But with thousands of scientists all working together on the same manuscript, it is all but impossible to go against the flow. In the end, there is no way to know whether science is converging on a single truth, the way the universe really is, or simply building artificial structures, tools that allow us to predict, to some extent, and to explain and control. This dilemma hovered in the back of my mind as I explored New Mexico's patchwork quilt of cultures, talking with people up against the edge of knowledge, and of what it is possible to know. The tension between history and science, contingency and timeless natural law, runs throughout these pages. Traditionally, biology has been seen as a historical science, while physics is regarded as a search for absolutes.
Physicists seek that which is constant throughout the universe.
One of the themes of this book is that this division between physics and biology is becoming blurry. Conversely, we will see physicists seeking signs of contingency in the way the universe happened to crystallize from the big bang. If so, it would be no more required that we have neutrinos than that we have hemoglobin, no more necessary that we have four fundamental forces than twelve ribs and thirty-three vertebrae. What I propose to provide between these covers is a tour of some of the edges of twentieth-century science that are being explored in the laboratories of northern New Mexico. After a panoramic sweep of the physical and intellectual terrain, Part One will present a bird's-eye view of particle physics and astronomy, the science of the very small and the science of the very large.