13 February 2007

The Fourth Annual Boyle LEcture:

Cosmology of Ultimate Concern

Professor John D Barrow

Rector George Bush

A very warm welcome to St Mary-le-Bow and the Boyle lecture. In the newly-published history of this parish, there will be a substantial chapter detailing the inception and history of the Boyle lectures and, indeed, much else besides.

Seemingly, in the Middle Ages, it was impossible to resolve legal disputes involving foreign territories. A device was invented by which these territories were deemed to be in England, and often here at St Mary-le-Bow. I am rather pleased that, for a time in the reign of Edward III, Majorca was in my parish! We have remained resolutely international; however, in recent weeks, we at St Mary-le-Bow, after much thought, demurred from participating,viatelecast, no international flights involved, and in real time, in a conference with our companion parish in New York, Trinity on Wall Street. This reticence was, despite collaborative intentions, technical expertise and the undoubted distinction of the participants, but partners here made us aware that a conference, although championing alternative contemporary readings, which was essentially about apocalypticism, would not 'run' in these Islands. It is several centuries since anyone here believed the world was coming to a divinely arranged end.

By contrast, a charity, Sense About Science, recently began a campaign to promote scientific evidence in the statements of celebrities when they stray into such areas. Joanna Lumley, usually free from criticism in these parts, has been taken to task for describing cancer as roaring ahead, whereas the prevalence of the disease is more to do with longevity. I had thought it was clerics who were most exasperated by inaccuracies made about or attached to our most cherished convictions and rituals. A corrective campaign to expose bad religion would require a strong nerve, but is of course essential. The revived Boyle Conversation with Science, physical and human, is a much to be desired corrective among much else to bad religion.

In espousing reasonable religion I note, and only from a review, that William Charlton, in a recent book of a similar name, states that: 'Science, having been mathematised, became identified with viewing the world as a closed mathematical system, and so people think that, if God exists, he would have to be a supernatural cause, interfering with such a system.' Most of us may not recognise this, but it informs a caricature of religion sensibility.

In welcoming you to this fourth revived Boyle Lecture, I am delighted to announce that Gresham College have most graciously agreed to record the proceedings and to make them available by webcast. There should, before long, be a link from Mary-le-Bow's own website, St Mary-le-Bow not normally numbered among those with overhead projectors and screens! I record a debt of gratitude to the Lecture's trustees for their guidance and enthusiasm, as to the worshipful Company of Mercers, and especially to the Grocers' Company, by turn patrons of this parish, whose interest and generosity has been imaginative and unstinting.

It is now my pleasure to introduce Dr Michael Byrne who, with energy and endless good humour, convenes, as indeed he has reinvented, these Lectures.

Dr Michael Byrne

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome you once again to this annual Boyle Lecture at St Mary-le-Bow. As George has said, this is the fourth in the new series of Boyle Lectures to be held at this church. The original series ran from 1692 to 1731, and the original Boyle Lectures were recognised, even then, as marking an important episode in the relationship between religion and the sciences in this country. Most of those early lecturers used their sermons to stress that the new natural philosophy developed in the late 17thcentury was wholly supportive of Christian theology. Both theology and the sciences have moved on a good deal since that time, and our intention in reviving these lectures four years ago was to ask whether that 17thcentury aspiration was still valid today.

The work of selecting each year's Boyle lecturer falls to a group of trustees, who give generously of their time to make such a success of this enterprise. The presence among them of Julian Tregoning, a former Master of the Grocers' Company, and David Vermont, a former Master of the Mercers' Company, recalls the deep historical connections between this church and the wider City of London, as does the presence among the trustees of Sir Brian Jenkins, a former Lord Mayor. Canon John Polkinghorne, the distinguished scientist and theologian, has been of inestimable assistance in identifying interesting speakers for the series, and another trustee, Jonathan Boyle, the 15thEarl of Cork and Orrery, recalls the connection between this event and the Boyle family. Lord Cork's predecessor, Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, was Robert Boyle's father.

This year, we are also very fortunate that the Earl of Selborne, chairman of the Board of Trustees at Kew Gardens and, like John Polkinghorne, a Fellow of the Royal Society, accepted our invitation to join the trustees, and we are honoured that the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, continues to be a member of the board. I reiterate the thanks of both the Rector George Bush and myself to these fellow trustees for their constant encouragements of this venture.

These new Boyle Lectures are also beginning to gain the attention of a wider audience. The first two lectures were published in the journalScience and Christian Belief, and last year's lecture by Philip Clayton and the response by Niels Gregerson, were both published in another academic journal,Theology and Science. We also plan, in 2009, to publish the first five of these new Boyle Lectures in book form, together with a debate on their relevance or otherwise by a number of critics and commentators.

I should also mention, as George already has, that the forthcoming History of St Mary-le-Bow, due for publication in September this year, will contain a chapter on the Lectures by a young German historian, Johannes Wienand. This History will mark the culmination of four years' work and will feature essays by a range of distinguished contributors on many aspects of the life of this Church since its foundation in or around 1080.

So let me conclude by introducing our speakers for this evening, both of whom can only have the time to do all the things they do by living in parallel universes, a concept which I expect both speakers will mention in their speeches this evening.

Responding to this year's Boyle Lecture is Professor Martin Rees, who became a member of the House of Lords as Lord Rees of Ludlow in 2005. Lord Rees is Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics in the University of Cambridge, where he is also Master of Trinity, Isaac Newton's old college. Lord Rees is also the author of many books which introduce issues in cosmology to a wider audience. Finding that these various activities still leave him with too much time on his hands, he also serves as Astronomer Royal and, since last year, as President of the Royal Society. We are very honoured to have him with us this evening.

