Final Thoughts

The title of a monumental painting in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts by the French post-Impressionist artist Paul GauguinGauguin, Paul, his 1897 D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?), appears in French verse in the upper-left corner of the painting which was made during the artist’s Polynesian period. Ever since we became conscious of ourselves and the world around us, we have asked “ultimate” questions such as these regarding our origin, purpose, and destiny. It is significant that when GauguinGauguin, Paul posed them, science was not in a position to provide answers; one would have had to consult philosophers or theologians. Today, however, more than a century later, science has come a long way in answering these most profound of questions that still lie at the heart of philosophy and modern science—even if, to the dismay of author John GribbinGribbin, John, “hardly anybody outside a small circle of scientific specialists seems to have noticed” that “[w]e have answered the biggest question of them all—where do we come from?”—Gauguin’sGauguin, Paul leading question here. We now know that we are stardustStardust, children of the stars, one of the most profound and inspiring discoveries ever made, certainly the most fundamental and fascinating finding about ourselves and our connection to the Cosmos. Understanding our cosmic connectionCosmic connection—that the stuff we are made of traces its origin to nuclear processes accompanying the Big BangBig Bang and thereafter to billions of years of the birth and death of generation after generation of stars—is an important and beautiful story that deserves more attention.