As science progresses closer and closer to a unified Theory of Everything, we may be able to better understand the profound concept of God's unity. According to many Jewish philosophers, God is the ultimate perfection, which can not be superceded in any way whatsoever. And yet, we percieve Him in a variety of ways, according to, at minimum, His thirteen attributes. Sometimes we will experience God's pleasure, and at other times His wrath (and at other times we are not sure which), but in essence He is perfect, unchanging, and the ultimate Unity.
It is interesting that this is exactly what modern physicists would have us believe about the structure of the world. Newton began this journey by equating the motion of the celestial spheres with the force of gravity here on earth. Maxwell equated the electrical and magnetic forces, and laid the ground for the eventual inclusion of light and other radiation under electro-magnetic theory. Einstein would have us believe that time and space are one and the same.
Perhaps the best-known expression of the idea of multiplicity resulting from basic unity is the periodic table. There is absolutely no difference between one element and another except for the number of protons, neutrons and electrons it contains. These three basic particles result in the entire array of elements and compounds which we are familiar with, from oxygen to uranium to table salt. All the wild differences between the elements can be attributed to these three essential particles, interacting according to the nuclear and electric forces, resulting in the very, very, interesting world in which we live.
Somewhere out there, we believe, there is one perfect and beautiful equation, from which all the laws of physics – all the forces and interactions we see in the everyday world – proceed inevitably.
This analagous to the concept of God's unity. Somehow, as a result of His simultaneously simple and grand perfection, we find ourselves in a simultaneously perfect and lacking world, with the mission to perfect it.
Perhaps the fundamental equation, when we find it, will help us to better understand the most important natural relationship of all – the relationship between God and His creations.