Our Boyle lecturer for 2007 is Professor John D. Barrow, who also inhabits multiple universes. John is Professor of Mathematical Sciences in the University of Cambridge, as well as being Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College here in London. He took his undergraduate degree at Van Mildert College in the University of Durham. I mention this in passing, because that College is named for William Van Mildert, the last of the Prince Bishops of Durham who helped found the University there in the 1830s. Before being appointed a Bishop, Van Mildert was in fact Rector of this Parish, from 1796 until 1820, and in the years 1802 to '04, he delivered the Boyle Lectures here in this Church. Professor Barrow has written some 17 books of popular science, and has lectured at Number 10 Downing Street, Windsor Castle and the Vatican. He is also a playwright, and in 2006, he won the distinguished Templeton Prize. We are greatly honoured that he accepted our invitation to lecture here this evening, and it gives me great pleasure to invite him now to deliver the Boyle Lecture for 2007 on the topic 'Cosmology of Ultimate Concern'.

Professor John D Barrow FRS, Gresham Professor of Astronomy and University of Cambridge

The years 1691 and 1692 were very eventful and significant for the subject of natural theology for the entwinement of theology and the natural sciences. Of course in 1691, Robert Boyle died, and his Will set up the series of sermons and lectures that we now call the Boyle Lectures. The first of those was given by the young Richard Bentley in 1692 at the age of 29. But also at that time, in those two years, two very influential volumes were being published by John Ray, based on lectures that he gave in Cambridge, so natural theology was something that was in the intellectual air as well as being in the religious air. It was only five years since Newton'sPrincipiaappeared in 1687, and what Bentley decided to do amounted to a sea-change in the way that natural theology was presented and fashioned.

Previously, the focus of natural theologians had been upon the multiplicity of the outcomes of the laws of nature, the fortuitous coincidences of those outcomes that appeared to create an environment tailor-made for life and for our sort of it in particular. But what Bentley decided to do was to take information that he had gleaned from more informal versions of Newton'sPrincipiato create a form of design argument in natural theology that was based not upon the outcomes of the laws of nature but upon the forms of those laws themselves. Newton was the first to create an extensive system of universal laws of nature. Bentley engaged in correspondence with Newton in order to learn more carefully and more clearly what Newton's views were about the issues he intended to raise in his lectures. Newton clearly approved of this enterprise, and the famousLetters to Bentleyare among the most interesting pieces of informal scientific intuition that exist from that period.

Bentley recognised the scope of Newton's creation for what his enterprise required. He was of course a classical scholar. Later on, he would go on to become Master of Trinity College, like Lord Rees; fortunately Lord Rees is a much more enlightened Master of Trinity College than Bentley ever was, and certainly will not be following the course of action that Bentley embarked upon in his engagement with the Fellows. They failed over many years to have him removed and, to their chagrin, he eventually died in his bed in the College. Well, they were probably pleased he died- but not in the College!

Bentley took his cue from, in effect, new physics of his time, and we are going to do the same: we are going to look at what some of the new ideas in cosmology have to say about our place in the universe.

Like Bentley, we know that the universe is big, but what Bentley did not know and we do is that it is also getting bigger. Since the late-1920s, we have known that the universe is expanding; that distant parts of the universe, distant clusters of galaxies, are receding away from one another at ever-increasing speeds. That introduces to cosmology a complexion of the universe which we might call an evolutionary one; that things are in a state of change. The universe is not like a watch in the sense that Paley once tried to persuade us in 1802 - it is not like a watch because it is not finished at the level of the astronomical phenomena. It is still changing, it is still developing, it is still exploring all the potential that is possible for it to visit.

We can measure the size of the universe as it expands against time in billions of years; the expanding universe and the unfolding trajectory of its history. That trajectory means that at different times, conditions are different. When the universe is small, it is hot and dense, and too hot in its first quarter of a million years for any atoms to exist. Today, it is relatively cool and sparse, just a few degrees above absolute zero. In between, as it has expanded, it has, first of all, allowed the first atoms to form, then molecules, then great islands of material condense out to form what we now call galaxies and, within them, stars, planets and ultimately people can form.

In the future, the long range forecast looks rather bleak. The Sun and the Solar System around it will undergo an irrevocable energy crisis. If our descendents wish to survive, they had better move elsewhere, but ultimately wherever they move to will suffer the same fate, and the long range forecast of the universe is bleak for habitation and for life. Similarly, if you look back early enough, the universe is not able to support life. There is a short interval of cosmic history, a niche of time during which conditions allow life as we know it and complexity in any chemical form to exist. The fact that we live within that habitable niche is of course no coincidence. We live about 13.7 billion years after the apparent beginning. Those enormous periods of time seem very strange. A few years ago, I was shopping in my supermarket and I discovered that these enormous periods of time had even infiltrated the commercial world of Sainsbury's. On the shelf there was a sachet of salt, and it had written on the side, 'This salt is over 200 million years old. Extracted from the mountain ranges of Germany. Best before April 4th2003!'

This unfolding trajectory of evolution in the universe is linked to our own existence in unexpected ways. The elements of chemistry that you need for any type of complexity, things that are heavier than helium and hydrogen gases, do not appear ready-made in the universe; they do not come from the apparent Big Bang beginning. They are made in the stars by a sequence of nuclear reactions that are long and slow, and they amount to combining helium with helium to make beryllium, beryllium with helium to make carbon, and then carbon with helium to make oxygen and so on. When stars reach the end of their lifetime and explode and die, these life-supporting elements are dispersed around space, and ultimately find their way into rocks and debris and planets and you and me. So all the carbon nuclei in your bodies have, at some stage, been through a star, perhaps more than once.