A Beautiful World

We need a Nobel laureate to tell us this?

Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek is convinced that the universe is, at heart, beautiful (“Beauty is Physics’ Secret Weapon,” Steve Paulson, Nautilus, January/February 2016). He says, “The exact question I’m trying to address is whether the world embodies beautiful ideas.”

Sorry, but we need a Nobel laureate to answer this question?

Mr. Wilczek observes, “We already know there are beautiful laws that explain most of the way matter works. It’s just that we haven’t figured it all out.” Should we all hold off answering the question until science accomplishes that?

He doesn’t need the help of religion to figure this out, although the history of Christianity, at least, is rife with discussions of the question, as well as plenty of examples of art and other artifacts universally acknowledged as beautiful. The key lies in understanding the brain, Mr. Wilczek explains, and not in any notions of the soul or any such thing.

Unlike the secularist, the Christian welcomes all contributions to ques-tions about beauty and the universe, for we understand that, in the end, the truth of God will prevail, and the teaching of God’s Word, in every field and discipline, will be vindicated. Of course the cosmos is beautiful, even though it groans and travails under the burden of sin at present. How could it not be? And can we fail, by studying the cosmos, to see the beauty of God in it, and to know God in His glory more clearly, and to love and praise Him more consistently? Surely, we cannot. But we must give ourselves to the task of discovering the beauty of God in the beauty of His works.

I believe that no man liveth who can grasp the whole beauty of the meanest living creature; I say not of a man, for he is an extraordinary creation of God, and other creatures are subject unto him. I grant, indeed, that one man will conceive and make a more beautiful figure and will explain the natural cause of its beauty more reasonably than another, but not to such an extent that there could not be anything more beautiful. For so fair a conception ariseth not in the mind of man; God alone knoweth such, and he to whom He revealeth it, he knoweth it likewise. Albrecht Dürer

Print