LITMIR.BIZ

      Every now and then, usually by default and seldom on the first try, the human race blunders on a fact or two. Wrenched from the shadows of ignorance or simply sideswiped by some careless time traveler, these truths often shatter deep-seated if somewhat unsustainable beliefs.

      Take Homo sapiens, for example.

      In the beginning, when fate still ruled the world, when providence, not scheme, random chance, not purpose or plan molded man’s destiny, two camps vied for the truth; and both held it for a while.

      Fat and sated like iguanas basking in the sun, wading in and out of the primordial soup where it’s cozy and warm, Darwinists made no bones about it. Their blueprint was sound. Evolution made sense. One by one, the pieces of the gigantic puzzle began to fit into place with such symmetry as to make some transcendental first cause -- divine or other -- not only quite probable but essential. They just didn’t call it God.

      Angered by Darwin’s seeming irreverence, outraged by the notion that they might be descended from apes, not angels, Creationists kept invoking divine intervention, as though evolution were not in itself a wondrous phenomenon. And life went on.

      One day, for no apparent reason, and as if there was an urgent need to know, cosmologists everywhere began splitting cosmic hair. With the Big Bang versus the Steady State debate well behind them, though still deadlocked on several core issues, they now asked each other (and themselves, no doubt): is the universe “open” or “closed?” Does intergalactic space extend indefinitely and in all directions, or do as yet undetected boundaries found only at some inscrutably distant point mark its final limits? If so, what lies beyond? What is space, anyway, they asked. Is it a circumstantial realm with no intrinsic dimension, no reality of its own except that which is fancied by man in his convoluted ruminations? Is space a byproduct of human consciousness, like time, which is seen as “passing” but in fact does not move? Some insisted that space is not only endowed with quantifiable form and volume, but that it is also measurable by a timeline that includes a starting point, a first cause, or alpha, but not necessarily an omega. Others retorted with disarming logic that something that has no boundaries cannot possibly have shape.

      Surely, while these mental pirouettes severely strained the limits of awareness, others yet agreed that the issue was the sphere of philosophy and mysticism. After all, probes sent out on scouting missions to the farthest reaches of the inky void had gone on one-way odysseys and no one knew for sure what they would run into, or when.

      For a while, the case for an open (or infinite) universe gained ground. Infinity is a tolerable abstraction because, like all absolutes, it is as self-limiting as it is unquantifiable. Something that has no shape or computable dimensions, however keenly one may try to comprehend it, has no being. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, even among the learned.

      In time, however, unable to bolster their respective positions, cosmologists reached an impasse -- and a compromise. It became fashionable to argue that, for lack of a more convincing explanation, perpetual space-time and cosmic confinement may be one and the same. The choice, they offered, lay in the mind’s eye of poets and stargazers and dreamers and a science fiction writer or two. It was, pardon the irresistible witticism, pretty much an open and shut case. Adding to the confusion, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps in an attempt to blur the distinction between knowledge and whimsy, someone suggested that reality is a hologram. Someone else theorized that the universe has no reality except in God’s boundless imagination. And another millennium came and went in a cosmos unconcerned with the pitiable struggles and contests of a wretched organism that keeps breeding itself out of existence.

      And then it happened, not unexpectedly perhaps, but with devastating finality.

      “WE ARE ALONE!” banner headlines proclaimed. “HUMANKIND: AN ACCIDENT” they screamed impiously on all the front pages.

      Carefully worded, unadorned, brutally prosaic, eloquently detached, spreading across the page, the article ignited passions, provoked outrage or apoplectic stupor, clouded the mind, froze the spirit.