Collisions. Espionage and Cybercrime in Science

By Jan H. van Bemmel

In the waning years of the Soviet Union scientific research falls far behind. Vasili, head of KGB, tries to gain Western knowledge by espionage. He persuades Dmitri, a physicist, to defect to the USA. Dmitri obtains a position at NSF and later at FermiLab, while remaining entangled in the KGB web. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union Vasili becomes very powerful and wants to strengthen science in the new Russia. He asks Dmitri to return home, because Russian knowledge needs upgrading. Dmitri is appointed director of IHEP in Moscow. He is not successful, because the best Russian scientists have emigrated to the West. Blackmail and intimidation pursue him. To escape Vasili’s influence, Dmitri accepts a job at CERN in Geneva, where the largest particle accelerator in the world, the LHC, is under construction. Vasili now wants revenge. When he does not succeed in obtaining Western knowledge through espionage he wants to ruin Dmitri and to obstruct research at CERN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329254039

Book preview

Collisions. Espionage and Cybercrime in Science

Collisions

Espionage and Cybercrime

in Science

Jan H. van Bemmel

C:\Users\Jan\Documents\Collisions cover e-book no text.png

Synopsis

In the waning years of the Soviet Union scientific research fell far behind that of the Western world. Vasili, head of the KGB, tried to rectify this situation by using espionage to gain Western knowledge. He persuaded his friend, Dmitri, a physicist, to defect to the USA. Dmitri is given a key position at the National Science Foundation, while remaining entangled in the web of the KGB. In Boston, he becomes acquainted with Catherine, who introduces him to the thinking of C.S. Lewis. It makes him reconsider his life. He marries her and moves to Chicago, where Dmitri finds employment at FermiLab. A few years later, the Soviet Union disintegrates. Vasili becomes increasingly more powerful and wants to strengthen physics in the new Russia. Therefore, he asks Dmitri to return home, because the level of Russian knowledge needs upgrading. Dmitri is appointed director of the High-Energy Physics Institute in Moscow. However, with all the best Russian scientists having emigrated to the West, his work there is doomed to fail. Blackmail and even physical intimidation pursue him everywhere he goes. Attempting to escape Vasili’s influence, Dmitri accepts a job at CERN in Geneva, where the construction of the largest particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider, is in full swing. Several hundreds of Russians also work there. Unfortunately, Vasili wants revenge and his arm is very long. When he does not succeed in obtaining Western knowledge through espionage, he decides to ruin Dmitri and to obstruct research at CERN.

Copyright

Copyright@2015 by Jan H. van Bemmel. (second edition)

All rights reserved. ISBN number: ISBN 978-1-329-25403-9

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

The author can be reached by e-mail: [e-mail].

Acknowledgments

The author is most indebted to Mrs. Susan Guthman, who has assisted him in finalizing the text of this book into readable English. He is also very thankful to Dr Gerard Nienhuis, professor of quantum optics at Leyden University, for having reviewed the physics contained in Collisions. However, because the book also contains many speculative views, only the author is to be blamed for possible erroneous ideas.

The contributions of colleagues at research institutes, universities, museums and libraries worldwide in granting permissions to use images in the form of hyperlinks for the e-book version of Collisions, are highly appreciated. Although the captions of all hyperlinked pictures give credit to their sources, the following institutions are gratefully mentioned:

CERN's Press Office, Geneva, Switzerland; FermiLab, Office of Communication, Batavia Il, USA; Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, USA; Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS), Assergi, Italy; The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, Ontario, Canada; The Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel; The Albert Einstein Archives of the Hebrew University, also providing information for the quotes of Einstein in this book, Jerusalem, Israel; Master and Fellows of St John's College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Great Britain; The Dean and the Library of Westminster Abbey, London, Great Britain; The Historical Museum of The Hague, The Hague, The Netherlands; The Marion E. Wade Center, Photo Collection Archive, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Il, and John S Murray, W. Yorks, Great Britain, for a picture of C.S. Lewis.

USA

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Chapter 1. Dmitri

1987

The Boeing 727 from Reagan Airport was landing on time and Dmitri could therefore reach his hotel, the Sheraton in downtown Chicago, before rush hour. He knew it was less than a 45-minute-drive, having been there previously. This time the situation seemed different. Was it his imagination or was someone actually following him? Several times on arrival he had noticed a slender person with dark glasses in his neighborhood, looking in his direction.

