The Potentiality of Matter

Early in the twenty-first century, the old dualism of matter and spirit seems irrelevant. In the new theories of physicists, the fundamental material particles—protons, neutrons, electrons—dissolve into a kind of cosmic music, all resonances, vibrations, and spooky entanglements. Matter has revealed itself as a thing of astonishing, almost immaterial subtlety The one property of matter that lingers is its potentiality. The hydrogen and helium atoms forged in the Big Bang possessed a built-in capacity to complexify and diversify, to spin out stars and galaxies, carbon, silicon, oxygen, iron, and ultimately the rocky substrate of the Earth, even life and consciousness. Far from explaining away the mystery of the world, our new knowledge of matter rubs our noses in mystery. The more we learn, the more we become aware that matter—ordinary matter, even the handful of glacial drift that I scoop up along the path—is more than we had ever dared to guess.

From simple hydrogen atoms, it is incredible what can become of matter.