Mr. Gleiser,
Thank you; your essay was a joy to read. I have already added your book, 'The Dancing Universe,' to my Amazon shopping cart, and look forward to reading it.
Your book may describe a myth which has long been a favorite of mine. It relates the story of the wise man from an earlier era who was teaching "cosmology" to his avid disciples. "The Earth upon which we live," he explains, is actually the back of a gigantic tortoise. "But, Master," asks one of his disciples, "what is the gigantic tortoise standing on?" To which the Master replies, "It was revealed to me in a dream that the tortoise is standing on the back of an even more gigantic elephant." "Ah, yes," replies the disciple, "that is very good! But then what is the elephant standing on?" To which the Master was forced to reply, "That, my son, even I do not know."
I tend to view the lot of humankind as being very much analogous to the lot of a dog riding in the back of a pickup truck. Much as the dog may enjoy riding in the truck, it has no concept whatsoever of the internal combustion engine which powers the truck. This is not because the dog is "faulty" in any way, nor is it because internal combustion engines are intrinsically impossible to comprehend; it simply reflects the fact that dogs' brains have not evolved sufficiently to comprehend these things. In a similar way, I suspect that much as we humans may enjoy our little ride through the universe, our brains have not evolved sufficiently to fully comprehend the engine which drives it.
Regardless of how wonderfully our brains eventually may evolve in the future (assuming, of course that we don't stupidly erase ourselves or become erased by some impersonal cosmic disaster before that can happen), I suspect that we may never learn exactly what it is that the elephant is standing on. But that could be a good thing, because we are energized most profoundly and most joyfully by our (hopefully never ending) quest to understand more about the universe than we already do. Today, internal combustion engines, tomorrow, the universe.
Cheers