Order

ORDER MICHAEL BERRILL* Wherefore, Socrates, ifin our treatment ofa great host ofmatters regarding the Gods andgeneration ofthe Universe, weprove unable togive accounts that are always in all respects self-consistentandperfectly exact, be thou notsurprised; rather we should be content ifwe canfurnish accounts that are inferior to none in likelihood, remembering that both I who speak andyou whojudge are but human creatures, so that it becomes us to accept the likely account ofthese matters andforbear to search beyond it.—Timaeus. Mankind searches for order in everything that he senses or contemplates . This search is a function of whatever mind is, for our minds seek, impose, and accept order. But to what extent does order exist outside the inquiring minds ofmen? Do we find or impose order when order is not? Can order be sensed, or must it be approached solely through the reality of mathematical abstractions? Camus spoke of the absurd experience of contemporary man as he confronts the silence and chaos of the universe with the order that is his mind. I wish to examine this silence, and listen for strains of music. Mathematics is the manipulation ofnumbers in search ofpatterns and relationships among them. It requires participation ofman's intellect, but not his senses. It is maximum abstraction. The truth of any particular science may be directly proportional to the amount of mathematics involved in it, for mathematics may be man's most accurate means of approaching reality. In any case, numbers have order, and their relationships can be predicted without error. Predictability is entirely a result of order, and where there is predictability, there also is order. When sounds are substituted for numbers in the number patterns, the human ear recognizes them as music. Mathematics and music exist most certainly in man's mind, and they are order. But man searches for similar relationships in the world ofhis senses, in the universe that he feels, sees, * Ph.D. candidate, Princeton University, Princeton, NewJersey. 515 hears, and smells. He calls a discovered relationship a "law," and each science is supported by a groundwork of laws. These laws are purely descriptions of sensed order, not explanations, for we have no explanations . If laws exist despite man, if man is indeed discovering rather than creating them, then the order that they describe also exists. Not many of the laws of physics that were propounded during the Age ofEnlightenment have withstood intact the years since then. Newton explained his world by his laws of gravity and acceleration, inertia and momentum, motion and dynamics. His laws seem to account for much that occurs here on the earth, but they have failed to explain the motions of stars and galaxies around us and the motions of subatomic particles within us and all things. An apple fell to the ground because it was attracted by the earth with a force proportional to its mass. But Einstein did not accept the Newtonian dogma that seemed so satisfactory . He showed us that gravity cannot be distinguished from inertia, that the apple might even "fall" parallel to the earth if the earth were spinning fast enough. Einstein made no attempt to explain. Instead, he described the characteristics ofa gravitational or inertial field, predicting what would happen to anything that traveled through the field. Gravitation remains unexplained in much the same way the electromagnetic fields have been described but not explained. The description of a field is a description of order, and gravity and electromagnetism are facets of a single order. Einstein first became known when he rejected the theory ofthe jellylike ether pervading the universe, accepted the velocity oflight as a universal constant, and spoke of the universe in terms of motion, time, and space. Space does not exist without a body in it by which it can be measured . A body cannot be proved to be moving or stationary in isolation, only in relation to other moving bodies; in fact, no stationary, absolute body can be shown to exist. Time exists only if some repetitive action occurs to measure it; it cannot exist in a static system. A time interval has no meaning outside of the frame of reference of that interval. Space shrinks and time slows...