These were just some of the conclusions of a meeting in Venice aimed at sorting out some of our confusion about the origins of the Universe, which astronomers believe was born between 15 and 20 billion years ago. The meeting was organised jointly by the Cini Foundation of Venice and the astronomy department of the University of Padua, in conjunction with RAI, Italy’s national broadcasting corporation, and the Bank of Rome at the beginning of September. It was a two-culture clash of scientists versus the rest -theologians, philosophers, poets, historians and film-makers. And it was timed to overlap with the showing of director Ermanno Olmi’s new film, Genesis: the Creation and the Flood, at this year’s Venice film festival.

Looking back at the Universe’s origins was a hot topic in 1992, when NASA’s cosmic background explorer satellite (COBE) discovered temperature variations across the Universe. These variations were essential for the big bang theory to explain the irregular distribution of matter. At the meeting, astronomers such as George Smoot of the University of California at Berkeley, who spearheaded the COBE programme, and John Barrow of the University of Sussex rattled off details of the scientific data from COBE, the Hubble telescope, lumps of matter in a 300 000-year-old cosmos and pulsating stars in the Virgo cluster of galaxies.

Besides all this, the meeting waded through Greek and Roman thinkers, mythology, the need to explain the Universe we live in, the ideas of creation embraced by various religions, and previous conflicts between science and the Church. The meeting then tried to sort out the signal from this cosmic background.

The big bang once promised such conciliatory prizes, so what went wrong? At first sight, this theory has the approval of religions, which glimpse a creation. However, Weinberg, who works at the University of Texas at Austin, warned that people are only deluding themselves by viewing the cosmic event as creation. Modern cosmology cannot be used to “cheer us up or give us spiritual comfort”, he said. The Church replied that God the Creator is by no means tied to a temporal beginning, and indeed, mankind’s search for solace can explain our attraction to a static theory of the Universe, with its hints at immortality. Einstein wasn’t keen on the big bang, even though applying his the theory of gravity to the Universe created an expanding Universe right under his nose. To him it smacked too much of creation.

Testimony to the human search for reassurance was the film Genesis, in which the central character Noah narrates the early Old Testament. We are reminded too of the geologists’ search for evidence of the flood. But at the meeting – in a region now itself seriously in danger of disappearing under a flood – Olmi could only stand and stare when faced with the scientists’ accounts. He said he felt “emptiness, fear, silence”. He claimed he looked into the future and not the past, and sought refuge in the why, not the how.

The most emotive words came from Barrow, however. He described the Universe as “big and old, dark and cold” – spookier than any of the poetry read at the meeting. Barrow echoed Weinberg’s warning that the once-comforting human-centred view of the Universe, which belonged to the era of old science, was lost when Galileo and others began to put forward a more impersonal perception of the world and so heralded the advent of modern science.

But if scientists can explain how the Universe was born, they cannot say why, reminded the philosophers. For Weinberg, the Sun and Moon are “just there”, nothing to do with human beings. At the same time, science too is limited as it approaches the origin of the big bang. The problem is the singularity of that first moment. In the very first infinitesimal flash of time (10⁴² seconds) after the big bang, the so-called Planck time, physical laws as we know them today did not work.

In a new theory from Stanford University, the Universe is pervaded by fluctuating fields that are responsible for properties such as a particle’s mass. At the Planck time, very strong fluctuations created our part of the Universe through our individual big bang, creating our own mini-universe now 10 billion light years across – just one of many strong fluctuations that is occurring all the time. There is no genesis, no moment of creation. In each expanding universe, the fluctuations will result in different values for nature’s fundamental constants. “We are not certain of this,” Weinberg said, “but uncertainty is one of the hallmarks of science. So here we are, in this Universe possible for life.”

Nicola Dallaporta, an astronomer from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican City, argued that this field theory with its multiple big bangs was “more akin to metaphysics”. It was a dig that forced Weinberg to retort that it was his critics’ metaphysics that was on borrowed time. At least science can test its theories, hopefully at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva – though “very often our scientific theories are solved by solving another problem”. For example, the theory behind the strong force that binds together the atomic nucleus is verified in one way and tested in other respects. “Often you don’t know the correct problem until you are close to the answer,” said Weinberg.

