Sky & Telescope May 1991 [antikvár]

FOCAL POINTAstronomy as PlayQCIENCE is a wonderful thing!3 if one does not have to earn one's living at it," wrote Albert Einstein. He knew that science is play. He played with his equations like a kid with a new toy. "Only when we do not have to be accountable to anybody can we find joy in scientific endeavor," he said. In other words, keep the grown-ups out of the room us kids are having fun.It doesn't diminish science to call it play. Animal behaviorists define play as an activity that makes no immediate contribution to survival or reproduction. As Einstein implied, play sure beats making a living. Only animals with highly evolved brains play; cats and dolphins do, ants don't. The play instinct is part of our humanness and one of the purest forms of creativity.The child at play creates imaginary worlds. Scientists, too, construct worlds that go beyond the immediate scope of our senses, fantasies that we can enter if we choose to play. In our imaginations we plunge through the rings of Uranus. We dive into black holes. We witness the galaxies condense from primeval matter.Science, like the games of children, is make-believe. Physics students who spend hours working problems with frictionless pulleys and weightless strings are well aware that physics is a game of "let's pretend." Theorists who model galaxies in a computer utilize a highly refined talent for invention. Black holes, neutron stars, and cold (or hot) dark matter are creations of the human mind, no less than the hills and valleys that the bed-bound child of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous poem "The Land of Counterpane" imagines upon her coverlet.But surely science seeks reality, not dream worlds? Yes, but so does all play. All play has rules. All play builds models of reality dolls. Monopoly money, Lionel trains, the pieces on a chess board. Scientific theories, too, reflect reality (whatever that is), but only in an imperfect and sometimes arbitrary way. Physicist R. Bruce Lindsay called science a game in which we pretend that things are not wholly what they seem, so that we may make sense out of them in terms of mental processes peculiar to us as human%beings. The fun of the game of science is trying to make the match between theory and reality ever more convincing.In play we escape from the workaday reality of surviving and reproducing into a higher reality. There a different kind of order reigns, one where the connection between science and play becomes most convincing.All higher forms of play are based on repetition and alternation, on rules and variations within the rules. The human mind rebels from too much constancy or too much chaos. It prefers a delicate balance of sameness and novelty. The child enjoys that optimum balance in rhymes and games. The adult seeks it in chess or baseball. It is also at the heart of science. And that is why the sky was the scientist's original playground.The night sky offers a satisfying mix of sameness and novelty. Celestial cycles attracted the early attention of natural philosophers because these cycles exemplify the psychologically satisfying pattern found in the nursery song. The refrain establishes for the child after the digression of the variable verse a still point, a moment of recognition, a reassurance that the song remains the same. Stars go around in an endless ring-around-a-rosy. The demiurge (or Creator) of Greek astronomy is the world's parent, and the music of the spheres is the song he sings.More subtle observations of the sky were required to discover repetitive patterns in the complex paths of the planets. For his students Plato created the game ofdevising some combination of circles that would account for the observed planetary motions. To win the game, the space of the sky had to extend radially so that planets could dart in and out of the ring, as in "in-and-out-the-window." The mathematical device that achieved this was the epicycle, one of the cleverest inventions of the ancient Greek astronomers. With it the game of science acquired a level of sophistication that has sustained it ever since.Today, we have abandoned epicycles, equants, and eccentrics for rather more sophisticated inventions: the Oort cloud, dark matter, the Big Bang. We still construct imaginary worlds wilder and more wonderful than any child's fantasy.Johan Huizinga, the Dutch philosopher who wrote Homo Ludens (Man the Player), said this of play: "Inside the playground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. . . . [Play] creates order, is order. Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection. Play demands order absolute and supreme. The least deviation from it 'spoils the game,' robs it of its character and makes it worthless. . . . [Play] is invested with the noblest quality we are capable of perceiving in things: rhythm and harmony."Huizinga's description of play will sound familiar to any scientist. Change the word "play" to "science" (or "astronomy") and the passage still makes perfect sense.Science, like the play of children, satisfies a deep-seated need for escape from the boredom of fixity and the trauma of chaos. It springs from the same source as rhymes, games, and ring-around-a-rosy. To call what we do as astronomers "play" does not trivialize it. It grounds our activity in the noblest of human instincts and explains why what we do is so much fun.CHET RAYMORaymo plays wiih physics and astronomy at Slonehill College in Massachusetts. He has authored several popular books and also writes a weekly science column for the Boston Globe, from which this essay was adapted.Focal Point invites contributions from readers who wish to comment on contemporary issues in astronomy and space science.460 Sky & Telescope, May, 1991