In The Sacred Depths of Nature Ursula Goodenough raises fascinating questions that one generally shies away from asking without guidance. Why is "effectiveness" the goal of life? Why is "death" a necessary precursor to development of the brain? Why do [atomic] nuclei acquire electrons to form atoms? That is, why are nuclei not electrically stable in and of themselves? If the answer is that the outer tier of electrons allows the atoms to commingle, interact and ultimately merge with each other to form increasingly more sophisticated molecules, and thus life, it begs the questions of why life is the goal and how this elegant permutation of the simplest design of a compound unit arose. "How Are Things?" and then, "Which Things Matter?" asks Goodenough.
As the chapters progress, life as we know it on this planet develops: from the energy and mass incident in the original theorized singularity, to the coalescing universe and Earth, to the genesis of single celled and then multicellular organisms. How these organisms diversify and how some acquire empathy follows. Along the way Goodenough outlines what she terms a "common morality," a universally understood story that can become a planetary ethic linking us responsibly to every other organism, regardless of complexity. John Wesley Powell also used this term in advocating his policy of laying the groundwork for successfully settling the arid lands of the West. Both evolutionary stories, the first of life and the second of [cultural] life in an inhospitable clime, rely on a popular understanding of the scientific tale. The first story is still intact, requiring telling, the second didn’t find a receptive audience in time. So as the author tells the first story she breaks it down into independent and memorable accounts.
The way she merges the languages of science and the humanities in these accounts is often compelling. "So because we have an endless array of niches, with tectonics and glaciations to stir things up in the long term, and tides and seasons and weather to modulate things in the short term, we have had an endless array of organisms. And what a windfall it has been! Minute and enormous, beautiful and hideous, enduring and evanescent, independent and parasitic. They occupy the most impossible (to our eyes) niches: ocean vents, arctic snows, desert cliffs, human eyelashes. They form long complex food chains and, in the process, provision our atmosphere with gases and our earth with soil and our biosphere with fixed carbon and nitrogen."
Sacred Depths offers and expands upon multiple definitions of "religion" with the hope that the magnificence of the unveiled science will provoke in the reader a religious sense. Religion is perhaps what William James defines as an "acceptance of the universe" or maybe it simply emanates from the Latin root religio, "to bind together again." Religion is, quite likely, humility as was also suggested to me recently by a friend in a missive from the Pacific Crest Trail, the length of which she is walking. To be religious is to be needy such that we seek answers to existential questions. To be religious is also to know that our culture can transmit such accumulated answers and understanding. Religion is also manifest in prayer, as Emerson suggests, that is "contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view." Finally, one can reflect on a simple image in our culture, the YMCA logo: "We build strong kids, strong families, strong communities." Goodenough sees the universe as a similarly effective assemblage and religion is, for her, the ability to see it that way.
One role of religion Goodenough describes in her Introduction is "to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its emergent moral understandings." And what we see as religious we are inclined to treat as sacred. Perhaps the building blocks of life are religious icons, inviolate and worthy of our devotion and respect. The variation comes in here, though. They are also worthy of our complete understanding. Her point is that these icons are truly accessible.
Richard Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow, for example, also does a fine job of illuminating many scientific mysteries of nature. But where Unweaving often becomes too pedantic in its arguments, Sacred Depths sticks nicely to a simple plan of chapters broken down further into subtopics and concluded by "Reflections," sections within which the author reinterprets her preceding scientific explanations as religious epiphany. That the book does not seem too dense will make it engaging particularly for high school students who are thoughtful, have had multiple introductions, at least, to the three major scientific disciplines (here limited to physics, chemistry and biology) and are eager to find out to what it all applies.
Particularly interesting is Goodenough’s treatment of death and her recognition of its importance in the progress of life itself. All sorts of interesting questions arise here. Clearly the birth and death of stellar cycles yields increasing complexity….but why does life tend toward the complex? What is the meaning of energy flux? Will an organism of maximum complexity ever evolve? How did conscious choice develop from carbon, oxygen and nitrogen? Why does death override choice?
Fascinated by her discussion of "emergent functions," those properties apparent in organisms sculpted by and from the simplest pieces and rules that don’t demonstrate the same properties, I picked up a copy of Steven Johnson’s Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. Even though the last item seems inconsistent with Goodenough’s reverent writing, I found interesting similarities. Goodenough’s atoms are Johnson’s insects, her organisms are his colonies. Simple rules describe the formulation of both sets of individuals. But collectively, these like pieces metamorphose into stunningly sophisticated and unpredictable patterns. Could God be renamed Property of Emergence? "Something more from nothing but," she writes.
Although she clearly wants to dissect life, she honors the position of Eastern religions that life not be demeaned by speaking of it only as pieces, splitting it into factions, or viewing it as distinct parts of unrelated matter or incompatible forms of energy. "…the nature of life cannot be merely understood as the interplay of mechanistic forces. It may only be comprehended by taking in the essence behind the physics, chemistry, biology, math, and other scientific outlooks. All too frequently, we become so mesmerized by life’s details that we fail to comprehend the whole." (Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao (1992), #208, "Essence") She offers plenty of details not to narrow the reader’s focus but to engage the reader with a new and accurate myth of the process of life. Engage such that the remarkable advent of ourselves and our ability to understand how we are where we are ceases to be mere fact and becomes, instead, a remedy for disengagement.
Some "Reflections" sections, in an effort to give the reader access to new ways to look at religion, ultimately confuse by using undefined or esoteric vocabulary. The result is just as unhelpful as stating "religion is…!" throughout. While actively considering the superb and mysterious abilities of nature the author writes, for example, "I sanctify myself with my own grace." Such proclamations are rare, though, and don’t become the focus of the book. That "Reflections" also include references to poetry, hymns and Mozart will work well for some readers.
Goodenough’s overarching goal is to create, and I think she has, a new sort of reference book for our cultural myth. This makes me eager to leaf through Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael again. If life is really "getting something to happen against the odds and remembering how to do it" then this book is also about probability, or the probability of a certain possibility. That is to say it could be about quantum physics……and perhaps that is her next venture. While I await that publication I’ll grab this one from my shelf one more time.
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