When we see or hear something that pleases us with perfect symmetry, or form, or color, we describe it as beautiful. We are told that God has made all things beautiful in His time. But this does not seem to describe the world we see about us; sorrow, pain, ugliness, evil, degradation, and depravity do not fit into our definition of beautiful. However, we do not see the big picture that God sees; our vision is limited by a distorted knowledge of the past, a brief experience of the present, and a lack of foreknowledge of the future. God is telling us that in the end, in His time, all things will appear beautiful in perspective.
In the world of science, the word 'elegant' has a special connotation. It is akin to beautiful, but it is uniquely applied to a very neat mathematical explanation of nature. There have been a limited number of such elegant theories that have expanded and summarized man's knowledge of nature's laws. Galileo's theory of a heliocentric solar system in which the planets revolve about a stationary sun, and day and night are the result of a rotating earth, is considered an elegant theory. Sir Isaac Newton's General Theory of Gravitation connects falling objects such as apples on earth to the rotation of the moon and planets into a single elegant equation. Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which gives us a revolutionary view of space and time and a new picture of gravitation, is considered an elegant theory. Also his unique equation which demonstrates the equivalence of mass and energy literally shook the world. James K. Maxwell's four equations that summarize all we know about electricity and magnetism are considered elegant. Quantum Mechanics, produced by Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Paul Dirac, Edwin Schroedinger and others, unifies the three forces of atomic physics into one elegant relationship
Einstein's goal, and the goal of modern theoretical physicists, is to find a unified theory, sometimes called the theory of everything, that will express in one simple, elegant equation the relationship between gravity and the three subatomic forces, Electromagnetic Force, Strong Force, and Weak Force. So far their efforts have been unsuccessful. The latest theory that shows promise is called "String Theory." Someone has said that it looks like they are trying to tie everything together with strings.
No doubt there is a solution to the problem, but perhaps it is beyond man's comprehension. Certainly God knows the unifying principle that explains His creation, from the forces that control the atoms to the forces that control the galaxies in space. No doubt God has made everything beautiful with one mysterious, "elegant equation."
