Some who have been reading my newsletter know that, lately, I have taken to spelling the supreme being as G-d with a hyphen as part of my (very) fledgling spiritual journey. Many of the more devout Jews do that out of respect for what in the Christian tradition St. Anselm described as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The name of the creator of the universe is too holy for humans to write out.
Meanwhile, at Israel’s Tel Aviv University (TAU)—where conditions, as we know, are not exactly normal—researchers “have successfully manufactured a new type of glass that while maintaining its transparency can come together instantly with the touch of water at room temperature.”
The story states that the research, “led by PhD student Gal Finkelstein-Zuta and Prof. Ehud Gazit from the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering at TAU, could dramatically change the sustainability and cost of tools in a variety of industries.”
“Most notably,” it reads, “the discovery could revolutionize optics and electro-optics, satellite communication, remote sensing, and biomedicine.”
A new form of glass? What does this mean exactly? And how does it happen? Ms. Finkelstien-Zuta called it just like making Kool-Aid.
“The commercial glass we all know is created by the rapid cooling of molten materials, a process called vitrification,“ she said, according to The Jerusalem Post. ”The amorphous liquid-like organization should be fixed before it arranges in a more energy-efficient way as in crystals, and for that energy is required—it should be heated to high temperatures and cooled down immediately. On the other hand, the glass we discovered, which is made of biological building blocks, forms spontaneously at room temperature, without the need for energy such as high heat or pressure. Just dissolve a powder in water—just like making kool-aid [sic], and the glass will form. For example, we made lenses from our new glass. Instead of undergoing a lengthy process of grinding and polishing, we simply dripped a drop onto a surface, where we control its curvature—and hence its focus—by adjusting the solution volume alone.”
Wow. What’s going on here? Are we back to the Middle Ages? This sounds like alchemy. David Copperfield should add it to his Vegas act.
But it’s not magic. It’s real ... I think. It has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
So where does this leave us regarding intelligent design? (I should note that I never regarded my skepticism of ID as proof that God did not exist.)
Yes, this discovery could be looked at as just another—but rather extraordinary—advance in science. Still, there are other factors, not just, as I alluded to above, that it took place in the Holy Land while under fire but also the very complexity and invisibility of this discovery. In a way, it relates to the world of quarks and other constituents of matter from small particle physics that we are now told have a random quality to them.
Who puts all this together?
Much of it that I have been reading contains similarities to ideas you might find in Christianity and Buddhism, but with its own point of view, one you could almost say is vibrantly optimistic. Leafing through an abbreviated version this morning, I found the following quote that seemed apposite to the discoveries of the Tel Aviv researchers:
“To attain true joy
contemplate God
permeating all things
realize that this world
is nothing but divine glory.”
