Far and deep: the joy of scientific discovery

OK I admit it, I'm a space nut. I was just 11 when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon—and I was completely absorbed by the sense of occasion, discovery and sheer technical brilliance of the Apollo missions.

I felt the same way this morning watching the press conference of excited scientists poring over the images and data of Pluto. They were transmitted from the New Horizons probe as it sped past the icy planet on its journey to and beyond the outer reaches of our solar system.

At almost the same time, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland were excitedly reporting the discovery of a new particle—the pentaquark.

For both groups of scientists, the sense of joy and delirious excitement is palpable. That moment of discovery. That moment when all the hard work and planning pays off. All the years of dreaming and hoping. All the effort and the grind of hard work to make something huge and "impossible" actually happen. It's easy to write it off as a little bit nerdy—but at the same time the sense of joy is infectious and truly wonderful.

Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
Psalm 8 v 1-2

And so it is with our amazing species. We are capable of so much. We have achieved, and will achieve, incredible things that extend our knowledge, and create new possibilities for technology and medicine and entertainment. The science fiction of yesterday becomes the science fact of today.

The scientists I know who are Christian believers share this sense of wonder and excitement which occasionally comes to them as part of their work. But they enjoy it too at a deeper level. They pursue their investigations, driven by many of the same things that others are driven by—a hunger to discover more; a drive to use their research to benefit others; a sense that they are benefitting humankind in general. But they also know they are "thinking God's thoughts after him": they are exploring the richness and complexity and the wonder of the works of his hands—whether at a cosmic or a microscopic level. They are driven by a sense that God is truly glorified as we reveal and uncover more of the things he has made. Like the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, they can say:

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

Or join with David when he says:
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens. (Psalm 8 v 1-2)

And we might add… "and in the subatomic world".

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