Musings
I read an article recently arguing that the microscope was the greatest invention of all times. I'm not sure if I agree or not. I think the microwave is pretty amazing myself. I remember the first time I looked through a microscope and found a whole new world in it. All kinds of creatures that I couldn't ever have imagined wriggled around on the glass slide -- all contained in a single drop of water. Amazing.
I get the feeling that we have absolutely no concept of what our universe is like. We're rather like goldfish in a bowl trying to describe the planet from our view of the interior of one house. We really have no grasp on how small things actually get or how big the universe actually is. Philosophers postulated that the atom was the smallest indivisible unit of matter. Now we know that an atom is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons. It turns out that protons, neutrons, and electrons are also composed of even smaller things. We really don't know how small the smallest things are that make up things.
I remember being a kid and trying to understand the universe. My main question was whether or not the universe had an edge. If space did have an edge, that meant that it was finite. However, that begged the question of what was just beyond the edge of space. Surely it would be more space, right? So the other option then is that space is infinite with vast spaces of nothingness extending forever. But that doesn't make sense either. How can something not have a limit? It seems just as impossible that space could extend forever as it does that it could have a limit. It still makes me dizzy, just as it did as a child, to think about it all.
Perhaps our solar system is really like an atom forming the molecule of our galaxy with all of the other atom like solar systems in our galaxy. That begs another question. If our galaxy is really only like a molecule, and is connected to all these other galaxy/molecule thingees, what do all those molecule/galaxy thingees make? That is what I would really like to know. Perhaps we are a single atom in what forms a table leg, a dog, a coffee cup or something else in a dimension that is so big that it entirely eludes our capabilities to grasp the enormity of it.
I feel like a goldfish and am in awe.
I get the feeling that we have absolutely no concept of what our universe is like. We're rather like goldfish in a bowl trying to describe the planet from our view of the interior of one house. We really have no grasp on how small things actually get or how big the universe actually is. Philosophers postulated that the atom was the smallest indivisible unit of matter. Now we know that an atom is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons. It turns out that protons, neutrons, and electrons are also composed of even smaller things. We really don't know how small the smallest things are that make up things.
I remember being a kid and trying to understand the universe. My main question was whether or not the universe had an edge. If space did have an edge, that meant that it was finite. However, that begged the question of what was just beyond the edge of space. Surely it would be more space, right? So the other option then is that space is infinite with vast spaces of nothingness extending forever. But that doesn't make sense either. How can something not have a limit? It seems just as impossible that space could extend forever as it does that it could have a limit. It still makes me dizzy, just as it did as a child, to think about it all.
Perhaps our solar system is really like an atom forming the molecule of our galaxy with all of the other atom like solar systems in our galaxy. That begs another question. If our galaxy is really only like a molecule, and is connected to all these other galaxy/molecule thingees, what do all those molecule/galaxy thingees make? That is what I would really like to know. Perhaps we are a single atom in what forms a table leg, a dog, a coffee cup or something else in a dimension that is so big that it entirely eludes our capabilities to grasp the enormity of it.
I feel like a goldfish and am in awe.
posted by The Mad Hatter at 9:35 AM
1 Comments:
Hans, that pure sense of awe and wonderment you express to end this most thoughtful entry...isn't that as close as we can get to knowing God? Is this not the fulcrum point beyond which human capacity cannot transcend?
Physical reality and spiritual reality look at the dimension of life through science and religion respectively, each using the physical senses and the spiritual senses for comprehension. There can be only one "knowledge" which must harmonize this paradox.
As I ponder the seeming disparity between the microcosm and the macrocosm--representative of particles of an atom or the vastness of the stars and planets--my thoughts end in that same emotional state of awe regardless which end of the universe I focus. Could this be the ultimate unity where intelligence and heart organically co-exist?!?!?
Thank you Hans for picking such an important topic, full of potential to mitigate feelings of inferiority or superiority. If we could just apply the Universal
Truth found in the GOLDEN RULE of all major Faiths, wars would cease to exist.
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