Francis Mont's Blog, page 12
June 16, 2015
What is love?
When you are old,
you know how little sense it all makes.
What keeps you going
is a deeply felt oneness,
with Another…
…the answer to the riddle
of elusive human happiness.
When you are old,
choking back all the unshed tears
collected in a lifetime,
your hurt is wiped off
by the smile of one
who forgives you:
imperfect,
not what you pretend,
to save your fragile ego
from the rest.
When you are old,
and you have told
all your stories
to anyone who would listen,
your love will gently hold your hand
and ask you to tell, once more,
how you felt
when you met for the first time.
you know how little sense it all makes.
What keeps you going
is a deeply felt oneness,
with Another…
…the answer to the riddle
of elusive human happiness.
When you are old,
choking back all the unshed tears
collected in a lifetime,
your hurt is wiped off
by the smile of one
who forgives you:
imperfect,
not what you pretend,
to save your fragile ego
from the rest.
When you are old,
and you have told
all your stories
to anyone who would listen,
your love will gently hold your hand
and ask you to tell, once more,
how you felt
when you met for the first time.
June 13, 2015
The Scientific Method
The “Scientific Method” we scientists keep talking about has many ingredients, but this is the most important: intellectual integrity. Some call it objectivity: look at all the relevant data and go where the evidence takes you, whether you like it or not. Kepler discarded the results of years of very hard work because his theory did not quite agree with the observations. Einstein once published a paper documenting the colossal failure of a research that had taken him two years, “to save another fool two years should he wander down the same path”.
You might say that I am talking about plain honesty, not something special reserved for science and scientists. Yes and no. The difference is that scientists must take it seriously, because without it the whole endeavour is pointless.
No ‘white lies’ are possible in science. We cannot make an exception and suspend our objectivity, even for a second, because we are forging chains of logic and if even one link is missing or ‘weak’, the whole thing falls apart. We might fool ourselves, but we cannot fool Mother Nature, who doesn’t care whether we manage to uncover her secrets.
Honesty and integrity are only prerequisites for science. They are not the method itself. The method starts with observation. Not just looking but seeing.
If you look at the stars on a clear night, your first impression is randomness. Thousands and thousands of pinpricks of light scattered all over the sky. After a while, you begin to see structure. The bright band of the Milky Way should be the first thing you notice. Then, if you have the time and imagination, you might look for some way to remember the shape of star-groups. Maybe they remind you of something: a cart, a bear, a dragon…. Eventually, you might realize that the arrangement of stars within a group and the relation of the groups among themselves never change -- except for half a dozen ‘stars’ that seem to wander all over the place, moving forward for a while, than stopping and moving backwards, then forward again.
It takes time to observe nature and find patterns that are not immediately obvious. Once you have observed something, you have to be able to describe it to others, which means you have to be able to describe it to yourself first. You give names to what you observed to save time in both thought and communication. The fixed lights, you call stars; the wandering few you call planets (‘planetes’ means ‘wanderer’ in Greek). Inventing names and explaining what they mean is called ‘definition’.
And that is where mere curiosity turns into science. Of course scientists don’t just sit down and make up definitions before doing anything else – it doesn’t work that way. We must have some ideas about the attributes of matter and the processes that we want to study. Often, we understand something intuitively before we are able to give precise definitions. ‘Force’ and ‘mass’ in Newtonian mechanics were described before they were defined. Some concepts, like ‘space’ and ‘time’, we can never define precisely.
Science is not a linear progress, leading from ‘A’ to ‘B’. It can be best described as ‘iterative’: getting closer and closer with every pass we make at it. We gain depth in the process and our definitions and statements will be more and more precise. A common error made by undergraduate students is the attempt to treat physics like mathematics. You can’t because it isn’t! Mathematics is a logical, self-consistent creation of the human mind. It does not need to be tested against messy, approximate reality. Physics, by necessity, is imprecise. How do we know where an object’s boundaries are when, with enough magnification, everything dissolves into whirling, colliding atoms and molecules that move in and out of macroscopic objects?
Eventually things are defined; theories are developed and tested against reality. A new theory will have to be built on top of a self-consistent network of known facts and already proven theories that are connected to basic experiments, axioms and principles. This is the existing body of science that, to the best of our current knowledge, does not contain contradictions. This knowledge-base is the result of thousands of years of curiosity, passion, determination. It contains knowledge gained in every era and location through history: the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Europeans, the Russians, the Americans all added data that became ‘integrated’ along the way.
