Dark Matter

It’s straight out of MIT: We’re all in the dark; well, 95% anyway. One is tempted to paraphrase Lincoln: “Some of the people are in the dark all of the time, all people are in the dark 95% of the time, but 100% of the people cannot be 100% in the dark 100% of the time”… but I’ll refrain. 

Now, thanks to the blunt edge philosophers at the world’s leading school of technology, the universe just got a tiny bit darker. Consider the following excerpt from the 5/19/2025 issue of the MIT Technology Review: 

“We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That’s how much of what’s floating about in the cosmos is ordinary matter—planets and stars and galaxies and the dust and gas between them. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities aptly named for our inability to shed light on their true nature... Cosmologists have cast dark matter as the hidden glue binding galaxies together. Dark energy plays an opposite role, ripping the fabric of space apart.”

No, this is not a critique of the Dark Universe hypothesis; it’s a presentation of it! Even so, there’s nothing new here. But now just imagine this same paragraph written by a theist talking about ‘God’. It might go something like this:

“We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That’s how much of reality is knowable via our senses and reasoning faculties. The other 95% is what we call  Mystery. Observation and reason alone are unable to shed light here. Only Revelation can enlighten us re what must otherwise remain dark. Theologians have cast God as the hidden glue binding all things together (logos) and as a force (physis) ripping apart what is now to make way for what is to come.”

Public reaction would constitute a Tsunami. The Capitol itself would shake. Who knows, SCOTUS might even get involved. Does the 1^st Amendment protect such nonsense? Should it not be a crime to pollute the minds of our youth with such superstitious clap trap? Is this not a crime against humanity? Should we skip SCOTUS and bring the matter directly to The Hague?

After all, Socrates was sentenced to death on these very same grounds: corrupting the youth (of Athens). Should modern day theologians not pay the same price? I mean, how dare these idol worshipers, these conjurers of spells, these alchemists place limits on the scope of my all powerful reasoning ability? 

"Their so-called ‘God’ is merely a god-of-the-gaps. Whatever we don’t know, whatever we don’t understand, they call that God – as if that settles anything. Like preschoolers everywhere, they imagine that giving something a name makes it real. Neither God nor Adam claimed that power (Genesis) but our modern day astrologers do not hesitate to claim it for themselves."

This is the hypocrisy of secularism: Science is now the one true religion, established to the exclusion (or marginalization) or all others in direct contravention of the 1^st Amendment. There is no gnosis, and therefore no salvation, outside of the Academy. Even to question one of its tenets is tantamount to heresy. We are all now self-appointed Grand Inquisitors. 

By the age of 8, we are already rooting out apostasy like pigs nosing out truffles. Like Russian children in the days of Stalin, we are encouraged by our teachers to turn in non-conforming adults to the local ‘science police’; doing so can earn us a Fauci Medal (called the Hawking Medal in the UK), the highest honor a pre-teen can receive.

As parents, we want our children to have every advantage. So…we encourage them to join science clubs at school, and we send them to science camp every summer. Bully! As a young boy, I joined the Cub Scouts (age 8). Later, many of my friends continued on as Boy Scouts. 

Had I lived in Russia in those days, I might have been a Little Octobrist (ages 7 – 9) and worn a star-shaped badge sporting the image of a young Lenin. Later, if I showed promise and commitment, I might have been invited to join the Pioneers (Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization); my parents would have been so proud to see me wearing the distinctive red scarf. 

Now please don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with children receiving an education in science. In fact, it’s absolutely essential in our culture. But there was also nothing wrong with my friends and I learning survival skills at scouts; nor was there anything wrong with Russian children learning to campaign for social justice.

The problem comes when we substitute dogma (“rite words in rote order” - Joyce) for discovery. Dogmatism breeds intellectual laziness. It was dogmatism that condemned Galileo, not true religion; it was dogmatism that undermined Glasnost, not true justice; and it is dogmatism, not true science, that’s placing the intellectual promise of the 21^st century at risk.

Dogmatism encourages us to accept easy answers, even when those answers make no sense. We are no strangers to such dogmatics in the US. For 60 years, we lived under the spell of a race based ‘separate but equal’ education system (de facto and de jure). Then in the 1950’s a doctrine known as ‘my country right or wrong’ became part of our national identity. Today it’s ‘trust the science’. 

What’s interesting is that these dogmas all have something in common: they are not just moronic, they’re oxymoronic. How can two things be equal once you’ve invested even a quantum of energy to separate them? How can any country be right if it’s wrong? 

Worst of all, how can I trust something that I cannot verify? I can verify certain propositions within the scientific canon, but I cannot verify the canon itself. The essential nature of good science is to question everything and accept nothing solely on another’s authority: experimentation is to replace revelation. Inquiry is the antithesis of trust. 

I hear you: “You seem very sure of yourself. How can you be certain that the Dark Universe hypothesis won’t turn out to be true?” Ok, I’ll do you one better: “It will turn out to be true!” But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong either. Huh? How so?

Scientists invented the Dark Universe hypothesis to give a name to things that they don’t understand and can’t explain. Based on what we know, the Universe shouldn’t work. There’s not nearly enough mass to hold galaxies together. In fact, however, galaxies do exist, 100’s of billions of them with more forming ‘every day’. 

So something’s wrong and the Dark Universe hypothesis seems to solve the problem. Of course, it is merely ‘solving’ one unknown in terms of another. But the headlines are already in the can: “Dark matter confirmed!” Of course it will be confirmed because any advance in our understanding of the Universe will now be labeled “Dark”. 

Whatever we discover down the road to resolve the paradoxes of modern cosmology will end up being called “dark matter/dark energy”. And why not? The phrase, Dark Universe, has no denotative content. It’s a place holder for whatever we don’t know right now. 

Once we learn something about the universe that we don’t already know, it will ‘fit the definition’ of ‘dark’. Of course it will. We don’t know what Dark Matter is so whatever turns out to solve the paradox will be quite correctly labeled Dark, and we will say, “That’s what Dark Matter is, we knew it all along.” Except of course, we didn’t.

Following Heidegger, we know that Dark Matter is (Dasein); but don’t know what Dark Matter is (Wassein). Dark Matter will turn out to be whatever we need it to be…and we will look back and say, “Boy those 21^st century scientists were smart!” 

We have set up a math problem so that whatever answer we write down will be the correct one. If only we’d discovered this technique when I was in the 3^rd grade! Scientific reasoning is a wonderful thing. We couldn’t have left our caves without it. But it’s a lousy basis for a philosophy!   

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Francisco de Goya, The Dog, 1820–23, oil mural transferred to canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Goya’s image of a lone dog nearly engulfed by an undefined, shadowy expanse echoes the essay’s theme of humanity straining for understanding while overwhelmed by the vast unknown of the “dark universe.”