I was not looking for this book. I rarely buy anything on Amazon, but I do use it frequently as a search tool. Bezos doesn’t need any of my money…he has more than enough without the meager amount my book buying habit could send his way. I use the library, rarely buying more than a few books anymore in a year. “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred”, turned out to be a valuable surprise. I’m always searching for books that crossover between physics and biology, that examine that complex academic space between the too often clearly demarcated, and isolated, sciences, books that address the question of, ‘What is life?’. This isn’t one of those, but it is about physics, how we do it, how the world we live in colors it and how those ‘physics’ are used to shape the world we all live in. I found this book, in that space labelled, ‘Customers who viewed this item also viewed’. It was not what I expected.

The author, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, decided to be a particle physicist when she was ten years old. She was a precocious child who loved math and the physics of the quantum level universe, from an early age. I know, weird. She would talk to her fellow students on the bus about quarks and such. The fact that she succeeded in her professional quest, at least so far, is remarkable given the circumstances of her birth, her family economics, being the daughter of a Black Caribbean mother and an Ashkenazi Jewish father, growing up in a mixed Latino neighborhood of East LA. Add to this that she was primarily raised by her single parent mother who was a social activist, suffered a life changing accident when hit by a car while riding a bicycle, identifies as agender while presenting as femme and was raped by a professor in her department. That’s a lot of hurdles to overcome.

Prescod-Weinstein, P-W, discusses all of this. The world of particle physics is perhaps the branch of science with the highest proportion of white/male scientists among its numbers. It is a science still driven by western European thought, dating back before there was a study called physics, to Issac Newton and Rene Descartes. Women are few. Women of color, even less so. Discrimination is built in to its organizational structure and competitive culture. The further one is from the ‘standard’ of white, male membership, the rarer their existence, the more gates are closed to them. The world of science is not a meritocracy. 

The first third of her book describes her work in physics and astronomy, discussing the big questions that drew her to the field, what excited her. I found her explanations of the details of particle and quantum physics, her study of dark matter and the formation of the universe, to be among the clearest I’ve read. Most scientists can’t translate from their specialized jargon to that of the interested laymen. They are far more comfortable with the equations which serve as the language in this esoteric field. Language here is an even greater problem than you might imagine as scientists, for want of a better choice, often borrow words from our everyday lexicon and assign them entirely different and very specific meanings, to processes and phenomenon far outside of our everyday experience. There’s literally, no words for what they are attempting to describe. This leads to confusion by the general reader. For example, the color charge and ‘spin’ of quarks, such as red, green or blue, up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom, which refer to qualities of quarks and how they interact with one another. These have nothing to do with their color or qualities these assigned names might suggest. They are outside of our knowing, our experience, but are real all of the same.

Dark matter, and its companion, dark energy, comprises 95% of the universe. The other 5%, is the observable portion of the universe, the portion that we can ‘see’ with our eyes and the instruments we have so far developed. We can only surmise that ‘dark matter’ is there, through maths we use to explain the behavior of galaxies and neutron stars, the expansion of the universe. Because we can gauge the rotational speed of a given galaxy, we know that there is far more mass to them than we can ‘see’. Without the additional mass galaxies would have long ago desintigrated as there is no where near the mass, and its consequential gravity, to keep them from ‘flying’ apart. What we demonstrably know, is insufficient to explain the universe, its contents and ‘behavior’ on its own. This 95% is not detectable. It effects gravity, but otherwise does not interact, in any way we know, with detectable matter and energies, such as observable light or any of the electromagnetic energies. Einstein demonstrated how matter bends spacetime around it, bending it in proportion to its increasing mass. The more massive an object, the more sharply it curves spacetime. This curvature effects us and everything else through gravitational effect. Gravity is not a force attributable to mass. Gravity is a consequence of curving spacetime as it bends around masses.

I particularly like this passage of the author’s:

 Gravity is not a force but rather an artifact of curved spacetime…. Imagine, going down a long slide that has curves in it. We are tied to gravity in the same way, following the bumps as the shortest possible way to get from the top to the slide to the bottom. The source of the curvature? Matter causes space time to bend around it. and we experience this curvature of space time as the force, gravity[…]Space isn’t a room that sits in the background. It is a room that is interacting with its contents. The contents can only move around the room, according to its shape— as before, in the Newtonian model— but now the contents of the room also influence the shape of the room. The room is in the foreground changing over time. For centuries, scientific thinkers, thought that gravity was a feature of matter, but in fact, it was a feature of space time.

