Tip-Off #223 - The Math of Eternity
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” - Albert Einstein
Einstein made sense of the universe; I’m hoping to survive the title.
Cynicism aside, what does it all add up to?
Optimism can make pessimism more convincing. Science might persuade—except for those sure it already has all the answers. Here’s a view that could be heartening simply by telling the truth, or at least by taking a step in that direction.
There is no single physical theory that explains everything. Instead, we have many, each built to describe a certain part of the universe—from the behavior of quarks and electrons to the motion of galaxies. These theories don’t always agree.
Aristotelian physics explained falling objects as natural motion toward Earth’s center; Newtonian mechanics replaced this with a universal force of gravity. The two are incompatible, yet both share a similar structure: they begin with basic assumptions and work out their consequences. Newton’s laws of motion and James Clerk Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism are compact statements that generate a wide range of predictions.
Modern physics speaks in mathematics—the language that traces the patterns nature itself follows. Numbers are not merely ours, and some never change. Math is not neutral; it presumes order, consistency, and the possibility of describing reality. Yet the universe keeps agreeing.
But comprehensible is not the same as understandable. “God doesn’t play dice,” Einstein said. Quantum mechanics rolled them anyway—and uncertainty won. What exists can depend on how and when we look. From one vantage, a particle or event fits; from another, its opposite fits too. We test, measure, and calculate—not to finish the search, but to keep it alive.
Niels Bohr put it sharply: “The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.” Freedom / Security. Change / Stability. God exists / Atheism makes sense. Great truths live in tension, not contradiction. Each side reveals something the other cannot, and the whole picture emerges only when both are held together. In science as in life, these pairs are less about choosing one over the other than about recognizing how they define, limit, and complete each other.
Physics is not ethics. It tells us what is, not what ought to be. It’s the math of “eternity”—a language that runs past the last decimal place and past the reach of AI. It resists final answers yet reveals how past, present, and future are interconnected. Call that connection divine design or the indifferent frame of the cosmos; either way, it shapes what might seem like chance—until the next surprise.
Loss becomes hope. Death becomes life.
In the moral world, as in the physical, forces act in pairs. Justice is never abstract; it takes shape against the reality of injustice. One reveals the absence of the other, yet neither is final. Laws can punish without healing; mercy can forgive without repairing. Holding them in tension is less about symmetry than about refusing to let either be the last word. In this, the natural and the supernatural are intertwined—woven into one fabric of reality rather than stacked in separate realms.
C.S. Lewis once wrote of turning to God in desperate need and finding “a door slammed in your face, the sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.” He knew that pain and suffering can make only tragic sense—until they make divine sense in the assurance of God’s providence and presence.
In faith’s language, the same equation holds. There is no Easter without Good Friday—not because God is behind the violence and injustice of the world, but because God promises resurrection and new life, now and forever. If that doesn’t work for you, try calling it a resolution you didn’t see coming.
Loss becomes hope. Death becomes life.
Notes and reading
Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality,” in Ideas and Opinions (1954), where he reflects on the wonder that the universe can be comprehended at all.
Niels Bohr - Danish physicist, Nobel Prize.
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by His Friends and Colleagues (1967) by son, Hans, 328.Sean M. Carroll, Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe (2022) — how elegant theoretical frameworks face the complexity and unpredictability of the physical world.
Brian Clegg, Are Numbers Real? The Uncanny Relationship of Mathematics and the Physical World (2016) — on the philosophical puzzle of whether mathematical entities exist independently of human thought. Cf. Weapons of Math Destruction - mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neil (2017). “Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.”
David Bentley Hart — The natural and the supernatural are intertwined. A full challenge to the usual “supernaturalism,” including the tired nature–grace divide, with close attention to history and tradition, gathered in You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature (2022).
C.S. Lewis — “A door slammed in your face…” On the shift from theory to reality when grief tested his own reasoning, see A Grief Observed (1961) and The Problem of Pain (1940).
Maya C. Popa, citing Amy Hempel and Alan Watts - “How do we know what happens to us isn’t good?” Poetry Today (January 31, 2024). Popa is a contemporary poet and critic; Hempel an American short story writer; Watts was a British writer and speaker on philosophy and religion.
Bill Bradley — The basketball great once said, “The best players have peripheral vision.” His own range was astonishing: 195° horizontally and 70° upward, “but you have to take into account what you can’t see.” —from A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton by the legendary New Yorker writer John McPhee (1999).
Tip-Off #222 - Remembering to Be Normal
I love that Niels Bohr quote: “The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.” We need tension to get to truth. I think of James's "mercy boasts against judgment": how can we know mercy without its opposite? I think Polybius understood this when he suggested that the ancients' six forms of government work in a cycle. Oligarchy leads to democracy, he argued, when people rise up against their leaders' crimes. But the next generation forgets the distinction, and democracy becomes mob rule. I'm not sure he arrived at an unvarying formula, but I think he saw that, generally speaking, oppression leads to freedom. Without oppression, though, it becomes a challenge to discern freedom, much less to maintain or to expand it. There's no need to champion sin (oppression) that grace (freedom) may abound, though. Perhaps a key is to find oppression that others near us experience . . . Anyway, a thought-provoking post.