Oh, rubbish, he thought. It's just my imagination. If they wanted to follow him, it would be very easy for the FBI or the CIA to track him down.[1] Maybe they were interested in knowing whether he was meeting someone else on his way. What on earth was the matter with him? Was he becoming paranoid? Impossible! He was far too down-to-earth for that. But nevertheless thoughts of this nature kept bothering him.

Some time ago, Dmitri had already decided to be more cautious when contacting his agents. Exchanging letters or using a telephone was strictly forbidden. Public telephones were allowed only if no one was watching him. He was always to use a password. Having lived in this country for some time now, he still could trust no one. It was basically not different from when he lived in the Soviet Union. This, he knew, was the consequence of his 'escape' to the West. He was completely on his own and felt lonely.

His job required Dmitri Polykovski to do a lot of traveling. Of course, his superiors knew the purpose of his visits. Usually his trips concerned scientific conferences or visits to university research departments. But he had no idea whatsoever as to who could be interested in his participation to this particular conference. Could it be the CIA or undercover KGB agents?[2] Were his superiors having him shadowed because they are suspicious? If the American authorities would be informed, he could await imprisonment or much worse. Fortunately, the Hooverian days were over. The CIA, however, would not hesitate to arrest him if they would find out that he was smuggling scientific information out of the country.

Dmitri was aware that he was a lucky dog to live in the USA and realized he has a job one out of a thousand. Yet, he was unhappy with his situation. He felt to be an intruder. He was not born to be a spy. At heart he was still a researcher. In the Soviet Union, too, he had been constantly on the alert, even though his friend Vasili had reached a position as Director of the KGB. In Moscow he could not say what he wanted to; telltales were everywhere. He always had to submit a request for traveling to some other city inside the country. Here, in the USA, this was completely different; he had the freedom to travel wherever he liked. He could say whatever he wanted.

Wouldn't it have been better to have stayed behind in Russia? occasionally crossed his mind.

For almost seven years now Dmitri had lived in the United States. After a few years, he had obtained his American citizenship and could speak flawless English, albeit with the typical heavy accent, characteristic for Russians. The people he had met were mainly professionals. His role as a spy did not allow him to be on familiar terms with Americans. But in no way was he permitted to have contacts with the Russian Embassy. This would raise great suspicions. Yet, he yearned to make personal friends.

Dmitri preferred to meet his secret agents during scientific conferences, which he often attended in his position at the National Science Foundation.[3] Such meetings bear hardly any suspicion, since he could hide in the mass of conference participants, as a fish in a school of herring encircled by voracious killer whales. Besides, he did not need to make a separate trip. At such conferences, he could even be in touch with Russian participants who, like himself, had escaped their country, or who were occasionally granted to visit a conference abroad. The latter was only possible on the condition that the relatives of such participants stayed behind in Russia. Frequently, they were 'accompanied' by persons employed by the KGB. If that was the case –and you never know for sure– he had to be extra cautious and then there was a fair chance that the CIA was already well-informed and kept a watchful eye on such conference participants.

He had been in Chicago to a congress on high-energy physics on a previous occasion. The big hotels over there had excellent conference facilities, such as the Sheraton where he was now heading for. Next morning at breakfast he had an appointment with an agent in the coffee shop of the hotel. He had received confirmation of that meeting some days ago when calling one of his phone numbers. Most of the time during such a call, he received a sentence for recognition and indications where and when the next meeting would take place. This time the recognition sentence was: Did you know that the Sears Tower is higher than the John Hancock building? [4] At 08:00 a.m. he had to be seated at the reading-table of the coffee shop with in front of him the Washington Post, unfolded on page 17. The request is that he would insert his secret information in between pages 18 and 19, and then shift the newspaper inconspicuously to the right for the person who was going to sit next to him and also had taken a Washington Post and had spoken the sentence of recognition. They should not speak to each other any further. Immediately thereafter Dmitri was supposed to go to another table and order his breakfast.