He also took issue with what President Václav Havel of the Czech Republic called “postmodern science” in his address at the 4 July Freedom Medal ceremony in the US. Havel was referring to the anthropic principle under which “we are not at all an accident, but connected to the Universe … We are an integral part of higher entities against whom it is not wise to blaspheme.” Weinberg was critical of this type of statement: “Does the world need this sort of intensification of religious feeling? I’m bothered with the style of Havel’s argument,” he said. He then referred to speakers who had talked about the depth of moral message in the Bible. “There is another value, that of truth. What bothers me is that for Havel and others, what counts is not the truth of these matters, but the effect on society – this latter is the driving force behind the misappropriation of science,” insisted Weinberg.

All parties agreed on the need to define terms. If the Universe is taken to mean the whole assembly of things that exist, have existed and will exist, then the origin cannot lie within it. Philosophers and scientists over the centuries, such as Kurt Gödel, Immanuel Kant, Einstein, Max Planck and Stephen Hawking, have reached this conclusion. We cannot be part of a problem we are trying to solve. Gianfranco Basti, a science philosopher from the Pontifical Universities in Rome, referred to a Christian tenet held since the Middle Ages that “in order for the Beginning to which the Bible refers to be a true beginning with respect to time, it must exist beyond time, rather in the way in which – by definition – the limit of any infinite series of rational numbers no longer belongs to the series it defines”. It follows that the theory of the entire Universe must be placed on a metaphysical basis, relating as it does to a time and place not accessible to science.

Despite some agreement, then, it seems the conciliation of science with the counterculture of philosophy and theology will be a long time coming. They remain on separate and lofty pedestals labelled physics and metaphysics. According to Weinberg, there is a time-variable boundary between the two. In the days of Kant, metaphysics was the solution to many of our problems. With Einstein the emphasis shifted towards physics. Weinberg closed with the words: “This jurisdiction of metaphysics will increasingly disappear, and one day leave us with just physics.”

So much for metaphysics. And the origin of the Universe? Inaccessible and not even necessary.

At a meeting in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana last month, the Italian
branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature and its Slovenian equivalent launched
a campaign to have bears made a protected species in Slovenia. Although
brown bears are endangered, under the old Yugoslav laws, which are still
in force, farmers can kill animals that attack their livestock or damage
crops.

Around 300 brown bears live in Slovenia. Italy, where the bears are
protected, has two populations, a tiny group of 6 or 7 bears in Trentino
in the northeast and about 150 in the Abruzzo National Park in the south
of the country.

An increasing number of bears are now travelling north into Slovenia.
Some have crossed the border into Italy; a one-year-old cub recently appeared
in Trieste’s science park and others have been seen in a local ski resort.
A few have wandered into Austria but have not stayed there.

The wildlife groups want to increase the species’ chances of survival
partly by persuading the Slovenian government to change the law to protect
bears, and partly by educating the public about the need to preserve them.
‘It is proving difficult to persuade the Slovenians to leave the bears in
peace,’ says the WWF.

The war is not the only danger facing the brown bears. Italian motorways
are a serious hazard for them, says Dario Predonzan, until recently regional
president of the WWF. Drivers spotted a mother and cub on an Italian motorway
and one migrating bear has been killed. Several bears have died on the roads
in Slovenia.

A few bears in Slovenia have been killed after attacking livestock.
In Italy, local authorities compensate farmers who lose animals to bears,
wolves and royal eagles – all protected species. The International WWF
is setting up a scheme to help compensate Slovenian farmers. Even the bears
in Abruzzo are not entirely safe. Some have been shot by poachers after
wandering outside the park in search of food.

The Italian branch of WWF recently started a scheme to keep bears inside
the park. Bears are particularly partial to apples, and wildlife experts
believe a ready supply of apples will help to stop the bears roaming. The
response to its ‘apple-tree appeal’ has been ‘overwhelming’, says WWF. So
far, the public has donated about £500 000. Some of the money will
be used to provide food for the northern bears.