I cherish my conversations with cosmologists and physicists. They are standing on ground where

religious thinkers reigned until very recently in human history, the sphere in which we imagine the

nature of the cosmos and our place in it. As the brilliant physicist Brian Green explained to me,

my perception that this table is solid and red or that the sky is blue

is not a matter of reality. It is a projection in my mind based on the sensory input of my hands and my

eyes. The fundamental nature of reality, as far as we can grasp it now, he says, is fundamentally hidden from us at this

stage in our development as a species. It's not just that I can't comprehend the true nature of the

forces that compose and determine my presence and action in the world. Rather, what I feel and

experience and believe is leading me astray.

One of the scenarios suggested by string theory is that reality as we observe it is akin to a

holographic projection of a real base of information. Our civilization and selves in this theory

are like a skyscraper to an architect's blueprint.

But that blueprint or base of information is somewhere else, something else more real than us and beyond our imagining.

And this idea returns me to the excruciatingly imponderable question of my otherwise certainty-soaked childhood.

If God made the universe, who made God?

Likewise, one might reasonably ask, who or what was the architect of the blueprint?

This is becoming wise, an inquiry into the mystery and art of living.

I'm Krista Tippett.

There's a sense in which, you know, even if we accept this and respect it that that our senses

mislead us about the nature of reality that that kind of thwarts um the ability of ordinary

human beings to internalize the lessons of science no No, you just got to learn math.

Yeah.

...