Born in Leningrad, Dmitri had studied physics in Moscow, partly under the supervision of Andrej Sakharov,[5] the father of the Russian H-bomb, who would receive the Nobel Peace Prize some years later. After his studies he had started scientific research at the Russian Institute for High-Energy Physics (IHEP), founded in 1963.[6] Substantial support for this Institute had come from the part of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The Party realized that the Soviet Union should be at the forefront of nuclear physics research. This was important for both the provision of energy and nuclear armament. Large amounts of money had been invested in the construction of an elementary particle accelerator, the U70. Because of this, IHEP became worldwide one of the most modern scientific research institutes.

Dmitri made a rapid career and also published in Western scientific journals. Internationally he was considered an excellent researcher in the domain of elementary particle physics [7] and astrophysics,[8] both on the rise everywhere. His own expertise was primarily the area of neutrino-research, a field in which IHEP had a lead position. Dmitri was a trustworthy person and, once in a while, he got permission to go to a conference on high-energy physics in the West.

During his studies, Dmitri became friends with Vasili Baykonov. Both of them were very ambitious. Vasili studied political sciences and would later on rise to become the Director of the KGB. He was truly a sly old fox who looked many years ahead, with in his visor the glory of Russia and foremost his own career. He had made a rapid climb on the ladder of KGB hierarchy and had acquainted himself with all the tricks of espionage, intrigues, and how to threaten and blackmail people. The KGB was responsible for the unmasking of subversive movements and people. The influence of the organization was felt at home and abroad, in contrast to the American FBI, which had primarily an inland task, or the CIA that aimed at the protection of the interests of the USA against threats from elsewhere.

When, at the end of the 1970s, he had reached his high position at the KGB, Vasili conjured up a plan to let his clever friend Dmitri become a scientific spy so that he could acquire scientific secrets from the West and above all from the USA. Both of them had struggled with the fact that the West surpassed their country in military power and scientific knowledge. According to his plan, Dmitri should pretend that he wanted to escape from the Soviet Union during a congress on high-energy physics in 1980 in Geneva. Once in a Western country, he should attempt to smuggle scientific information out of the country to be transferred to the KGB. Dmitri had great hesitations, since he did not like to be forced acting as a spy. He told Vasili that he did not consider himself the most suitable person for such a role. However, Vasili was adamant and said that he would come back to this issue some time later. Dmitri struggled with the problem how to escape from Vasili's plan.

Gradually, however, he conceived the idea that this plan would also offer him better opportunities. He would be delighted to be able to conduct research more freely in Western laboratories, preferably in the USA. He could also ask for asylum himself once he was abroad; for this he did not need the ideas of the KGB. However, he realized that a private initiative to call for asylum would be considered as desertion. The KGB would find him everywhere and then he would have to suffer infamous consequences. Wouldn't it be better, therefore, to positively respond to the proposal of Vasili and privately follow his own plan? He would rather not collect material at all for espionage, but just continue conducting research. At any rate, Vasili’s plan was not such a bad idea at all. Anyway, if he did not respond positively to the plans of Vasili, he would also have to bear the negative consequences. So, it was a choice between two evils, in which escaping to the West was by far preferable to rejecting the plan of Vasili, because in that case he would never ever get the opportunity to travel to the West. Finally he decided to take Vasili's offer.

Above all expectations, the plan had been a success. During the conference in Geneva Dmitri traveled to the American Embassy in Berne and obtained asylum in the USA. After some time he gained the confidence of the often naive Western scientists, who eagerly wanted to tap the knowledge and experience in Dmitri's possession. His American colleagues did not realize that he was a spy, pretending to be a defector. In reality he was working for the Kremlin.

