https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/135106.Isaac_Newton
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/meister_eckhart.html
As a young, idealistic biology teacher, I naively assumed that all of the “big†questions about life would eventually be answered by science. Eight years into my teaching career, however, Lettie rendered that assumption invalid and turned my life topsy-turvy.
She was the spark that ignited a life-long journey of un-learning the singular importance of science. It’s not that science is not important, it is; after all, the microscope opened an unknown mini-universe of “cavorting beasties†which led to amazing discoveries in ecology, medical technology, disease prevention and control. The telescope has taken the human mind out to the very edge of the known universe into dimensions, distances and time/space paradigms that are beyond the most brilliant minds. Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope, captured the Greatest Image On Earth.
The fact is, however, that science did not evolve in a vacuum. It would not have been possible without the evolution of language arts, creative arts, poetry, philosophy and religion.
Interestingly, before the renaissance, 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart predicted that the big questions of life would not be answered by science. This reminds me of a comment by Robert Jastrow, former director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He is a self-proclaimed agnostic, and humbly and humorously mused that thousands of years from now, after scientists have scaled the last peak of knowledge, they will be greeted by a band of theologians who have been waiting there for centuries. Are we having fun yet?
As a trained “scientist†I am still baffled as to how artists, musicians and poets can use their “right brains†to transcend the pragmatic limits of what is “known†and enter the higher realms of mystery. Poet William Blake demonstrated this with his opening quatrain from, Auguries of Innocence:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
Four simple lines that stretch the mind into the depths of floral beauty and into the dual “twilight zones†of eternity and infinity.
Sometimes I would have students close their eyes and try to travel out to infinity. I could see them pondering until one of them would begin laugh and say:
 “I can’t do itâ€! How can it go forever? Isn’t there an edge there, beyond which there is nothing? But how can nothing go on forever?
I could never keep from laughing with them and suggested that perhaps there was a cosmic incarnation of Bugs Bunny who was standing out there saying, “Abitty, abitty, that’s all folksâ€!
Blake was celebrating mystery which is something that Albert Einstein emulated.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.â€
Thanks to Herb Burquez, I recently got to go on a fantastic voyage .Tony Darnell created a video that is breath-stopping. It is titled, Ultra Deep Field and includes an image that he claims is the most important image ever recorded by man. I am not one to quibble.
It was taken by astronomers who aimed the Hubble Telescope at a dark area in space about the size of a grain of sand.  I wonder if they were hoping to find a black peep- hole in the universal canopy that would take them to the very edge of infinity. Instead, using a time-lapse technique, they captured an image of at least 10,000 galaxies. This has led them to believe that there are 100 billion galaxies, however, if infinity and eternity exist, this number itself is equal to a grain of sand. Little wonder my students said, “we can’t go there.†If history offers any clue, arriving at the “Ultra Deep Field†is only one small step for mankind. In order to begin to think infinity, we must accept that from our perspective of 100 billion galaxies, there are countless other “Ultra Deep Fields,†each containing billions of galaxies and so on ad-infinitum. It simply never ends!
It is little wonder that Isaac Newton, perhaps the world’s greatest scientist, humbly proclaimed:
“I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.â€
He also stated:
“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.â€
 Many scientists have likly never heard of Meister Eckhart and if they had would likely would scoff at his thinking as obsolete.
I am sitting here laughing with my ex-students and recalling another Eckhart quote:
“God is home, it is we who are out for a walk.â€
Or is it “out to lunch�
Note: Darnell’s video has had nearly 8 million hits. I am surprised there have not been more.