Suppose somebody came up to you and said that the universe is made of music. What would you think? Would it have more meaning if the person espousing the view was a physics professor at Johns Hopkins University?
In his "Unheard Melodies," Johns Hopkins University professor Donald Hatch Andrews said that in 1924, a young physicist named Louis de Broglie "proposed that the universe is not matter but music." Dr. Andrews then commented: "... at first glance, the statement that the universe is music seems ridiculous. But whether we like it or not, the facts from the laboratory cannot be denied; and the deeper we look into the world of the very small, the more we find evidence for this strange new harmony throughout the universe. So as we fit these observations of science together, we become more and more convinced that from now on we must do our basic thinking in terms which are musical rather than materialistic." Later Andrews describes this as music that "reaches out into dimensions far beyond any sound to which our ears are accustomed." Andrews, "Unheard Melodies," The Ferdinand Hamburger Archives of The Johns Hopkins University, Record Group 04.060, Department of Chemistry, series 1, subseries 3, box 3 .
I loved these ideas! And it occurred to me that if one were to look at individuals from the standpoint of music, it's possible that some lives might be described as straight-line melodies. Others may be more complex with various musical themes running through them. No doubt you have some friends whose lives could be described as fugues—or maybe your life is fuguelike. There's something special about thinking of each individual as expressing a divinely inspired harmony that transcends whatever human limitations might be attached to his or her life.