It took a couple of years before he won the confidence of the CIA, which from the start considered all defectors with suspicion; but also this American counter-intelligence did not uncover Dmitri's role. The fact was that he appeared to be a very valuable physicist, able not only to offer good support to the NSF but also to provide useful information to the State Department.[9] Nobody knew that he was the one who smuggled drawings of the Space Shuttle to the Soviet Union, on the basis of which the Russian space vehicle Buran [10] was developed. Apart from that, the Buran became a total failure. After one flight already, on November 15th, 1988, it remained permanently grounded, as was understood 'for budgetary reasons'. In reality, no cosmonaut dared to board this space vehicle. For that reason the Buran had been designed in such a way that it could be launched without a crew, in contrast to the Space Shuttle. Several other Western inventions, which were smuggled out of the country by Dmitri, could well be used in the Soviet Union, primarily for the development of nuclear submarines such as the Kursk.[11] From the beginning he had a great aversion to smuggling true secrets, i.e., 'classified' documents. That is why he confined himself to transferring the newest scientific publications and reports that were already in the public domain. For Russia, however, this was of interest, because he translated these documents.

Towards four o'clock that afternoon the airport bus stopped at East North Water Street, close to the Sheraton. Dmitri went to the desk and made himself known. He had made reservations for a room on the club level floor and handed over his American Express card for a duplicate. The desk manager gave him a letter that was delivered and inserted in his mailbox. The cover belonged to the hotel, because the print on the left upper corner said: Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers. No sender was mentioned, but it was clear that the letter was intended for him. On the envelope was written: 'Dr. D. Polykovski, Rm 1643'. He put the letter in his inside pocket and took the elevator to the 16th floor.

Upon arrival in his room, Dmitri opened the envelope. The blank paper showed no date or sender, but only a message, handwritten: Appointment cancelled. He had never experienced this before. An appointment that is cancelled at the very last moment by a written message was against all rules. What circumstance could have intervened? And where should he leave the papers that he was supposed to hand over? In this case, he had an explicit instruction not to make contact himself. This was for different reasons: the agent had perhaps been prevented from coming, or they suspected that there was something wrong so that it would be too dangerous to let the contact go on. The instructions that were given for a situation like this one were very clear. For, if the counter-intelligence had got wind of his activities, he would have been followed all the time - he already had some premonitions -and then they would also have seen that he had received this letter. Perhaps the CIA had already opened the letter before he got it. Again, he inspected the envelope whether it had been opened before. But, of course, this would not be visible; the CIA had experts that leave no trace behind. In his protocol it was written that in case of trouble he should destroy his information as soon as possible. There were no clear guidelines how to do it. Of course, burning the papers in his hotel room was impossible; throwing them away after cutting them up could also not be done, because when they investigated the trash of his room it would be clear that he possessed a secret document.

Dmitri decided to leave the hotel immediately, pretending he wanted to go to a restaurant. In reality he would try to make use of different means of transportation to get rid of possible pursuers. With the help of a map of downtown Chicago he made a plan as to which direction he would go. After having put the secret document into his inside pocket, he went to the desk and asked loudly whether they had a list of restaurants in the neighborhood and if they could recommend a special one. He learned that the Italian restaurant Spiaggia had opened three years ago and was of excellent quality. He asked, loud enough to be understood by people around him, whether Spiaggia could be reached on foot. This was the case. Once outside he walked towards the restaurant, did not look back, but hailed a yellow cab, and quickly got into the back seat.

To the subway station at South Street and Jackson Boulevard, please!

But there is a subway station much closer, Sir, replied the cab driver.

Yes, I know, but I have an appointment over there.

It usually only took five minutes, but because of the busy traffic the ride was about twenty minutes. Now and then he looked back to see if a car was following, but he had the impression this was not the case. When he had arrived at the subway station, he took no risk and went with the Red Line a few stops farther down, where he got off and waited on the same platform for the next train. In the mean time he carefully looked around but saw nobody who together with him had left the train and also waited for the next train. Therefore, he took the subway again, for a few more stops, and started looking for a restaurant in the vicinity. Having found one he ordered a meal, tore up his secret information in the men's room, and disposed of the pieces in various trash cans that lined the street. He returned to the Sheraton with a taxi. Altogether, he had been away for less than two hours.

That night Dmitri could not get to sleep. Had he acted appropriately? Did the message indeed concern his breakfast meeting or was it about some other appointment? He had several meetings that week, with researchers at the conference who wanted to talk to him. But why, then, wasn't there a sender on the letter? He rose early and checked his appointments for the next few days. That didn’t help. He assumed that in any case it had to be an appointment that same morning with someone who perhaps had to leave in a hurry and had given a quick note to the desk manager, forgetting to sign. It was also logical that the letter was enclosed in an envelope of the hotel. Generally, the desk manager would put a note for a guest in an envelope and write the name and room number on the envelope. He took the envelope once more and compared the two handwritings – yes, they were different. Could the letter have been from someone other than his secret agent? He decided to test this idea and to go to the reading table in the coffee shop at the appointed time. He would have some other document ready, to be shifted in between pages 17 and 18, in case someone showed up.

