EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Higgs boson and the Arts

The Higgs boson may have been found. The news today is circling the globe faster than the speed of light, attracting elementary fascination. Everyone has their own twist on its significance to them even those, like me, whose knowledge of science is well below par. Nevertheless I cannot help commenting. The reality we know -  with all its richness of detail, not least the astonishing complexity of the human mind – accounts for a minutely small amount of matter. As the CERN press release reports:

“The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.”¹

CERN uses sight (“every visible thing”) as code for all the senses so that 96% of matter is imperceptible even by instruments and thus outside the reality we know. Despite the arithmetic, this is not a new finding. Wise minds will not be surprised because it is a truth embedded in the founding principles of all the world’s major religions, in pagan myths and the literature and arts of many cultures, and of course in science too. Plato knew it.² There is, we have always been told, another “reality” of which we know very little though spiritually-inclined people, trained by their elders or predecessors, have been able to “sense” it for want of a better word.

Even the idea that weightless matter obeys fundamental laws gaining mass only when an error is introduced into the system is the basic idea behind the story of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve made an error in taking a bite from the Tree of Knowledge and, as a direct result, fell from heaven into a dualistic world where opposites abound. Now conscious of each other and “of our nakedness” everything became a matter of subject and object, you and me, good and evil, observer and observed. Blind to that larger reality, mankind deludes itself into thinking that the 4% we are conscious of is all there is. Yet, we have always been told, that inside each of us lies a particle of that reality we cannot see. Some call it a “divine essence”; others “God”, “Wisdom” or “Truth.” A very small number of highly sensitive people – mystics, saints, true philosophers, leaders in the arts, creative scientists like Einstein of the highest rank, even leading mathematicians - can sense the unity of that other reality through casting off their own personal ego. Einstein said: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” He also understood or sensed, at odds with his own atheistic age, the truth in religion and the purpose of art:

‘It is very difficult to elucidate this [cosmic religious] feeling to anyone who is entirely without it….The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma….In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.’

So, welcome Higgs! You’ve been long awaited.