David Peat

From Clockwork to Chaos 133and the exercise of control. Other societies are willing to accept fluxand uncertainty. They live in the Tao, within the flow of things, andtolerate the fact that they will never know all there is to know aboutthe universe. By contrast, the Western mind has been seeking a storywith a definite ending. Science wants theories that are finite androunded off. A good theory should not leave gaps, areas of ambiguity,or uncertainty. Moreover, as in some Freudian death wish, physicsseeks to bring about its own end. It desires the ultimate answer, the“theory of everything” that will bring closure to its activities. With theultimate equation, theory will be finished, all questions will be answered.We will know once and for all the story of the universe. In factthat term, “the universe story,” has been used by Thomas Berry andBrian Swimm as the title of a book and a project to provide a contemporaryscientific account of the universe of similar mythic proportionsto that of Dante in the Middle Ages.Most societies have their origin stories, ways of linking theirpresent world and society to the creation figures of the past. Some storiesconcern the creation of the world. But often the world is alreadypresent as given and the stories are about the naming of things, theorigin of medicine, language, cooking, and writing. Berry and Swimmintend something similar with their Universe Story. Yet traditional originstories have an open quality to them or involve the role of clownsand tricksters such as Coyote, Raven, or Brer Rabbit who turn thingsupside down and subvert the order of the world.Until the twentieth century forced us to face the basic uncertaintyof the universe, we asked science to present us with comfortable bedtimestories, ones in which “everything comes out all right at the end.”Science believed in the parsimony of the universe and applied Occam’srazor. 5 There could only be one right theory and every choice shouldbe judged as being good or bad. Now chaos theory is telling us that ifwe desire total certainty, if we want to hold the universe in the palm ofour hands, we have to leave the human race behind and become godlikebeings who can observe and measure a system without in any way5Occam’s razor states that in the face of alternative explanations one shouldaccept the explanation that is simplest and most direct.