Just before eight o'clock Dmitri went to the coffee shop and sat down at the reading table. He walked to a chair that had an empty seat at the right and took a Washington Post from the pile of newspapers. He put the Post in front of him and turned to page 17. When a waiter asked what he wanted, he ordered coffee. He saw on page 16 a message on the 527 meters Sears Tower that soon would be no longer the tallest tower in the world. Several people walked behind him, but after a few minutes he noticed that the chair next to him was pulled out and that someone sat down and also took a Washington Post. Dmitri didn't look up, but waited. In the mean time his coffee was brought, but he took care not to start a conversation. The person next to him looked his way and said, pointing to the message in the journal:

Did you know that the Sears Tower is higher than the John Hancock building?

Dmitri had been well instructed and only said, looking ahead, Yes, I do.

He drank his coffee, inserted a substitute document behind page 17, and folded the newspaper that he shifted to the right, stood up, and moved to a free table to order his breakfast.

Something not yet known to Dmitri's anonymous contact person was that the information that he inserted in between the pages of the newspaper just contained the program of the conference that would start this morning in the Sheraton congress facilities. Dmitri didn’t want to run any risk and also didn’t want to expose himself with a message that he had drafted himself. Sitting at his table he saw that the man in question got up with the newspaper under his arm. It was a slender man with colored glasses.

Only few weeks later, Dmitri was told in one of his secret telephone calls that this entire event had been staged by the KGB, to test whether he was sufficiently alert and whether he would react correctly in the event of a real trap by the CIA. He felt deluded, being squeezed between secret organizations of two superpowers, the CIA and the KGB. How, if ever, could he terminate this disgusting situation? He had not completed his studies in physics to carry out this type of work. He was humiliated as an ordinary spy and had walked into a trap with his eyes wide open. He should do something about this. Should he make himself known at the CIA or the State Department? But this would antagonize the KGB and could mean death. Also the Americans would never trust him again. And perhaps they would arrest him anyway, in spite of his frankness. He wished he knew someone with whom he could discuss his disagreeable situation. But there was nobody he could trust.

Blaise Pascal

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Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand on 19 June 1623 and died in Paris on 19 August 1662. Pascal repeated Torricelli's experiments, using various liquids.  Most famous is his experiment performed in 1648 on the Puy-de-Dôme in France, in which he demonstrated that atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing altitude. In 1642, Pascal also developed his calculating machine, called the Pascaline. He started his barometric experiments in 1646. He maintained that his experiments contradicted the doctrine of horror vacui. Pascal also developed arithmetic, combinatorial analysis and probability theory. He corresponded with Fermat. Pascal was a very original thinker, who mastered many different disciplines: he was a mathematician, a physicist, a philosopher, a famous author, and later on – after what he called his 'second conversion' – a sharp-witted theologian. His Pensées (Thoughts) were the product of his new life. His 'second conversion' took place in the monastery Port Royal in Paris, after a mystical experience, of which the famous Mémorial gave evidence. After his death, this document had been accidentally discovered in the lining of his coat. In his Mémorial he spoke of 'certainty, joy and inner peace' that was – as he wrote – 'not to be found amongst scientists or philosophers'. The painting of Pascal has been made by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674).

---

[1] FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation. CIA: Central Intelligence Agency. In 2009, the combined budget of the CIA and the FBI was almost 50 billion dollars. In addition, the U.S. Military Intelligence has a budget of about 25 billion dollars. All Intelligence Services together are said to employ 200,000 people; the true number is unknown.

[2] The KGB, Committee for State Security, functioned from 1954 to 1991. The successor of the KGB became the FSB, Federal Security Service. This book will use the most known abbreviation 'KGB'.

[3] The National Science Foundation (NSF) was established in 1950 by the American Congress: 'to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense …' The NSF has a budget of over six billion dollar.

