The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos Video:
Science, Religion, and Cosmology
by Brian Swimme
Center for the Study of the Universe
80 minutes
ISBN -9650365-0-2

"The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos" video is a useful and illuminating companion piece to Brian Swimme's book of the same title. The video is divided into three segments of approximately twenty-six minutes each. This format makes it very possible for teachers to show a section of the video and then discuss the contents. Each segment is self-contained, yet the series seen as a whole functions nicely with the major themes of the book.

Part One, "The Generosity of the Sun," discusses the role of cosmology, both ancient and modern, as a central way that humans are integrated into a sense of ultimate fulfilment. The problem according to Swimme is that in the modern world there is no serious contemplation of the universe. By this he means that questions about the role of humans in the universe are missing from the cosmological constructs of modern science. The cosmological tradition is gone from our consciousness leaving us bereft of belonging in any fundamental sense to the world around us. One direct result of this disconnection is the increasing destruction of the Earth. Most perceptive on Swimme's part is asking what has taken the place of an integrated cosmology. The chilling answer is consumerism. Ads have become the new sermons of a global consumerist worldview that places human purpose, meaning, and identity in the endless quest for money in the never ending consumption of an infinite variety of ever changing objects.

To begin to help us see the true cosmological realities around us, Swimme begins to orient us to the true relationship between the earth and the sun. Even though we know that the Newtonian worldview is a false one, we still tend to think that earth, our earth place, is the center. Swimme wants to broaden our vision here to a truer picture. With a series of beautiful and simple visualizations he begins to help us see our spinning planet as it sails around the sun. The result is to all of a sudden break into a much larger and more accurate view of reality. The paradoxical result is not a diminishing of our engagement with the world, but an enlarging of it.

Part Two, "Birthplace of the Universe," takes the larger picture that was created in the first segment and expands it even further. From our place in the solar system we move out to a picture of the immensity of the galaxy. From our Milky Way Galaxy we move to the nearest galaxy of Andromeda and then to our galactic cluster. Each of these points, earth, sun, Milky Way, local galactic cluster revolves around a center, but the super-clusters of galaxies do not. The movement of these super-clusters away from each other leads Swimme into a discussion of the origins of the universe. The central paradox here is that scientists now think that the birthplace of the universe is fifteen billion light years away from us, yet we are in the center of that expansion. The answer to this paradox lies in the concept of omnicentricity. What this simply means is that everywhere is the center of the universe, or "to be in this universe is to be in its center." With this is mind it is therefore impossible to not see that the human story is in fact deeply embedded in the story of the unfolding universe. By nature of the very atoms in our bodies and those atoms of everything around us, we are the universe unfolding.

Part Three, "The Fecund Darkness," follows material presented in the previous two segments by asking where did this energy that exploded out creating the universe come from. Swimme makes the case that the answer lies in the notion of the quantum vacuum, the non-material realm that lies between the galaxies and between you and me. It is out of this vacuum itself, this "field of emptiness, this fecund darkness, or empty fullness" that all creativity comes. This emptiness is not a place or a thing, but the root of all generative power. It is the source too of all human creativity because we are rooted only in that generativity. Swimme goes on to illustrate this point by using the example of Albert Einstein.

Useful, exciting, and inspirational, "Hidden Heart of the Cosmos" is a perfect tool for the secondary classroom. I recommend it highly.

review © by Tom Collins and RSiSS

Seabury Hall
Makawao, Hawaii

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