As I sit typing this note, I know that I am a teeming mass of microscopic matter. More atoms than cents in the U.S. Debt owed to the Chinese Government. Rather than a floating pool of matter, these atoms are organized as a body. Then there are electrical impulses as well as fluids coursing throughout this system. And I am an entity that is then teeming with intangibles as well - such as thoughts and emotions.
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| Somehow these add up to you and me as individuals |
But today I am.
I am aware that as an entity I am pulled together (my closer friends would debate that point).
A microbe in the intestine (believe me, we all have these...... and some crave chocolate.... honest), has no clue how big an entity I am or that I even exist. As far as the microbe in my intestine goes, it feeds, lives, regenerates inside that organ.
For the microbe, I am a being as large as the universe as far it is concerned.
At the other end of the scale, I keep reading science reports about how vast the universe is. Still strewn with more atoms everywhere So many that the only other number that can rival it is the interest on the debt that will be owed over the years to China.
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| Picture of Earth from Deep Space |
These atoms are structured into stars, planets, comets, black holes, quasars and what not - operating on a cosmic time scale that is, at least to me, unfathomable. There is speculation of multiverses and wonderous thoughts such as the universe not having an actual physical boundry (since apparently it folds upon itself much like a mobius strip).
So there we are - a vast universe ourselves (to the microbe); a microbe ourselves in this vast universe.
And yet, here we are as individual entities, entirely self-aware, that lumber around in this 'bodily universe' in this cosmic universe. And that 'aware individual' is suspended in animation between these two worlds big and small.
If you would for a minute with me ignore the categories of human body, planet and solar system (these labels have a numbing effect on the mind and thinking freely). Instead let us for that minute view ourselves as a teeming mass of atoms in a teeming universe of atoms with the 'thought-of-you' suspended in between.
Do you find this as odd as I do?!
That is the realization that is unsettling me . . . .
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p.s. 1 - this Power of 10 video captures this thought rather well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
p.s. 2 - perhaps this realization should unsettle me more?
5 comments:
This whole concept is stupendous ! In sanskrit there are two words 'Anuvu' and 'Anoraneiam' One is the minutest and the other is endless. It is so difficult for us from where we are ( in between the two) to understand the two ends of the spectrum. Also, the laws we know in our level ( the Newtonian level) are not applicable for either of the ends. We then are pushed only into a speculation and psudo mathematical explanation. This is the same in another dimension also - the 'soul'. About which also we know nothing ! except that no one has yet come up with a mathematical equation for it so that we can have some feel good explanation for it's existance !
It is sad that such epiphanic rumination strike only a few. If they did many more, not only can we dispense with a lot of modern world nonsense, the knowledge envelope would be genuinely pushed. The fundamental physics institutes and nano-enquiries are small mercies of hope that we are spared considering that philosophy died long ago!
This piece brought to mind a particular recurring speculation about the nature of cosmic metaphysics of my youth.
At that time (teens and 20’s) I thought the structure of the atom was correctly represented by the universal icon for it; a ‘sun-like’ nucleus center around which orbits the ‘planet-like’ electrons. From this false image (we know that electrons have both wave and particle attributes and are perhaps best described in terms of force fields – the wave function of which is collapsed into a particle by observation – ‘smeared’ around a nucleus which is itself made up of quarks which are, it is now speculated, made up of vibrating ‘strings’ with some sort of 10-dimensional existence.
But that early physical model of what we humans will only ever be able to grasp mathematically, lent itself to this idle pondering: What if this model is not only a recapitulated in the solar system and at the atomic level, but throughout all of existence? That is, what if the cosmos is endlessly fractal (the same at all scales)?
Even today, though our cosmic models are different, a similarly awe-inspiring speculation is possible. One such speculation is regarding why gravity is, by orders of magnitude, much weaker than the other three physical forces. This speculation explains that it is because it’s diffused into all these other dimensions. In fact, this theory is one of the factors giving raise to multidimensional string theory. Essentially, the power of gravity is seen as largely ‘escaping’ into parallel dimensions that we will never be able to experience though they in fact share the same space with us right now.