[4] The Sears Tower and the John Hancock Building in Chicago are 527 en 241 meters tall, respectively.

[5] Andrej Dmitrievich Sakharov was a nuclear physicist and later became a human rights activist. He is the father of the Russian hydrogen bomb (H-bomb).

[6] Institute for High-Energy Physics; see the review article in the CERN courier:  http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28958

[7] The goal of elementary particle physics is the investigation of matter and the fundamental forces between elementary particles. This involves a scale in the order of 10-16 cm, smaller than the size of the proton.

[8] Astrophysics is the part of astronomy that studies the physics of galaxies, stars, planets and, in general, celestial bodies in the cosmos. The field has become more and more related to elementary particle physics.

[9] State Department: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USA.

[10] http://www.buran-energia.com/

[11] http://kursk.strana.ru/

Chapter 2. Catherine

1987

Catherine Sarkozy had Hungarian roots. Being the daughter of Zoltán Sarkozy she was born in 1960 in Boston. Zoltán had a forward looking spirit. He was averse to communism. He and his wife had fled their country already years before the Hungarian revolution of 1953. He had been professor in the Philosophy of Science in Budapest. After his emigration to the USA he had settled in Boston, because of the nearness of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zoltán had written several books on the influence of philosophical ideas on changes in society, and already before his departure to the USA he was a well-known scientist. Soon he had obtained a chair at Harvard, also because of his knowledge of Marxism and contemporary philosophical trends.

In the USA the family Sarkozy had three children, two sons and one daughter, Catherine. All three children had their education in New England. Catherine went to MIT to do research with Noam Diunsky after having studied linguistics at Yale. While working on her PhD she met Alexa de Groot, a Dutch postdoc doing research in the same laboratory. They became close friends and remained in contact, also later on when Alexa moved to Geneva as a researcher for CERN.[12]

Catherine was proud of her descent, even though she had no Hungarian nationality but was a born-American. She was very fond of music, had twinkling dark eyes, raven-black hair and a fiery temperament, typical of many Hungarians. She played the violin as outstandingly as her father and had an open mind for everything that was related to literature and the arts.

Being extremely inquisitive, her father had taught her at early age the history of science of his former fatherland. Over the centuries Hungary had brought forth great scientists, among them philosophers and physicists. He had told his daughter about Ervin László, who believed that – comparable to gravity and electromagnetic fields – there are information fields, extending over the entire cosmos.  He also mentioned the famous Nobel Prize winner Dennis Gabor, the inventor of holography, and the nuclear physicist Leó Szilárd, who had discovered the nuclear chain reaction. The latter had been a participant in the Manhattan project, in which the first American atomic bomb had been developed during the Second World War. But perhaps the most famous Hungarian was John von Neumann,[13] physicist and mathematician, and creator of the first digital computer. John von Neumann believed that the human brain would some day be surpassed by the computer.

During her studies Catherine became particularly intrigued by Blaise Pascal, who had both a scientific and a philosophical background. Inspired by the conversations with her father, Catherine had delved into the life of Pascal and had become deeply impressed by his 'second conversion', after his mystical experience, of which the famous Mémorial  gave evidence (see Appendix 1). After his death, this document had been accidentally discovered in the lining of his coat. For Catherine it was the reason why she began her search to discover the meaning of the  Mémorial that dealt with certainty, joy and inner peace that – as Pascal wrote – 'is not to be found amongst scientists or philosophers'. She wondered why this inner peace was not found among most of the scholars or philosophers she knew. It became her quest for the roots of Pascal's thinking. Her father appeared to be an outstanding guide.

Already during her studies at Yale, Catherine had approached her father with many questions in this domain.

I do not understand why in the past great scholars had no problem believing that the world was created and why nowadays most scientists think that the world came into being all by itself, without any intervention from elsewhere. When and why did this change in Western thinking take place?

In discussions of this kind Zoltán showed his daughter that the current way of thinking can only be understood when one has a solid knowledge of the history of philosophy.