Integration is a process that constantly compares statements in the knowledge-base for consistency and agreement. Whenever a contradiction is found, every effort is made to resolve it. Contradiction in science is like poison in the human body – it has to be expelled for the body to survive. Even if all the experiments performed so far are in agreement with the theory, scientists must be prepared to discard or modify the theory at any future time, should contradictory evidence surface in further research.
Once we have a knowledge-base, we need the tools to expand it through meticulous observations. The primary tool used by science for learning new things about the physical world is experimentation. With experiments we collect facts, identify the exact nature of what we know and how we know it. Experiments must be repeatable and consistent, publicly demonstrated and the resultant data freely available to anyone. And, as many teachers and books point out: no measurement is valid without identifying its precision and its margin of error.
An integral part of scientific experiments is called ‘reduction’. We try to determine which parameters play a role in a process we want to study. Once we have an idea about those attributes that affect the process, we have to set up an experimental situation wherein we can change any one parameter and see what happens to the rest.
A good example is studying the relationship between pressure, volume and temperature of a gas. After many experiments performed by Robert Boyle in 1661 and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1802, the “Ideal Gas Law” was discovered: the relationship between temperature (T), pressure (P) and volume (V) of a body of gas is such that the magnitude of PV/T remains constant (values determined by the kind of gas we use). Which means that:
• If we keep the temperature unchanged and decrease the volume then the pressure has to increase (V and P are inversely proportional)
• If we keep the pressure unchanged, and increase the temperature, then the volume has to increase as well (T and V are directly proportional)
• If we keep the volume unchanged and increase the temperature, then the pressure has to increase as well. (T and P are directly proportional)
While collecting data on a given subject, scientists use both pattern-recognition techniques and imagination to find relationships and cause-and-effect links among these facts. This is usually done by trying out different models (hypotheses, theories) that could explain the experimental results and not contradict anything we know.
Then the scientist is ready to try to develop a theory that will explain the collected data, based on the existing knowledge-base of science. The theory is usually built on an assumption or hypothesis that appears reasonable, in view of all the known facts. Quite often it states this assumption as a hypothetical law or laws. Some of the best known theories in physics are:
• The Heliocentric Universe theory, suggested first by Aristarchus in ancient Greece, followed by Copernicus in 1514 and then embraced by Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Galileo got into trouble with the church because he had stated it as a proven theory instead of as a hypothesis.
• Newton’s three Laws of Mechanics, coupled with the new mathematical tools he invented, could be used to deduce results in perfect agreement with all known facts at the time.
• Maxwell’s Electromagnetic Field Theory offered a set of equations that could be used to calculate all known electromagnetic phenomena. It also suggested experimental results (like radio waves) that were only confirmed later.
• Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was based on a few philosophical assumptions that explained many unresolved problems and perplexing experimental results. Its predictions have been experimentally confirmed since.
• Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity stated a number of equations that explained anomalies in Mercury’s orbit, suggested a new view of gravity and correctly predicted that the sun’s gravitational field bends light.
• Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that in the world of atoms, we can never measure everything to arbitrary degree of precision. For example, the more precise we are in measuring the location of an electron, the less precisely we will be able to measure its momentum - mass times speed - and vice versa.
Actually, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr spent over 25 years arguing about the Uncertainty Principle. Einstein would dream up thought-experiments to prove that the theory was incorrect and Bohr would prove Einstein wrong every time. Until, one day, at the 1930 Solvay conference, Einstein managed to come up with one example that completely baffled Bohr, who went to bed and spent a sleepless night trying to find a way to prove Einstein wrong, yet one more time.
Next morning they met at breakfast, each with a huge grin on his face. Einstein was convinced that he’d finally defeated Bohr. Bohr, on the other hand, had found Einstein’s mistake. Albert forgot to take only one thing into consideration: the effect of his own General Theory of Relativity. There was much merriment around the table that morning!
All the experiments performed since then seem to decide in Bohr’s favour. The Uncertainty Principle Theory – as of this moment - is considered to be proven beyond any doubt.
Many other theories have been proposed by physicists during the last 400 years, some fundamental, others minor; some proved correct, many turned out to be wrong. To prove a theory, we need deductive logic. By applying mathematical tools, we logically deduce the consequences of the new theory and make predictions. We can test these predictions against existing experimental data, or perform new experiments to verify the results of the calculation.
Once these deductions are tested and their accuracy demonstrated, the theory is considered to be proven.
