Particles Of Change

''We're only particles of change I know, I know, orbiting around the sun. But how can I have that point of view, when I'm always bound and tied to someone.''

So sang Joni Mitchell in the song Hejira. The reference to 'particles of change' brought her song to my mind, given the huge media coverage to the £5 billion Big Bang experiments in Switzerland at the moment.

I am reminded by these vast - and vastly exciting - scientific investigations that our world is composed of endless matter, energy, space and time. I find it entirely humbling to think of the enormity of the universe, and the infinitesmally small part I play in it!

But then I think again - of Shakespeare - and another piece of culture that is close to my heart - the film Withnail and I. Towards the end of the film the character played by Richard E Grant recites to himself the lines from Hamlet about What a Piece of Work is a Man. It goes like this:

''What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?''

I am told that the scientists in Cern are looking for the so called god particle that was the builder of universe and life at the time of the big bang. But - you know - I'm not sure they are going to find it.

I think that life stems from something that is not part of the laws of the physical universe at all. I believe that the spirit - the stuff that makes man and woman such a piece of work - is more abstract than that.

So 'the quintessence of our dust' is probably not accelerating around a 24 kilometer track at close to the speed of light beneath the city of Geneva! But then I am a good catholic boy - so I would think that wouldn't I?"