"Virtually all our philosophical problems were known to the ancient Greeks, of which Aristotle, Plato and Socrates are the most prominent ones. Regretfully, early medieval Europe was not acquainted with Greek philosophical thinking. Most ancient manuscripts were lost during many wars. But, fortunately, Arab scholars in the Middle East had discovered the Greek philosophers much earlier and had translated their writings in Arabic.[14] During the Renaissance these antique sources were rediscovered and translated from Arabic into Latin."

I wasn't aware of this, Catherine replied. But hadn't the Church of Rome already existed for centuries and hadn't it passed on what was written by the church fathers?

"Yes, but the Church of Rome always stood in between God and man. Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century one of the greatest thinkers in the church, believed that what we observe in nature is independent of the divine reality or the supernatural. In the latter domain the church had exclusive authority. Man could reach the supernatural via the church only, a doctrine that dominated the worldview. This had major consequences for science."

But why did Pascal have the courage to turn away from the worldview of the church?

"To understand this you have to turn to the scientific giant Galileo Galilei, who – while adhering to Copernicus – had the courage to disagree with the worldview of Ptolemy, adhered to by the Church of Rome. According to that view the earth was in the center of the cosmos. Much courage was needed to deviate from that belief, since the viewpoint of the church was all-encompassing and scholars, too, had to conform to it. Later great thinkers and theologians had a totally different opinion. In particular the Reformation viewed reality as an undivided whole, without a split between nature and the supernatural; no church stood in between God and man. Everyone had received individual responsibility. Man possessed creativity that he had received from God who had created the whole cosmos out of nothing, ex nihilo."

This ex nihilo was a notion that puzzled Catherine the most. 

So, this was the reason why Blaise Pascal got into trouble with the Jesuits because he believed in the existence of a wholly empty space, a void without any matter?

Certainly, her father replied. If all of reality had been created by God, it was, according to the church, impossible that a space would exist that was barred from that creative force. An entirely empty space, a vacuum, was theologically not acceptable. On this basis a vacuum did not exist; it was considered to have been filled during the Creation.

But how did Pascal dare to oppose the church?

"Pascal was a very original thinker, who mastered many different disciplines. He was a mathematician, a physicist, a philosopher, a famous author, and later on –after what he called his 'second conversion'– a sharp-witted theologian. His Pensées, Thoughts, are the product of his new life." [15]

Yes, I know. He even dared to face René Descartes in their discussions on the vacuum. He was convinced that he had the correct viewpoint, because he had given himself experimental proof by his mercury tube, inspired by the work of Evangelista Torricelli. [16]

Exactly! And this experimental approach to nature is precisely the turning point in the thinking of that time, initiating modern science. Observations in nature lead via experiments to a scientific theory. The theory, in turn, has to be tested by further experiments, until it appears that observations and theory no longer match. If that happens, a more extensive theory or a new one has to be formulated. This was also the case with Pascal and his mercury tube concerning the vacuum, with Galilei and his telescope regarding the position of the sun and the earth, and with Kepler and his mathematics pertaining to the trajectories of the planets. Before Galileo and Kepler the experimental approach to reality did not exist. The reason was that the church prescribed how you should look at nature. This changed attitude was not restricted to scientific observations only, but was extended to the entire worldview. Original thinkers of the Reformation laid a theological foundation for this new approach.

Catherine was puzzled.

What I do not understand is that scientists like Galilei, Kepler, Pascal and the later Newton had no problem whatsoever to believe in a creator, whereas later scientists, not to mention the present, completely got rid of that concept. Then what was the cause of that new attitude?

Zoltán carefully tried to formulate an answer.

"There are many reasons for it. First, from childhood on every human being is confronted with a rebel inside of him. He has some natural resistance against all authorities above him and even more so when he reaches adulthood and believes one can be fully on one's own. In Pascal´s days such an authority was explicitly present in the form of the church. This partly explains his protest. He seems to have been rather pigheaded. Besides, you should not underestimate that with the rediscovery of the ancient Greeks it became evident that, even before Christianity was founded, people at that time had reflected about the world in which they lived. For instance, you know that the existence of indivisible particles, atoms,[17] was already assumed by the Greek philosopher Democritus; definitely not a member of any church. And the reflection about concepts or designs behind the visible world had entered the mind of Plato much earlier. His 'ideas', of which the phenomena on earth are just shadows, was a way of thinking that was completely in accordance with that of Thomas Aquinas with his vision on nature and the supernatural. No wonder that the church from before the Reformation did not mind to incorporate Greek and particularly Aristotelian and Platonic thinking in her theology."