My friend, Zeah Lessley, wrote the following comment to me after reading this:

What’s extra trippy is that if you were traveling through space on a perfectly straight line, say floating […] in your special little spaceship, and you have your trajectory changed due to a large gravity well, [created by a massive object] you wouldn’t move a hair to the side because you did technically go in a straight line according to everything you can measure [in Euclidean geometry].

Insert a smiley face here🤓

This is not a book focused on these phenomenon, rather, they are a jumping off point. The physics of this book is more of a tease. I would like to read an entire book on this topic authored by her. I appreciate P-W’s perspective and ability to communicate these ideas. The focus of Prescod-Weinstein book has other themes, and they seem to be the most pressing ones. Dark matter, she argues, more accurately should be called, ‘invisible’ matter. Dark implies that it absorbs light, like a dark object…it doesn’t. Light passes through it qualitatively unchanged, unabsorbed, unreflected, unrefracted. Visually, to us, it is as if it isn’t there. The descriptor, ‘dark’, permits comparison with dark skinned people, who are, according to many ‘white’ skinned people, less than…inferior to the matter that ‘counts’. A dark object is detectable. The word, ‘Dark’, carries negative connotations in our society. As the author points out highly melanated people, those with darker skins than ‘whites’, would never have assigned this name to this unknown material. She goes on discussing how white science continues promulgating inherently racist views that dark skinned people are substantially different, when in fact they are not. The difference is a ‘social’ fabrication, a device, conceit or convenience, for those who would retain power and control over darker skinned people. White men are over-represented in the sciences. Non-white, and other minority groups are under represented. Programs for youth that would support them as they choose to follow such a career path are few. Non-white and minority grads are discouraged by the built in biases, the relative dearth of opportunities and the messages they regularly receive from white peers, administrators and profs which repeatedly deliver some version of a message of inferiority. They are actively discouraged from scientific careers. The few who get by these hurdles find themselves in a position of having to continuously prove themselves. Science becomes secondary after survival and, worn down, many minority members drop away.

Dark matter isn’t the matter we’ve studied and know, it is fundamentally different than visible, detectable, matter. People, despite their inheritable differences in amounts of melanin in their skins, are of the same ‘stuff’. This becomes a dominant theme of her book as it progresses. Dark matter, undeniably shapes and effects the universe, bending spacetime around it. Its makeup and ‘behavior’ is qualitatively different than the matter we know. This is the focus of P-W professional work…when she can do it. The practice of science today demands much of its practitioners, work that has little to do with the work of science itself.

She doesn’t attempt to dumb down particle physics, astronomy and cosmology, the story of the universe, or make it ‘fun’…nor does she try to impress the reader with her ‘superior’ brilliance. In fact she downplays her intelligence and writes of how difficult her studies often were for her, as an undergrad, graduate and postdoc, how her pursuit of a tenured position feels unlikely. It is in the two latter sections of the book where she writes about what made so much of her education and struggles so difficult and her performance often appear lackluster.

Much of this book is a critique of how we do science in this country and ‘why’ we do so. It  becomes a critique of our entire society, our politics and economics, our relations with one another. Particle physics and astronomy, as conducted today, suffers the same problems of our larger society and country. P-W will be considered by some ruthless in her analysis, flat out wrong by others. She is however, thoughtful and thorough, a scrupulous thinker who has spent much of her professional life looking at how we do science, who is welcome, who is excluded and how and what is exacted from those credentialed and allowed to participate. She also teaches classes in women’s and gender studies and has conducted research into what is wrong with how we do science in this country. She is far from ‘happy’ with the state of its practice.

My first degree is in sociology and her critique feels spot on. When P-W claims that the way we do science is tainted by the same systemic racism and misogynistic structures and attitudes that permeate our culture, I agree. In many ways our society still conducts itself as an occupying colonial power. In our world today people are set against one another in competition. The greater good, with its expected sacrificing, and deferred rewards, is a lure. The reality is that the system has another agenda and limits its largesse, to a select few, keeping the rest in line as they struggle to maintain their position and relative security. People at the bottom are often under no such illusion and understand that they are blocked and excluded. She strips away the veil behind which this takes place arguing how politics, economics and social institutions limit and control universities, the acceptance of students and the assigning of tenure, even what can be researched, much as they do the rest of society. 