For example, the “Kinetic Theory of Gases” assumes that gases are made up of atoms or molecules in random motion inside a container. The pressure of the gas is due to the force exerted by the molecules hitting the walls of the container and the temperature is due to the kinetic energy of the molecules. If we apply Newton’s Laws to this model, then we can deduce the experimentally obtained “Ideal Gas Law”, so the theory is proven within its limits.
Luckily, we don’t always have to do a lot of math before realizing that a theory is wrong. A common mistake many young physicists make is taking mathematical deductions too seriously. I don’t mean that math can be sloppy and incorrect - far from it. However, as experienced physicists will tell you, it is possible to think in terms of critical and determining variables, and see how they stand up in the new theory. Much deductive work can be saved if one can spot a show-stopper at the beginning: thinking ‘physically’ before thinking ‘mathematically’.
The theories we make up will be judged by what is called: “Ockham’s razor”. William of Ockham (1280-1349) laid down the rule that “entities must not needlessly be multiplied”. Between two theories that fit all observed facts, we accept the theory that requires the fewer or simpler assumptions. This does not mean that the simplest explanation is always correct. Remember: all observed facts must be taken into account!
The famous quote from Albert Einstein is appropriate here: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”.
Physicists like this elegance and simplicity of nature. They like it so much that they have been pursuing the Holy Grail of Physics for over a century: the “Unified Field Theory”. They would like to come up with one theory that explains absolutely everything! A tall order indeed, but there is cause for optimism: as the science of physics progressed over the decades, more and more phenomena that seemed to have nothing in common were proven to be manifestations of the same thing.
For example electricity and magnetism, once considered totally different areas of physics, were unified by James Maxwell in 1873 under the “Electromagnetic Field Theory”. Many advances on the ‘unification front’ have been made since then and physicists still hope that one day they will have one equation that explains the universe!
You might say that I am talking about plain honesty, not something special reserved for science and scientists. Yes and no. The difference is that scientists must take it seriously, because without it the whole endeavour is pointless.
No ‘white lies’ are possible in science. We cannot make an exception and suspend our objectivity, even for a second, because we are forging chains of logic and if even one link is missing or ‘weak’, the whole thing falls apart. We might fool ourselves, but we cannot fool Mother Nature, who doesn’t care whether we manage to uncover her secrets.
Honesty and integrity are only prerequisites for science. They are not the method itself. The method starts with observation. Not just looking but seeing.
If you look at the stars on a clear night, your first impression is randomness. Thousands and thousands of pinpricks of light scattered all over the sky. After a while, you begin to see structure. The bright band of the Milky Way should be the first thing you notice. Then, if you have the time and imagination, you might look for some way to remember the shape of star-groups. Maybe they remind you of something: a cart, a bear, a dragon…. Eventually, you might realize that the arrangement of stars within a group and the relation of the groups among themselves never change -- except for half a dozen ‘stars’ that seem to wander all over the place, moving forward for a while, than stopping and moving backwards, then forward again.
It takes time to observe nature and find patterns that are not immediately obvious. Once you have observed something, you have to be able to describe it to others, which means you have to be able to describe it to yourself first. You give names to what you observed to save time in both thought and communication. The fixed lights, you call stars; the wandering few you call planets (‘planetes’ means ‘wanderer’ in Greek). Inventing names and explaining what they mean is called ‘definition’.
And that is where mere curiosity turns into science. Of course scientists don’t just sit down and make up definitions before doing anything else – it doesn’t work that way. We must have some ideas about the attributes of matter and the processes that we want to study. Often, we understand something intuitively before we are able to give precise definitions. ‘Force’ and ‘mass’ in Newtonian mechanics were described before they were defined. Some concepts, like ‘space’ and ‘time’, we can never define precisely.
Science is not a linear progress, leading from ‘A’ to ‘B’. It can be best described as ‘iterative’: getting closer and closer with every pass we make at it. We gain depth in the process and our definitions and statements will be more and more precise. A common error made by undergraduate students is the attempt to treat physics like mathematics. You can’t because it isn’t! Mathematics is a logical, self-consistent creation of the human mind. It does not need to be tested against messy, approximate reality. Physics, by necessity, is imprecise. How do we know where an object’s boundaries are when, with enough magnification, everything dissolves into whirling, colliding atoms and molecules that move in and out of macroscopic objects?
