Space Without and Within

I read the other day that there is no known size to the universe, that as far as we know now, each time we come upon a planet or star or galaxy, we have every right to believe we will see another one past it. There is, in other words, no edge to it all, and if there were, we could not even conceive whatever might be on the other side of that border. I looked at, then, an accompanying photograph of deep space from the Hubble telescope, and that was enough to set me down.

Putting all that aside for a moment, let’s ask ourselves the more terrestrial question whether there should be a comma after the noun administrator in this sentence: In the interview there were only two technical questions that came from the system administrator asking whether I had any experience with artificial intelligence. The rules of the science of grammar stipulate that commas cut, meaning that they separate (for any of a host of reasons) what does not belong together—and conversely they associate what does. The word asking is a participle, and that linguistic compound combines elements of both verbs and adjectives, which is why the textbooks define a participle as a verbal adjective. If we pause to consider that definition, we will find the answer to our comma question.

The sentence as it stands has no comma between administrator and asking, and the proximity of those two words draws out the adjectival force of the participle. That means that the writer wishes to stress that it was the system administrator who asked whether he had any experience; the emphasis, in other words, is on a person, not an action. Had the writer, though, inserted a comma between administrator and asking, those two words would have been separated from each other, and the participle would have discharged its verbal force instead, because the comma would be telling the reader to overlook the immediate noun and return mentally to the verb came earlier in the sentence. Why the verb came? Because the verbal force of a participle radiates adverbial force as well, which the verb came will attract. The answer to our question, then, is this: either include a comma or not, depending upon what you want to say. The objective answer depends upon the subjective intent to angle the light this way or that for the reader. In most circumstances, there would be a comma.

Now what could possibly be the connection between these minutiae of grammar and the utterly arresting ideas about the nature of the universe which that Hubble photograph prompted? The definition of a system, whether solar or grammatical, is an organized body of facts. Systems are not random, although they may comprise some constituents which are; systems work, they’re effective and coherent and rational—all characteristics that apply both to accurate science and to clear language. Our ruminations about physical space, therefore, can remind us that we humans, who are beings able to marvel at such wonders outside ourselves, also possess our own interior space, every degree as disorienting when we look within as when we look without. But both being space, they harbor things to be found, and once found, to be ordered and comprehended. It is as if space, interior or exterior, were the stage for some grand allegory in which we play a willing part, a part requiring a rational system for its display.

Without and within we are looking both for and with reason, reason being the rationality which becomes us as human beings and characterizes the universe we find ourselves in. With reason we can observe the system and the coherence of what is implied by what we first naively perceive, whether in the skies or in the words we read and hear and write. We are searching with both science and art, and in both the macro- and microcosm, for the reasons behind the rules we detect, whether those rules are set by physical laws or linguistic custom. And in those rules we may discover, after all, that things are intelligible.

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