The work of science, research and experimentation today, ‘must’ have direct utility, to serve business and the preferred economy, or it is considered frivolous and wasteful. Attacks on basic research proposals often come in the form of ridicule by the public, jeering selected vanity projects, critics picking out those they chose to heap scorn upon. There will always be questionable grant requests, but basic research is often dismissed and ignored, projects chosen for the ease with which they can be dismissed as jokes and irresponsible. In our world today science is strictly limited to that which serves the growth economy. It’s funding and priorities pretty clearly demonstrate this. Basic science, that which serves understanding, without any immediate and direct utility, as well as that which simply works directly toward the general health and good of the whole, are generally under funded or ignored completely. Funding comes from the government with its focus on economic growth, or from wealthy donors, with their more focused agendas, whose ‘gifts’ are generally tax deductible. Research is expected to meet the demands of those making decisions which will prove profitable for big business. Elon Musk pours billions into his own vanity project, his Space X program, with its goal of reaching Mars, colonizing it in an effort to escape the destruction of Earth presumably, because Musk can afford to. Not because this has been determined to be best for society. Could this money be better spent addressing some of the problems causing leading to a degraded world. Musk couldn’t care less what happens to those he would leave behind.

Another element of her analysis is the cost exacted from those permitted to practice science. Like so many human endeavors today our individual efforts often feel misdirected, insufficient or genuinely destructive to a healthy society and planet. While we work to provide for our families, provide them some degree of security and attain a degree of ‘success’ in our chosen fields, we invariably end up feeling relatively powerless and ineffectual, while working on things that we know may very well be counter to what we might otherwise choose. We do what we’re told, accept what we are ‘given’ and ‘settle’….Scientists are generally drawn to their careers by the sense of awe and wonder they feel for the world, its workings and the challenges that life faces…but our entire system is skewed in such away that  the greater good, health, a better world, though promised, seems to be slipping further away. In this way the world of science is no different than that experienced by us laboring in the everyday world. What matters, yours, mine, ours, and the health of the entire planet and the possibility of a healthy future, are secondary to goals set for us, beyond question….If we want these things, then we must first do this. Only, the future never arrives. 

The management of science, P-W argues, actively misdirects efforts to change itself. It schedules meetings, creates committees to study problems, defines the problem and goals in ways which misdirect and defuse efforts to address the real problem, as the system is quite content with the status quo. So we, each successive generation, pledge our lives to work which consumes and diminishes ourselves, the lives and health of others and the planet. We are set up in a competition with others for these things, which we never truly, securely, attain…no matter how hard we work. We work towards other’s goals while seeing lesser ‘others’ as our competitors, those whose success assures our own failure to reach these things for ourselves…and we rarely, if ever, talk about the rules by which we work, how they construct it in such a way that guarantees our frustration as collectively continue consuming resources and possibilities, while a handful of the rich and powerful, accumulate more wealth and power. We do this because that is what the system is set up to do. As a result, minorities of all kinds, are under represented in the sciences, their communities largely ignored, their voices going unheard. As one of those rare members P-W makes her case.

Her analysis reaches out far beyond the world of science. Science is conducted at a remove. We do damage to ourselves when we reserve it for the ‘eggheads’ and fail to connect it to us, the people. Knowledge and understanding has become other. Science is suspect. In a world in which knowledge is power we have created barriers between it and ourselves. People need to be brought back into science. We need to see ourselves reflected in those who practice it. In school, however, we are taught that it is difficult and, even worse, that it is unessential. We need rediscover its value.We understand that knowledge is power and we have become suspicious of scientists…because of the way we conduct it. Our isolation from it. Its practitioners need to prioritize making it accessible to us. We need to reawaken our sense of wonder and awe for the world diminishing the space for ignorance and fear. This can only be accomplished by making its practice more inclusive and its goals more explicitly in support of life, rather than profit and control.

