I was struck when I learned about the atom – that most of it is empty space. Electrons and protons circling at a distance a nucleus. And I vividly remember thinking how like the Universe it was: things in orbits, forces in play, unceasing motion and mostly . . . emptiness. I doubt there are also miniature humans on the odd electron (as in some supposed science fiction magazine) but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future they find something they didn’t expect.
But it is how the small is an image of the immense that interested me and vice-vera. As if the template were fixed and everything mirrored it. Which has implications for other things. I have often said though we consider ourselves brilliant as a species, we cannot do anything nature doesn’t allow to be done. And our natures are images of her processes. Which implies that somehow, so is our reason.
There are few people who think that ‘nature’ thinks, preferring to believe in some organised brain in a godhead for that sort of thing, but mirror images are never exact. There may well be reason in the Universe that is neither godly nor human; a reason we reflect but is unlike ours . . . ours being so small, or ours being so personal or so especially human.
It is a reason though that is broader and wider than ours because it includes all species, all worlds, all ideas and all thoughts whereas we are terribly parochial.