In its purest form, the human spirit of inquiry is a holy thing.  According to the Rambam (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, 2:2), nothing less than the mitzvah of ahavas Hashem is fulfilled when a person investigates nature and, struck by its intricacy and beauty, is filled with awe and gratitude to HaKodosh Boruch Hu.

And so it is exciting to ponder the new aspects of physical reality that might be revealed by the Large Hadron Collider – the 17-mile-circumference particle accelerator that, over 15 years and at a cost of some $8 billion, was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) underneath the French-Swiss border.

Subatomic physics is already a wonderland of strange beauty (not to be confused with “strange” and “beauty” – fanciful names physicists have, at one time or another, given to types of quarks),  having revealed that the seemingly mechanistic, clockwork universe we experience in daily life hides astonishing oddities, uncertainties and incomprehensibilities.

Those microcosmic bafflements complement the more readily accessible wonder of the world we experience when we simply look up at the stars, or down into the grass, or at a sunrise, or a newborn baby.  The Standard Model – the current theory of how subatomic particles interact – reminds us that not only do the “heavens relate the glory of G-d” (Tehillim 19:2) but that “to His wisdom there can be no comprehension” (Yeshayohu, 40:28).

An ultimate understanding of the universe will likely always evade the mortal mind.  But new revelations the LHC might yield – when its gargantuan magnets accelerate streams of particles in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light so that they collide and release their until now unexamined innards – make the mammoth machine a most promising engine of scientific advancement.

Some cheerers-on of that advancement, however, are not exactly motivated by the Maimonidean quest to gain inspiration through a new glimpse of Hashem’s subtle wisdom.  To the contrary, they look to whatever new knowledge the LHC may grant as just further justification for denying the Divine, forklifts with which to pull themselves up onto the pedestal of omniscience.  They hope that the LHC will confirm the existence of particles predicted by the latest theories – one such beastie, the Higgs boson, has even been labeled by some the “G-d Particle,” for its potential to lead to a grand unified theory of the universe – and thus show that the human mind can fully grasp the totality of creation, and is thus its intellectual master.

And so, while there are many scientists (like astrophysicists Fred Hoyle, Paul Davies and Arno Penzias, to name a few of the most famous) who maintain their human sense of wonder at the world and see purpose in nature, others, like physicist Steven Weinberg, choose to see the cosmos as fascinating but ultimately meaningless.  Commenting on the LHC’s expected informational yield, he opined that “as science explains more and more, there is less and less need for religious explanations.”

Such conceit recalls another technological project, one whose promoters’ focus was on the macrocosmic.  The builders of the Migdal Bovel, the Torah tells us, sought to erect a structure whose top would pierce the heavens, the better to assert their independence from the Divine and “make for ourselves a name.”  Their plans, of course, were dashed; their arrogance did them in.

The LHC was supposed to have already yielded its harvest of new particles by now.  On September 10, proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the structure.  Nine days later, though, operations were halted, as an electrical fault caused liquid helium to leak into the tunnel, damaging dozens of the LHC’s superconducting magnets and contaminating the “collider’s ring.  Physicists say it will take until next summer to make the necessary repairs.

“Man tracht, G-t lacht,” – “Man contemplates, G-d laughs” goes the Yiddish expression.  I don’t know if Hashem laughed as the glitch rained on the LHC parade.  I certainly didn’t; I was deeply disappointed.  My thoughts, thought, did go back to the builders of Bovel, and to how, in monumental projects, success or failure may ultimately hang on intentions.

Will the LHC in fact come to function as planned, and allow us to see deeper into nature?  It might just depend on why we’re looking in the first place.

© 2008 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]