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{ Paul Lafornara - Arrangement } - { Narrative - Part I: Clifford Stoll's reading of the in__ion on the first Hayes Hall Tower Bell, Part II: Richard Dawkins - excerpts from "Queerer than we can suppose, the strangeness of Science } - August/September 2008 - The View

All truth, is one. In this light. Science and religion endeavor here for the steady evolution of mankind. From darkness to light ... From narrowness to broad-mindedness ... From prejudice to tolerance ... It is the voice of life, which calls us to come and learn. Queerer than we can suppose, the strangeness of Science. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose. I suspect there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of or can be dreamed of in any philosophy. Quantum theories, experimental predictions of atoms. This means that Quantum theory has got to be in some sense true. Yet the assumptions that Quantum theory needs to make in order to deliver those predictions are so mysterious if you think you understand Quantum theory, you don't understand Quantum theory. It's so queer that physicists resort to one or another paradoxical interpretation of it. In the fabric of reality embraces the "many worlds" interpretation of Quantum theory. Because the worst you can say about it is it's preposterously wasteful. It postulates of vast, and rapidly growing number of universes existing in parallel mutually undetectable except through a narrow porthole of quantum mechanical experiments. The queerness of modern Physics is just an extreme example. Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense. ... the number molecules per glassful is hugely greater than the number of glassfuls, or bladdersful, in the world. You have just breathed in a nitrogen atom that passed through the right lung of the third Iguonadon to the left of the tall Sykat tree. Queerer than we can suppose. What is it that makes us capable to supposing anything? And does this tell us anything about what we CAN suppose? Are there things about the universe that will be forever beyond our grasp? But not beyond the grasp of some superior intelligence. Are there things about the universe that are in principle, ungraspable by any mind however superior? The history of Science has been one, long series of violent brainstorms as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe. We're now so used to the idea that the Earth spins rather than the Sun moves across the sky. It's hard for us to realize what a shattering mental revolution THAT must have been. After all it seem obvious that the Earth is large and motionless, the Sun small and mobile. It's worth recalling, why do people always say it was 'natural' for man to assume that the Sun went 'round the Earth, rather than the Earth was rotating? Well obviously because it just LOOKS that the Sun is going 'round the Earth. Well what would it have looked like if it HAD looked as though the Earth was rotating? Science has taught us against all intuition that apparently solid things like crystals and rocks are really most entirely composed of empty space. In the familiar illustration; is the nucleus of an atom is a fly in the middle of a sports stadium and the next atom is in the next sports stadium. So it would seem the hardest, solidest, densest rock is really almost entirely empty space, broken only by tiny particles so widely spaced they shouldn't count. Why then do rocks feel solid and hard and impenetrable? Our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude of size and speed which our bodies operate at. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms. If we had, our brains probably WOULD perceive rocks as full of empty space. Rocks feel hard and impenetrable to our hands precisely because objects like rocks and hands cannot penetrate each other. It's therefore useful for our brains to construct notions like solidity and impenetrability. Because such notions help us to navigate our bodies through the middle sized world in which was have the navigate. Moving to the other end of the scale, our ancestors never had to navigate through the cosmos at speeds close to the speed of light. If they had, our brains would be much better at understanding Einstein. We are evolved denizens of middle world. And that limits what we are capable of imagining. We find it intuitively easy to grasp ideas like when a rabbit moves at the sort of medium velocity at which rabbits, and other middle world objects move and hits another middle world object like a rock, it knocks itself out. What is the atom mostly made of? Space What am I mostly made of? Atoms All I have to do is merge the spaces! Unaided Human intuition ... schooled in middle world, finds it hard to believe Galileo when he tells us a heavy object and a light object (air friction aside) would hit the ground at the same instant. And that's because in middle world air friction is always there. If we'd evolve in a vacuum we'd expect them to hit the ground simultaneously. If we were bacteria constantly buffeted by thermal movements of molecules it would be different. But we middle worlders are too big to notice Brownian motion. In the same way, our lives are dominated by the force of gravity but almost oblivious to the force of surface tension. A small insect would reverse these priorities. We have this tendancy to think that only solid, material things are really things at all. Waves of electromagnetic fluctuation in a vacuum seem unreal. Victorians thought the waves had to be waves IN some material medium ... the ether. But we find real matter comforting only because we've evolved to survive in middle world, where matter is a useful fiction. A whirlpool is a thing with just as much reality as a rock. In a desert plain in Tanzanian in the shadow of the volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai, there's a dune made of volcanic ash. The beautiful thing is that is moves ... bodily. It's what's technically known as a brachan. The entire dune walks across the desert in a westerly direction at a speed of about 17 meters per year. It retains it's crescent shape, and moves in the direction of the horns. What happens is the wind blows the sand up the shallow slope on the other side and as each sand grain hits the top of the ridge it cascades down on the inside of the crescent, so the whole horn-shaped dune moves. That you and I are more like a wave than a permanent thing. You weren't there! Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and moment'rily comes together to be "you". Whatever you are therefore you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back your neck, read it again until it does ... because it is important. x