At the same time, the idea that we have two phenomena that share the same label, ‘singularity’ (which physicists admit just means they don’t know what the hell is going on as the current laws of physics break down in both). There is the singularity of a black hole and the singularity of the big bang. This has lead to speculation that these are somehow related. Perhaps the singularity of a black hole is the creation of a new universe receiving what is being swallowed by the black hole. This suggests that perhaps our universe is the result of a black hole in another universe. Our big bang was simply a supermassive black hole event in another universe spewing its mass into ours. And the billions of supermassive black holes in our universe are the big bang births of new universes. Gravity is the maker of these universes and is what flows between universes via this and at the multidimensional subatomic scale.
And, consequently, our universe is but a bubble in an oceanic bubble bath of infinite bubbles.
Well, skeptics rightly point out that if this is so, and we can’t communicate with these different universes or experience these other dimensions, then such theories are little different than theophany. That is, it’s not real science; it is instead the stuff of religion or spirituality.
Perhaps so (though some feel these other universes are not completely cut off from scientific verification). So in that ‘spirit’, here’s an evocation of that ‘awesome-terror’ that is often found in religious and mystical texts. A form of this feeling often comes to me whenever I think deeply about modern science, from cosmology and physics to complexity and neural sciences.
My last reply discussing this topic referred only to one aspect of your piece; that we can become ‘unsettled’ by our thoughts when we try to grasp the awesomeness of cosmic scale. I left unremarked-upon the ‘scope’ aspect it, if you will. By ‘scope’ I mean the hierarchical organization of this huge scale via self-organization.
This is seen most clearly when look at how, unlike the entropy of most of the physical universe, life is an amazingly counter-entropic development of nature in which the arrow of time has led to ever more structured order – all the way up to self-consciousness.
Of course, if these billions of cells going about their existence unaware that there is a consciousness at all, not to mention one which has the gall to claim ownership and control of this self-organization, they’d laugh and offer-up the analogy often used to describe politicians as being folks who look around for a parade and jump in front of so they can claim they’re leading it.
Brian Christian, in his book “The Most Human Human” about the 2009 Turing Test competition in which he was a contender, offers a funny anecdote which perhaps explains this need to attach an ‘I’ to this complex multitudinous reality. You can watch his talk about it in this BOOKTV video:
The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive]
Approx. 49 min.
The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
Brian Christian
When you get to the part when he discusses the means by which the most sophisticated computers try to fool the judges, you get a deeper appreciation for poet Walt Whitman’s line “I am large, I contain multitudes.” He had no idea the degree to which this is so – but he did get the point that there’s both the ‘multitudes’ and the ‘I’.
Another BOOKTV talk worth checking out is by an author who’s taken this understanding onward to the larger implications of what it means to be this ‘multitudinous’ human embedded in society. We are just now beginning to understand via neural and cognitive sciences that much of what we’ve telling ourselves about who we is wrong. In David Brooks’ talk about his book, he not only covers some of this same territory, but also the territory covered by Haidt’s “Happiness Hypothesis”. Once again, one can get a pretty good flavor for it by watching this video of his presentation:
[The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement]
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
David Brooks
Something else you might find interesting in these presentations / books is that both mention Richard Hofstadter. Christian only briefly, but Brooks actually reads a snippet from Hofstadter’s book “I Am A Strange Loop” which I know you’ve read and, if memory serves, liked.
Oh, and if you want to get even deeper into my ruminations about some of the recent speculation about the ‘multiverse’ this is yet one more very interesting presentation from BOOKTV. This one also features a well-known mathematician skeptic who rather aggressively interviews the author. BTW, I think Greene got the better of the exchange.
I liked what you wrote.
The YouTube clip is fascinating. My experience going above the clouds was described in one of my old blogs.
Take a look when you find time: http://web.mac.com/tyag/Home/Blog/Entries/2006/6/7_Life_Above_the_Clouds.html
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