From Einstein’s “God does not play dice” to Lederman’s “God Particle”, scientists have many times used the name of God as a metaphor for the magnificence and beauty of nature or the mysteries of the cosmos. However, the metaphor is often misunderstood and the reference to God is taken literally. What’s worst, Intelligent Design proponents take advantage of this misunderstanding to sell their views. As if Einstein was endorsing their “theory” from the grave. So, is it a mistake for scientists to yield such a powerful metaphor to creationists and religious fundamentalists? Dennis Overbye explores the issue in this excellent essay.

What’s in a Name? Parsing the ‘God Particle,’ the Ultimate Metaphor

By DENNIS OVERBYE

We need to talk about the “God particle.”

Recently in this newspaper, I reported on the attempts by various small armies of physicists to discover an elementary particle central to the modern conception of nature. Technically it’s called the Higgs boson, after Peter Higgs, an English physicist who conceived of it in 1964. It is said to be responsible for endowing the other elementary particles in the universe with mass.

In a stroke of either public relations genius or disaster, Leon M. Lederman, the former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, referred to the Higgs as “the God particle” in the book of the same name he published with the science writer Dick Teresi in 1993. To Dr. Lederman, it made metaphorical sense, he explained in the book, because the Higgs mechanism made it possible to simplify the universe, resolving many different seeming forces into one, like tearing down the Tower of Babel. Besides, his publisher complained, nobody had ever heard of the Higgs particle.

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