For the time being, Catherine had enough food for thought. She decided to make a thorough study of the ideas of past and present thinkers to begin with. She asked herself with what problems modern scholars and scientists are confronted if they suppose that this world has come into existence all by itself. Was it by any means possible that from 'nothing' – the absolute vacuum of Pascal – 'something' comes into being? Does a wholly empty space exist, in which matter is 'spontaneously' created, ‘ex nihilo’, without the intervention of a Creator?

Such questions about physics appeared to be too demanding for the linguist Catherine. But perhaps this matter was also too problematic for her father. She intended to search for answers herself, starting with Pascal. She already knew much about him, but by far not everything. The problem of the vacuum and the creatio ex nihilo intrigued and haunted her.

The more Catherine was absorbed by Pascal, the more she became interested in the philosophical and religious questions of his time. She discovered that also in our modern time – albeit in modified form – such questions are still relevant. In ascending order she phrased them as:

- Is there an absolute vacuum?

- Is there a nothing?

- Can there be a creatio ex nihilo?

- What exists outside the cosmos, or even: what existed before the present cosmos?

The linguist Catherine did not know how to deal with these basic questions, but she remained extremely interested in their philosophical aspects. The frequent conversations with her father played a prominent role in her deliberations: what triggered scholars from the time of Pascal and Newton to deviate from the ruling views of the church? Is there a rebel hiding within every person? She could well identify with a rebel, being Hungarian.

There were further questions. How it was possible that someone like Blaise Pascal, with his wide interest from mathematics to philosophy, would at a certain moment throw all his earlier discoveries and knowledge overboard and pursue only matters of faith? Catherine could not avoid discussing this issue with her father again.

"What I do not understand is that Pascal completely turned his back on his mathematics, his physical experiments and theories, after his mystical experience of November 23, 1654. In the document that was discovered in his coat after his death, he called that year his 'An de Grâce', Year of Grace. Thereafter he retreated to the monastery in Port Royal-des-Champs in Paris and from then on he was absorbed by writing an apology of the Christian faith."

Recently it came to my mind, Catherine, her father reacted, "that the greatest philosopher ever brought forth by the Medieval Church, Thomas Aquinas, almost 400 years earlier had experienced a similar event as Blaise Pascal, in the Chapel of St Nicholas in Naples, on December 6, 1273. After this experience he, too, fully renounced all philosophical activities and devoted himself completely to meditation.[18] He said of this event:

I can no longer write, for God has given me such glorious knowledge that all contained in my works are as straw - barely fit to absorb the holy wonders that fall in a stable.

Three months later he died."

But what was it exactly that these great scholars experienced, which seldom happens to ordinary mortals? she asked.

"In the first place, Catherine, I think that both Thomas and Blaise were conscientious people, who seriously dealt with everybody they encountered and above all did not want to fool themselves. They were concerned about the truth and not interested in fantasies.

Secondly, they were very clever, gifted and sensitive, had antennas for all that deviated from the normal, and were prepared to critically investigate everything in great detail.

And thirdly, they were receptive to experiences about which the brilliant theologian Apostle St Paul had written in his Letter to the Corinthians [19] that he 'had heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter'. For me it goes too far to name Blaise, Thomas and St Paul just mystics. All three of them were very intelligent people, who stood firmly on both legs. However, they were open-minded to a world beyond the one that we experience with our senses, but of which we can make no mental representation.

Perhaps, somewhere a space exists, which is the source of the reality in which we live. Maybe Plato was also a visionary, because he also had an idea of the existence of such a place; the place where the ideas reside of which our world is merely a shadow.

But isn't it a fact that in modern physics we are increasingly unable to make a mental representation of a phenomenon we observe? Who is able to make a mental image of elementary particles or black holes? This may even hold true for everyday phenomena. For instance, nobody knows what gravity is, in the sense of the ontological is, even though we experience it all day."

Catherine had not yet thought that far and she regarded all of it as very speculative; she