Gemma Janes: And that feeling of wanting to understand something so impossibly vast is what makes something sublime?

Joshua Williamson: Gardening is sublime. Working with wood and plants and things that grow, it's an unbelievable privilege. As far as we know, there is no other place in the universe that can hold that kind of life. Cosmology could be a metaphor for topiary gardening where you've got hundreds, if not thousands, of gardeners, or scientists, all trying to tend to the same garden. And when there are a lot of gardeners tending to the same garden, there can be a lot of disagreements. For example, we've got this one shrub called the Hubble Constant, which asks how fast the universe is expanding. And they can't agree on it. If you ask one gardener, they think it should be one way; another gardener, it should be the other way. You can try to convince the rest that your way is the best, bring your evidence to the gardener conference, but you'll continue to disagree. It ends up descending into almost different factions of a religion, until you undergo some type of revolution where you get an Einstein gardener who discovers something that convinces all the others that it's the right way.

Gemma Janes: But in the end, you're always adhering to the same garden and the rules that were set in place from the beginning.

Joshua Williamson: It's true. In some way, the boundaries of the garden are the metaphor for science. We are very hemmed in by rules that have been set up a very, very long time ago.

Gemma Janes: We're currently in a moment of rapid acceleration in terms of science and technology. I'd like to consider the concept of Kontinuum, that which continues on its own time, indifferent to the pace surrounding it. Has studying the universe changed the way you think about time and continuity?

Joshua Williamson: I suppose there are things that we give a lot of value to on our planet. Diamonds, for example. We develop machinery that helps us mine with more speed and precision, but diamonds actually ubiquitous in our universe. We encase them in silver and enshrine them as if they’re the most precious thing of all. Plants and wood—they are truly rare. And they are continuously growing, in communication with us all the time.

Gemma Janes: There is a wonderful philosopher called Emanuele Coccia. He wrote a book called The Life of Plants, which considers that we are absolutely one with plants at all moments, that they consider us, they take us in, and they breathe us out too. It is a constant communication. In a way, this awe can be found on a minute level when observing plant life, in the same way that we observe our universe, which is on a rotation journey and expansion that gives us the seasons, the night, and the day. 

Joshua Williamson: Even if we never reach a place of comprehension, it's not going to stop people from observing. Cosmology might be the most humbling science because you can only watch. It's the one garden you can look at, but you can’t touch.  So yes, it is humbling to work with nature, in the same way that it feels to observe our universe. We can try to tame it, to look at it from a new angle, but it continues to grow outside of our control. I think that becomes an endless fascination for some, a continuous joy and a place to always return, one that will far outlive our end.