Eventually things are defined; theories are developed and tested against reality. A new theory will have to be built on top of a self-consistent network of known facts and already proven theories that are connected to basic experiments, axioms and principles. This is the existing body of science that, to the best of our current knowledge, does not contain contradictions. This knowledge-base is the result of thousands of years of curiosity, passion, determination. It contains knowledge gained in every era and location through history: the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Europeans, the Russians, the Americans all added data that became ‘integrated’ along the way.
Integration is a process that constantly compares statements in the knowledge-base for consistency and agreement. Whenever a contradiction is found, every effort is made to resolve it. Contradiction in science is like poison in the human body – it has to be expelled for the body to survive. Even if all the experiments performed so far are in agreement with the theory, scientists must be prepared to discard or modify the theory at any future time, should contradictory evidence surface in further research.
Once we have a knowledge-base, we need the tools to expand it through meticulous observations. The primary tool used by science for learning new things about the physical world is experimentation. With experiments we collect facts, identify the exact nature of what we know and how we know it. Experiments must be repeatable and consistent, publicly demonstrated and the resultant data freely available to anyone. And, as many teachers and books point out: no measurement is valid without identifying its precision and its margin of error.
An integral part of scientific experiments is called ‘reduction’. We try to determine which parameters play a role in a process we want to study. Once we have an idea about those attributes that affect the process, we have to set up an experimental situation wherein we can change any one parameter and see what happens to the rest.
A good example is studying the relationship between pressure, volume and temperature of a gas. After many experiments performed by Robert Boyle in 1661 and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1802, the “Ideal Gas Law” was discovered: the relationship between temperature (T), pressure (P) and volume (V) of a body of gas is such that the magnitude of PV/T remains constant (values determined by the kind of gas we use). Which means that:
• If we keep the temperature unchanged and decrease the volume then the pressure has to increase (V and P are inversely proportional)
• If we keep the pressure unchanged, and increase the temperature, then the volume has to increase as well (T and V are directly proportional)
• If we keep the volume unchanged and increase the temperature, then the pressure has to increase as well. (T and P are directly proportional)
While collecting data on a given subject, scientists use both pattern-recognition techniques and imagination to find relationships and cause-and-effect links among these facts. This is usually done by trying out different models (hypotheses, theories) that could explain the experimental results and not contradict anything we know.
Then the scientist is ready to try to develop a theory that will explain the collected data, based on the existing knowledge-base of science. The theory is usually built on an assumption or hypothesis that appears reasonable, in view of all the known facts. Quite often it states this assumption as a hypothetical law or laws. Some of the best known theories in physics are:
• The Heliocentric Universe theory, suggested first by Aristarchus in ancient Greece, followed by Copernicus in 1514 and then embraced by Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Galileo got into trouble with the church because he had stated it as a proven theory instead of as a hypothesis.
• Newton’s three Laws of Mechanics, coupled with the new mathematical tools he invented, could be used to deduce results in perfect agreement with all known facts at the time.
• Maxwell’s Electromagnetic Field Theory offered a set of equations that could be used to calculate all known electromagnetic phenomena. It also suggested experimental results (like radio waves) that were only confirmed later.
• Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was based on a few philosophical assumptions that explained many unresolved problems and perplexing experimental results. Its predictions have been experimentally confirmed since.
• Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity stated a number of equations that explained anomalies in Mercury’s orbit, suggested a new view of gravity and correctly predicted that the sun’s gravitational field bends light.
• Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that in the world of atoms, we can never measure everything to arbitrary degree of precision. For example, the more precise we are in measuring the location of an electron, the less precisely we will be able to measure its momentum - mass times speed - and vice versa.
Actually, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr spent over 25 years arguing about the Uncertainty Principle. Einstein would dream up thought-experiments to prove that the theory was incorrect and Bohr would prove Einstein wrong every time. Until, one day, at the 1930 Solvay conference, Einstein managed to come up with one example that completely baffled Bohr, who went to bed and spent a sleepless night trying to find a way to prove Einstein wrong, yet one more time.
Next morning they met at breakfast, each with a huge grin on his face. Einstein was convinced that he’d finally defeated Bohr. Bohr, on the other hand, had found Einstein’s mistake. Albert forgot to take only one thing into consideration: the effect of his own General Theory of Relativity. There was much merriment around the table that morning!
All the experiments performed since then seem to decide in Bohr’s favour. The Uncertainty Principle Theory – as of this moment - is considered to be proven beyond any doubt.
Many other theories have been proposed by physicists during the last 400 years, some fundamental, others minor; some proved correct, many turned out to be wrong. To prove a theory, we need deductive logic. By applying mathematical tools, we logically deduce the consequences of the new theory and make predictions. We can test these predictions against existing experimental data, or perform new experiments to verify the results of the calculation.
