It was Plato, one of the philosophers at the very essence of modern Western thought, who favoured a social system of three tiers, represented by metals. At the top would be the ‘gold’ tier, the philosophers; responsible for pondering key issues such as the nature of life, the universe and everything. Next would be the ‘silver’ tier, the soldiers, and at the bottom the ‘brass’ tier, the merchants; their role being to provide the economic clout to support the entire structure. How distraught Plato would be if he could see just how above themselves the merchants have become, their petty squabbles and concerns diverting attention from the momentous happenings in Switzerland, as scientists attempt to find a ‘theory of everything’.

The life-affirming and glorious work of the sort of philosophers Plato idealised, those represented by the super-brainy, star-gazing scientists at CERN, has been relegated to a relatively small slot in the media. Given that the media is responsible for reflecting the multi-layered edifice of our world, what does this say about us? Well, for one thing it suggests that modern humans are pragmatic. Pragmatism is not an alien concept among the quantum physicists toiling at CERN to get the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) up and running once more. The Copenhagan Interpretation of quantum mechanics, at the core of much accepted quantum science, is essentially a pragmatic theory. Niels Bohr and others in this school of thought tend to argue that the trick is not to understand every tiny detail about how quantum mechanics works, but rather to simply accept that it works; the mathematics agrees beautifully with what is seen in the real world and if it works it works. Pragmatism in a nutshell.

In these times of changing dynamics, wherein the beauties of the free market process appear to be brazenly throwing themselves with impassioned pleas at the feet of interventionist, all-powerful state protectors and/or foreign market players with money to spare, it would have been good to know that somewhere in a tunnel the answers to profound questions were on the precipice of discovery. That men and women dressed in white were using money in the way it ought to be used, to improve understanding, to add significantly to our human wealth of knowledge. Maybe even to settle, once and for all, the squabbles at the heart of the evolution/creationism battle to prevail over the science classroom.

The on-going debate as to whether creationism ought to be taught in science classes has claimed yet another head. Reverend Professor Michael Reiss, Director of Education at the Royal Society in England, recently had to resign his post as a consequence of his views that there is room for debate concerning creationism, alongside the teaching of evolution, in science classes (www.guardian.co.uk). The notion that creationism be allowed any credibility in a science class is controversial. In Britain, the prevailing opinion is that creationism and its sidekick, intelligent design, have not earned the right to be regarded as scientific theories because they are not open to testing under the rigours of scientific method. Discussion about creationism and intelligent design are probably more suited to religious education classes.

As a practising priest, there was great scope for mediation when Reiss took on such a key role in such a renowned scientific institution, but sadly science and religion really do not good bedfellows make. Yet if the CERN experiment succeeds in its quest to re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang, maybe a way can be found to understand the role of a creator in the building blocks of science. Some scientists believe in the concept of a creator at work behind the Big Bang and that among the possible revelations about ‘dark matter’, anti-matter and space-time dimensions there may also be evidence of a creator in the elusive ‘God particle’, the Higgs Boson. What really happened just before and just after the singularity, a point of infinite density containing the universe, so tightly packed as to have meaning only at the quantum level, exploded, unleashing the fabric of everything, is unknown. Postulated, theorised, predicted, but not known, and until it is known the debate as to what role a creator did or did not play is academic.

Professor Stephen Hawking said, in 1993: “ … to talk about causation or creation implicitly assumes there was a time before the Big Bang singularity. We have known for twenty five years that Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that time must have had a beginning in a singularity fifteen billion years ago.” (www.vuletic.com).

We need to know what the quantum mechanical effects were at the point of the Big Bang: in Planck time, approximately 13.7 billion years ago. To know this, we need a theory of quantum gravity and this is precisely what the experiment at CERN is striving towards; a theory of everything that will combine classical physics, such as that embodied in Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and quantum mechanics, such as that embodied in the Copenhagen Interpretation. A successful conclusion to the awe-inspiring experiments at CERN is far more likely to put paid to the perpetual pulling and pushing between creationists and scientists than any amount of verbal debate, court cases as to what should be taught in science lessons or religiously motivated wars. Surely if all nations are obliged to logically accept that the universe erupted from a single point, the singularity, because this is proven in the LHC, then further experiments aimed at how the singularity came into being would be next. These experiments could tell us whether there was or was not a creator behind the existence of the singularity and then maybe, just maybe, all nations could finally agree on a theory of life, the universe and everything. Religiously empowered hatchets might even, praise be the Lord, relegated to the dustbin. We should be thinking big, hoping with bated breath that the LHC can be repaired as soon as possible.

Behind the vast momentousness of the experiment at CERN stand a group of men who are true golden philosophers; Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Born, John von Neumann, Wolfgang Pauli, Louis de Broglie and others. The backlash for giving credit when it shouldn’t have been given has done major damage to the financial industry. Perhaps it is time to give credit where it is due; all hail the prophets of science!