Disturbing the Universe

By Freeman Dyson
A book review essay by Sally Morem

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair….
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?

It is fitting that Freeman Dyson quotes these lines from a T.S. Eliot poem. It
is also fitting that he takes the name of his book from that last line. Both
Dyson and Eliot realize that that’s precisely what human beings do. We not
only dare to disturb the universe, we do it every day.

Dyson describes how scientists disturb things. He describes how Feynman

and Oppenheimer argued physics while designing the world’s first atomic
bomb. He describes how Ted Taylor designs spaceships. He describes how
Gerald O’Neill envisioned space colonies. And he describes how Philip
Morrison calculated the likelihood that life exists somewhere else in the
universe.
Dyson probes his own boyhood memories for the source of his delight in
fashioning explanations of natural phenomena, and in generating great
societal change by getting the right answers. He was fascinated both by
mathematics and fantasy stories. Both held hints and promises of great
knowledge and power.

He chose mathematics (and then physics) as a profession, but never forgot

the delights of the fantastical as revealed in his love of poetry and futuristic
technology. He imagines beings, perhaps our descendants, able to live in the
vacuum of space using the energy of the Sun as their food and fuel. He
imagines a huge shell surrounding a star, gathering energy for vast scientific
and technological projects. Hence, the Dyson Sphere.

But, it is odd. He makes a strange, almost fervently ideological

differentiation between what he calls “gray” technology and “green”
technology. Gray technology is machine-like, lifeless, sterile. Green
technology is living, breathing, growing in diversity. But his division seems
artificial [pun intended]. It seems to be an artifact of his coming of age in
our rapidly receding Industrial Age.

He describes the concept of O’Neill space colonies as “cans of metal and

glass in which people live hygienic and protected lives, insulated from both
the wildness of Earth and the wildness of space.” Why is the wildness of
Earth restricted to Earth in his imaginings? Dyson never explains how he
came to this conclusion.
It would be perfectly possible to generate a wide variety of Earth ecosystems
in space colonies. There’s room enough in space for any conceivable
combination of climate, vegetation, predators and prey, and landscapes in
the thousands of space colonies people may one day construct. Imagine the
Twin Cities metro area with its hundreds of lakes and dozens of suburbs
rolled up into a long tube and set in space. That would be one design.
Imagine the Big Island of Hawaii likewise set in space. Go around the world
and imagine setting your favorite tourist spots in space colonies. If people
want it, one day it will come. Wildness, tameness, and everything in
between, designed, built and sent out in the Solar System and to the stars.

It’s very likely that when we do go into space, we will take our Earth
environments with us, just as our ancestors from Africa took their tropical
climate with them in the form of clothing, shelter, and fire. We may then
diversify these environments, creating new ones never seen on Earth, over
the generations of space development to come. Designing space colony
environments may well become a major new art form. At that point in our
cultural evolutionary development, gray and green may blend and become
one.

Disturbing the Universe does what this kind of book is supposed to do. It
encourages the reader to question long-held beliefs and conventional
thought. It helps the reader engage in truly unconventional thought…at
which point the truly attentive reader begins to question the questioner.

Do I dare?

Of course.

Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson. (New York: Harper/ Colophon

Books, 1979.)