That’s been my question since 2009 when I started writing my new book, The God Notes. The God Notes is my deepest dive into the nature of reality since The Field. It’s the story of the latest scientific revolution in its infancy, and it was born from a throwaway line.
I’d been watching a documentary called Did Darwin Kill God, in 2009, featuring presenter Conor Cunningham, a philosopher and theologian at the University of Nottingham, interviewing Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge, one of the world’s preeminent paleobiologists and a committed Christian.
Renowned for his research demonstrating how divergent life forms with entirely independent evolutionary paths produce markedly similar results, Morris was making the case for some sort of intelligent and universal design beneath the process of evolution.
For instance, take music. “Animals,” Morris said, “have music remarkably similar to ours. Some birds have drumming, for example, plus harmony, melody, and invention. There are even cultures of music.” In the oceans, he said, whales even swap songs.
“Now, supposing there is a universal music out there,” he added. “The reason why the music sounds the same is because it is something which arguably is even preexisting.”
I greeted that statement as if I’d just received an electric shock.
This distinguished scientist, who’d made his name studying convergent evolutionary paths of long-extinct species, had just suggested something outlandish: Music was not only universal between species, but it was just there, and it always had been—not anything that had evolved over time, but a feature innate in anything that was alive.
Throughout the next 15 years his statement—suppose there is a universal music out there—continued to haunt me, a conundrum begging to be solved. And another– perhaps even bigger – question: What exactly are sounds doing to us – and why?
The God Notes is my answer to all of that. And to give you a sneak preview, I’ve prepared a little video showing you a few parts of our body that are communicating through sounds and certain sounds and music that are affecting us, for good or bad.
