{"id":45060,"date":"2017-11-28T18:37:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T01:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=45060"},"modified":"2017-11-28T23:14:45","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T06:14:45","slug":"one-many-regrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/one-many-regrets.html","title":{"rendered":"One of my (many) regrets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Mt.<\/a>
An aerial view of the summit of Mount Wilson. The antenna farm that extends upward from the center of the photograph supplies most of the television and FM radio signals for Los Angeles. (A member of my ward was an engineer there.) In the lower right quadrant of the photo, some of the facilities of the Mount Wilson Observatory are visible. (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just come across a 1991 New York Times<\/em> article about the great astronomer Allan Sandage<\/a>, who died in 2010:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSizing Up the Cosmos: An Astronomer\u2019s Quest\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it opens:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPASADENA, Calif.\u2014\u00a0In the mornings before smog dims the sky like a dirty nebula, Dr. Allan R. Sandage can stand at his office window and see, if not the beginning of the universe, or its end, at least the summit where astronomers first came to the stunning realization that they just might be able to comprehend the origin and fate of space and time, of everything.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe points to Mount Wilson, in a gesture of homage as much as orientation. It is astronomy\u2019s Mount Sinai. Down from its observatory came the great Edwin P. Hubble in 1929 with tablets bearing the message that the universe was expanding, space stretching uniformly in all directions, carrying the galaxies along with it. His discovery established cosmology as a science, perhaps the least practical but most sublime of all.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018To cosmologists that is the most amazing scientific discovery ever made,\u2019 Dr. Sandage said with authority.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of my great regrets that I never met Dr. Sandage. \u00a0It was only very shortly before he died that I learned that we had been neighbors; my sister-in-law met his wife at a hair salon, and then mentioned the encounter to me. \u00a0Dr. Sandage lived and ultimately died in San Gabriel, California, the same suburban Los Angeles County town where I grew I up. \u00a0The article from which I\u2019m citing was based on an interview with him in his Caltech office in Pasadena, California, the city where I was born. \u00a0San Gabriel isn\u2019t very big. \u00a0It\u2019s not inconceivable that I was his paper boy. \u00a0And I saw Mount Wilson \u2014 \u201castronomy\u2019s Mount Sinai\u201d \u2014 virtually every day of my life through my high school years. \u00a0It was, as I\u2019ve mentioned previously, a frequent object of school field trips and family drives and even at least two dates (one with my future wife). \u00a0And \u2014 youth, as they say, is wasted on the young \u2014 I didn\u2019t really appreciate it at all<\/em>. \u00a0It was pleasant, and interesting. \u00a0But I didn\u2019t really grasp the science-historical significance of the place.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Atop<\/a>
This dome atop Mount Wilson houses the telescope used by Edwin Hubble when he discovered the general expansion of the universe. \u00a0(NASA public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I would very much like to have spoken with him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another passage from the article:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Science cannot answer the deepest questions,\u2019 he said. \u2018As soon as you ask why is there something instead of nothing, you have gone beyond science. I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Sandage, wishing he had never brought up his religious beliefs, stops himself with a quip. \u2018That\u2019s the reason people think my scientific career is over \u2014 I reveal myself as much as I do.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe stresses that his theology is independent of his cosmology. \u2018In this office, I have to be a rational reductionist,\u2019 he explained. \u2018None of this feeds back at all into the hard-nosed business of the laboratory or the observatory. It must not.'\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019ve just come across a 1991 New York Times article about the great astronomer Allan Sandage, who died in 2010: \u00a0 \u201cSizing Up the Cosmos: An Astronomer\u2019s Quest\u201d \u00a0 Here\u2019s how it opens: \u00a0 \u201cPASADENA, Calif.\u2014\u00a0In the mornings before smog dims the sky like a dirty nebula, Dr. Allan R. Sandage can stand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOne of my (many) regrets<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    I've just come across a 1991 New York Times article about the great astronomer Allan Sandage, who died in 2010:   "Sizing Up the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/one-many-regrets.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"One of my (many) regrets\" \/>\n<meta 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