What we do, who does it and how are political decisions. Who gets accepted and advanced, what research is funded, are political and effect people and outcomes. People and life can not be removed from our decisions and the claim that it can, damages people and the science. Simply claiming that one is unbiased and decisions going unchallenged, reinforce the operative givens in an organization and society. Life matters. Our goals and the way we do our work, how we do our work, all matter. How we do science is troubled by the same things that effect how we govern, how we treat each other. Democratic governance is under continuous challenge. today Excluding voices can only exacerbate this.

Today, reality, truth and governance, are being ‘bent’ into a tool to serve those who continue to limit who the world serves. Despite what organizations and governments might publicly proclaim, reality is determined by practice. Racism, misogyny, colonial practices at home continue despite rhetoric. Ours is an overly competitive world that denies others, ignoring the fact that nothing ‘good’ or sustainable is accomplished by individuals on their own, ignoring the essential element of cooperation and mutual support. Real progress, that promotes the well being and health of all, is necessarily a product of the whole. Inclusion, she argues, is the path for better science and a better life. This is not dependency. It is not a weakness. We have before us an opportunity, to improve our collective lives. That can not be attained through a retreat to an idealized past which never existed or by the act of exclusion. That is our old historic path and its promise of progress and comfort to some at the expense of the many, is ultimately futile. That others insist that we must continue on this divisive and exclusionary path promise only conflict and continuing losses of opportunity.  It can deliver only a joyless world lived at the expense of others.

In recent years, emboldened, the beneficiaries of exclusion are working to make their ‘vision’ more explicit, demonstrating little if any care for those they view as inferior, inconsequential. If you are one of the beneficiaries of this lopsided system, you won’t like P-W’s analysis. A great many others, shocked by the ‘sudden’ rise of fascism in our world today, have failed to see it working in the background all along. We are a country with a long history of racism and fascism. We are colonizers who have taken what we could. White Europeans fled to North America and chose to ‘take’ it from the indigenous people who had been here for several thousand years. We brought slaves to do much of the worst of the work and to wait on us. We allowed immigrants as long as they remained useful and then excluded them. We still conduct ourselves economically and politically as colonizers, whites, especially wealthy white males, with superior rights, and bent the ‘rules’ to assure their power and wealth. Those of ‘lesser station’, wage workers, scramble, competing amongst themselves for what they can, being very protective of what rights and privileges they have over those lesser than them. It’s an ugly situation. It’s in play at all levels of society, because, as P-W asserts, we have, for the most part, bought into it, conscious or not. Getting out of this will take a lot of work and commitment. It requires that we view each other all as valued and respected individuals, members of shared communities, citizens of the same world, dependent upon one another and the vitality of all of the living communities upon the Earth…without exception. That’s really the only way. Once we begin to place each other into lesser stations within a hierarchy, denying that which others require and need, the outcome is predictably negative. Science, like our other social institutions, operate within this same structure. This is not about implicit bias. This is a structural problem built into the way we conduct our lives and business. It has a long bloody history. Denying that, setting hiring or admission quotas, dressing it up in PC language and wringing our hands, won’t change anything effectively. That will require honesty, work and an acceptance of others, a love for life, all of it.

P-W loves the idea of science, yet she struggles with the reality of its practice, how it serves the few and ignores the many, limiting the wonder and joy that its practice should/could be. This is a book about the practice of science in America today. it has a lot to say about how we conduct business and our lives in general. Her experience is so common in the broader world that to oppose it feels overwhelming. This outcome is intended and works in support of those who retain control. Dividing. Leaving individuals struggling on their own, in competition with their peers and neighbors, weakens us all, and reinforces those who want to keep the world the way it is. Competition, many argue, makes us stronger, but when the ‘opposition’ holds the power, competitors become lesser settlers, even desperate to hang on. The ‘rules’ are differently applied. Consequences not evenly distributed. Being inclusive, talking about the need for change, without acknowledging our history and what is happening to people everyday, without a commitment to improve the lives of others and ourselves, only extends the ‘game’. P-W wonders if she will ever get the security of a tenured position, while at the same what it will ‘cost’ her to do so. Doing physics, doing science, demands much of practitioners which has little to do with science and a lot to do with keeping the way we do it, and the world, the same.