simon Singh New York, HarperCollins, 2004.
How did the universe begin? Where do the galaxies, stars, and planets come from? These questions have puzzled humans since they first looked up. As Simon Singh states in his recent book Big Bang: The Origins of the Universe, the struggle to understand these questions helped humans to develop not only mythological and religious answers but eventually scientific methods for discovering the truth.

Singh’s book is a stimulating historical survey of cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe. It isn’t intended for well-trained scientists or science students but for everyday readers who may not have strong scientific backgrounds. For example, I have worked hard – to my own detriment – to forget what little science I learned in high school, but I found Singh's explanations, examples, and details insightful and easy to understand. A glossary of terms is also helpful. While Singh does deal with complex material – astronomy, trigonometry, geometry, physics and so on – his unique strength as a writer is in making these difficult subjects both understandable and interesting.

Further, because this engaging book traces ideas about and studies of the origin of the universe back to the Greeks, Egyptians, and Persians, the reader gets a valuable history lesson about how scientific discoveries were made, discarded, or improved, depending on the evidence available. This book, it should be noted, isn’t a 532 page detailed discussion of the Big Bang theory itself. It is rather a study of the ideas, experiments, and observations that led scientists to conclude that it is the best theory of the origin of the universe available.

Because cosmology is related to some controversial religious issues, Singh affirms crucial differences between scientific method and mythological and religious beliefs. Religious myths rely on imagined revelations by and about deities to explain natural phenomenon, and, most importantly, do not seek evidence, perform experiments, or make observations to prove them true. In fact, curiosity about such things demonstrates a lack of faith and could cause the budding scientist to be ostracized in religious circles.

Scientific thinking or the scientific method, on the other hand, came to 'blossom only when the role of myths and folklore had begun to decline.' Science produces theories that 'must make a prediction about the universe that can be observed or measured.' If the 'theory' cannot be shown to be true by experiment or observation, then it isn't scientific and falls into the realm of myth or religion, or simply is discarded as inaccurate or wrong. If the theory is supportable by observation and experiment, it can be used to further the progress of scientific thought.

Singh provides an account of the scientists who studied cosmology from early Greek philosophers in the 4th century BCE who theorized the roundness of the earth based on their observations of the earth's round shadow on the moon during lunar eclipses to Newton’s famous observations about gravity to the 1992 discovery of varying wavelengths of a certain type of cosmic radiation known to have been produced at a certain stage of the evolution of the universe that supported the Big Bang theory's claim about how galaxies were formed. Along the way, readers might be surprised to learn that a Belgian Catholic priest/physicist named Georges Lemaitre and a Soviet era mathematician named Alexander Friedmann, working independently of one another, were the first to use Einstein’s theory of general relativity to arrive at the Big Bang theory. The name of the theory originated from a derisive comment made by the theory’s biggest detractor, the late Fred Hoyle, who went to his grave unsuccessfully trying to prove an alternative theory of an eternal universe known as the Steady State Theory.

All in all, Singh’s detailed account of the luck, personal tragedies, fierce competition, and ideological and political battles over scientific progress is fascinating.

A note of caution. Some of Singh’s critics have pointed to a few relatively minor historical errors in the book that for the most part do not seem to interfere with the scientific matter under discussion. But a more serious flaw in the book is the author’s treatment of ideological issues. As one might expect, Singh discusses at length the Catholic Church’s interference in scientific work, especially with its infamous abuse of Galileo and the suspect claim by Pope Pius XII that the Big Bang theory supported Christian religious doctrine about the creation of the universe. (None of the Big Bang’s proponents took such claims seriously as science.)

Singh, however, compares the church’s interference to that which he says took place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. According to Singh, Soviet authorities and ideologues intervened in the work of scientists that did not seem to agree with Marxist-Leninist ideas. Some scientists, says Singh, were punished and imprisoned. Apparently because the Big Bang theory implied a point of 'creation' rather than an eternal universe, Soviet ideologues assumed it must be wrong and prevented scientists from investigating the theory’s merits and shortcomings. Singh seems to allow this view of what he says happened in the 1930s to color his entire view of the whole history of the USSR, and he ignores that country’s strong record of scientific discovery and achievement.

Here Singh makes an impassioned plea to keep ideology and politics out of the laboratory in order to allow scientists to make real progress. In doing so, Singh assumes that science is a value-free and neutral field of study. His argument might be an effective counter to the religious-based interventions of the Bush administration and other right-wing forces in falsifying scientific work (e.g. intelligent design, irrational claims about birth control, wrongheadedness on global warming, etc.), if it weren’t for one major flaw.

While calling for neutral science, Singh suggests that such scientific work has taken place in capitalist societies like the US. At points in his discussion, he implies that government, military, and corporate interests have in the past supported scientific progress disinterestedly and without imposing their values. While he indirectly highlights differences between the Bush administration's bogus approach to science, Singh’s assumption is naive at best and disingenuous at worst about the past treatment of science by US elites.

Corporations, the US military, and the government have long pressured scientists to use their discoveries to make weapons, spy equipment, and other commodities that have enriched a handful of corporations powerful enough to own and control patents and intellectual property. Capitalism is a system of property ownership that ensures that most discoveries will benefit the few at the expense of the majority and more dangerously to the potential detriment of the entire planet. Nuclear waste and weapons are just one major example. Petroleum by-products, missile technology, breast implants, AIDS treatments, and Vioxx also come to mind.

Ignoring this obvious part of scientific history sinks Singh’s ideological proclamations and the call for neutrality with regard to science. Only a society that prioritizes human values – people, the environment, health, and the universalization of social wealth – can produce a scientific community capable of approaching neutrality and discovering the ultimate truths about our universe.

Nevertheless, I encourage a careful reading of Singh’s exciting book. I learned a lot and know you will too.



--Joel Wendland can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.