Once these deductions are tested and their accuracy demonstrated, the theory is considered to be proven.
For example, the “Kinetic Theory of Gases” assumes that gases are made up of atoms or molecules in random motion inside a container. The pressure of the gas is due to the force exerted by the molecules hitting the walls of the container and the temperature is due to the kinetic energy of the molecules. If we apply Newton’s Laws to this model, then we can deduce the experimentally obtained “Ideal Gas Law”, so the theory is proven within its limits.
Luckily, we don’t always have to do a lot of math before realizing that a theory is wrong. A common mistake many young physicists make is taking mathematical deductions too seriously. I don’t mean that math can be sloppy and incorrect - far from it. However, as experienced physicists will tell you, it is possible to think in terms of critical and determining variables, and see how they stand up in the new theory. Much deductive work can be saved if one can spot a show-stopper at the beginning: thinking ‘physically’ before thinking ‘mathematically’.
The theories we make up will be judged by what is called: “Ockham’s razor”. William of Ockham (1280-1349) laid down the rule that “entities must not needlessly be multiplied”. Between two theories that fit all observed facts, we accept the theory that requires the fewer or simpler assumptions. This does not mean that the simplest explanation is always correct. Remember: all observed facts must be taken into account!
The famous quote from Albert Einstein is appropriate here: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”.
Physicists like this elegance and simplicity of nature. They like it so much that they have been pursuing the Holy Grail of Physics for over a century: the “Unified Field Theory”. They would like to come up with one theory that explains absolutely everything! A tall order indeed, but there is cause for optimism: as the science of physics progressed over the decades, more and more phenomena that seemed to have nothing in common were proven to be manifestations of the same thing.
For example electricity and magnetism, once considered totally different areas of physics, were unified by James Maxwell in 1873 under the “Electromagnetic Field Theory”. Many advances on the ‘unification front’ have been made since then and physicists still hope that one day they will have one equation that explains the universe!
June 12, 2015
I had a dream last night
I had a dream last night:
I was a tree in pre-hominid times:
a giant red cedar
hugging the earth and the sky,
watching the birds and clouds float by,
stretching my leafy branches in leisurely comfort,
with not a care in the world,
knowing I would never die.
Then I was a bird,
a soaring condor,
being one with the sky
between the earth far below
and infinity above,
as I would fly over granite peaks
and desert dunes,
looking for food, mate,
landing on dewy meadow.
Then I was a whale,
embraced by the sea, the salty waves,
as I dove, and then rose again,
to emerge from the water,
celebrate the sunshine above
and the translucent green below,
wanting to live, in this splendor,
for ever and ever.
I was on the peak in every dream,
no one to hunt me, kill me,
no one to fear...
...not knowing that the end
of this beautiful existence
was soon, very soon,
here.
I was a tree in pre-hominid times:
a giant red cedar
hugging the earth and the sky,
watching the birds and clouds float by,
stretching my leafy branches in leisurely comfort,
with not a care in the world,
knowing I would never die.
Then I was a bird,
a soaring condor,
being one with the sky
between the earth far below
and infinity above,
as I would fly over granite peaks
and desert dunes,
looking for food, mate,
landing on dewy meadow.
Then I was a whale,
embraced by the sea, the salty waves,
as I dove, and then rose again,
to emerge from the water,
celebrate the sunshine above
and the translucent green below,
wanting to live, in this splendor,
for ever and ever.
I was on the peak in every dream,
no one to hunt me, kill me,
no one to fear...
...not knowing that the end
of this beautiful existence
was soon, very soon,
here.
Vegetarians
We are the pariahs of this flesh-eating world:
hated, resented, ridiculed, reviled,
our very existence a threat
of maybe losing a steak or a bacon…
…the non-negotiable staple
of unimaginative minds.
They all know where meat comes from:
the barbaric cruelty of factory farms,
abattoirs, chicken-horror-chambers,
processing plants,
industrial fishing,
special torture for baby animals:
goats, lambs, calves.
Oh, they love their science, technology:
computers and iPhones,
jet planes, boats, modern medicine,
but when it comes to their
most fundamental need: food
they insist on cruel, barbaric methods of the past.
The technology is there,
we can synthesize meat
in modern factories,
cheaper, cleaner,
without killing, cruelty, suffering
for living beings:
our animal friends,
we treat them as inanimate garbage
until we devour them
in fake-carnivore style.
