Physicists tell us everything that exists can be traced to a supposed single point of infinite density, called a singularity, that exploded some 14 billion years ago, and has been expanding ever since, giving rise to both space and time, ants and elephants, galaxies and hummingbirds, and, of course, you and me.
Yet even when we are moving in the rarefied aether of theoretical physics and its handmaiden, pure mathematics, it is important to realise thinking of any and every kind is carried on through images and metaphors. Physicists, for example, speak of ‘waves’ and ‘particles’, ‘inflation’, ‘black holes’, even ‘cold dark matter’. In each case we are talking about something that can be mathematically described, but only communicated by way of metaphor, analogy, or what scientists call ‘models’.
The reason for this is that virtually every word we use has a sense-derived origin. Jeremy Bentham, the 19th century Utilitarian philosopher, wrote: “Throughout the whole field of language, parallel to the line of what may be termed the material language, and expressed by the same words, runs a line of what may be termed the immaterial language.” You have a process by which words with material meanings turn into words with immaterial meanings, eg, ‘understand’, ‘influence’, ‘relative’, ‘seminal’, and ‘intention’.
If physics and cosmology work with metaphorical models in their attempts to understand and explain the origin of the universe, it is no surprise to realise that the different religions do likewise. Hinduism, for example, no doubt drawing on the analogy of yoga, sees the creation, expansion, and eventual destruction of the universe in terms of breath: exhalation and inhalation, while the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are true to their identity as ‘Religions of the Book’, and understand creation through the metaphor of the word of command – “Let there be light, and there was light.”
Recently I read for the first time a selection of the writings of the remarkable 12th century Benedictine nun, mystic, poet, and musician, Hildegard of Bingen. In a letter she wrote in 1146 to Bernard, head of the Cistercian Order and abbot of the great monastery of Clairvaux, there occurs a phrase that points towards another way of understanding creation – music.
Hildegard writes of “the sacred sound through which all creation resounds”. In fact, music as a metaphor of creation and the universe is very ancient. Perhaps its earliest formulation is to be found in the mysterious sixth century Greek philosopher Pythagoras who is said to have discovered one of the fundamental insights of music, that the ratios 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3 representing the length of strings correspond to the octave and the basic harmonies of the fifth and the fourth. These harmonies are visualised in the tetractys, an equilateral triangle composed of 10 dots. These same ratios are reflected in what traditionally became known as ‘the music of the spheres’.
In The Merchant of Venice, Lorenzo and Jessica are sitting outside, and Lorenzo points to the stars:
‘Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.’
It was said Pythagoras was the only mortal who could hear the music of the spheres. But the image formed part of everyone’s understanding of the universe until science began “unweaving the rainbow”.
For John Donne, delivering a sermon, it was a commonplace:
‘God made this whole world ... as that it was an instrument, perfectly in tune: we may say the trebles, the highest strings were disordered first; the best understandings, angels and men, put this instrument out of tune. God rectified all again, by putting in a new string ... the seed of the woman, the Messias ... for the music of the spheres ... we cannot hear it ... our music is only that salvation which is declared in the Gospel ...’.
Creation as music is such an aesthetically satisfying analogy it is surprising it has not featured more in the works of the great composers. Only Richard Wagner, in the astonishing beauty and simplicity of the hushed opening of Das Rheingold comes anywhere near capturing something of that “sacred sound through which all creation resounds”.
William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, was once drawn into a discussion of the origin of the universe, confessing that he thought it was impossible to put it into words: “I don’t know what can do it.
Music perhaps.”
Barnaby ffrench
