Listening to Sandage wrestle so honestly with the question of ultimate origins, with the implications of a theory that did not comport well with his previously long-held worldview, made a big impression on me. Could it be, I wondered, that scientific discoveries about the origin of the universe now challenged the long dominant materialism of the scientific establishment? Sandage seemed to be saying at least that much, and with good reason. If the material universe (of mass, energy, space, and time) itself came into existence a finite time ago, then matter and energy do not seem to be good
...more
