What to say, to a book about more than everything—more than what we thought we were talking about when we used to say “everything”? A book that introduces us to the entangled complexity of what we might call the politics of everything, Rubenstein not only charts the dizzying swells and speculative history of cosmos-talk, but also occasionally and artfully pulls back—back from the incomprehensible magnitudes of years, talk of dimensions, and tens to the innumerable powers—giving us glimpses of the human all too human drives at the heart of the discussion, at the root of our star gazing, at site of the stake where dear Bruno was burned.

What does this or that everything commit us to, where “us” is those with distinct stakes in the stars?

What unbound teeming bed of worlds, for the ancient Lucretian, might work to “clear away all theistic cosmogonies?” (43) What muscular mathematical ontology, for MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, might (quite literally) make everything exist, such that we might rest well that God does not? What combination of accident and (actual or potential) infinity might be set center stage to kick big bang theology out of the play? Continue reading “The Politics of Everything” →