Children love animals,
get misty eyed over kittens,
puppies, baby goats, little lambs,
not told what we do to them
where their burgers come from:
"Eat it dear, it comes from
your friendly neighborhood Mart"
They say:
it’s the natural way,
forgetting that we are unnatural
in every other way:
we fight nature
with science, technology…
…not in nature but in cities
we stay.
We are the flesh-eating disease
of this animal world,
not clean, innocent
as true carnivores are
who don’t have a choice…
…we, who evolved
with science and technology
left our brains behind
when it comes to
humane philosophy.
hated, resented, ridiculed, reviled,
our very existence a threat
of maybe losing a steak or a bacon…
…the non-negotiable staple
of unimaginative minds.
They all know where meat comes from:
the barbaric cruelty of factory farms,
abattoirs, chicken-horror-chambers,
processing plants,
industrial fishing,
special torture for baby animals:
goats, lambs, calves.
Oh, they love their science, technology:
computers and iPhones,
jet planes, boats, modern medicine,
but when it comes to their
most fundamental need: food
they insist on cruel, barbaric methods of the past.
The technology is there,
we can synthesize meat
in modern factories,
cheaper, cleaner,
without killing, cruelty, suffering
for living beings:
our animal friends,
we treat them as inanimate garbage
until we devour them
in fake-carnivore style.
Children love animals,
get misty eyed over kittens,
puppies, baby goats, little lambs,
not told what we do to them
where their burgers come from:
"Eat it dear, it comes from
your friendly neighborhood Mart"
They say:
it’s the natural way,
forgetting that we are unnatural
in every other way:
we fight nature
with science, technology…
…not in nature but in cities
we stay.
We are the flesh-eating disease
of this animal world,
not clean, innocent
as true carnivores are
who don’t have a choice…
…we, who evolved
with science and technology
left our brains behind
when it comes to
humane philosophy.
June 9, 2015
The blue heron
The blue heron conjured itself out of hot shimmering air,
or, maybe it just floated up from the marsh
by the grayish-blue band of the road I was driving on.
It did not seem to fly, just hovered
with lazy indifference to the gravity
binding me to the ground.
It was huge: all wings, neck and legs
yet it had the beauty of the improbable:
all curves carrying a head,
mostly just beak:
a feathery mosquito
with a five-foot wingspan.
Herons are so mysterious,
so rare,
an omen, a sign,
a revelation with great importance -
I asked what message it brought
to a human on a quest.
It did not reply directly,
just kept ahead of me,
out of reach,
transcending the obvious and predictable
to something almost completely unknown,
yet frighteningly familiar:
It seemed to say:
existence is not uniquely human,
the God we blame
made us all part of the puzzle,
with equally significant roles
in teaching one another
about beauty, truth
and harmony in the universe.
I thanked him for this piece
I have been missing
through a lifetime of trying to understand -
the obvious answer to an age-old question:
It’s not all about us, people,
it is about life…
…we are just a small
and not always important part.
It's about being, loving, dying,
reborning and retrying,
forever,
or until we finally,
one day,
realize
that we are not that different
from anything alive
on this Planet,
we are not many, but
we are
only
one.
or, maybe it just floated up from the marsh
by the grayish-blue band of the road I was driving on.
It did not seem to fly, just hovered
with lazy indifference to the gravity
binding me to the ground.
It was huge: all wings, neck and legs
yet it had the beauty of the improbable:
all curves carrying a head,
mostly just beak:
a feathery mosquito
with a five-foot wingspan.
Herons are so mysterious,
so rare,
an omen, a sign,
a revelation with great importance -
I asked what message it brought
to a human on a quest.
It did not reply directly,
just kept ahead of me,
out of reach,
transcending the obvious and predictable
to something almost completely unknown,
yet frighteningly familiar:
It seemed to say:
existence is not uniquely human,
the God we blame
made us all part of the puzzle,
with equally significant roles
in teaching one another
about beauty, truth
and harmony in the universe.
I thanked him for this piece
I have been missing
through a lifetime of trying to understand -
the obvious answer to an age-old question:
It’s not all about us, people,
it is about life…
…we are just a small
and not always important part.
It's about being, loving, dying,
reborning and retrying,
forever,
or until we finally,
one day,
realize
that we are not that different
from anything alive
on this Planet,
we are not many, but
we are
only
one.
Wild Dogs
I saw a pack of wild dogs
on TV, the other day,
they brought down a gazelle,
didn’t kill it outright but
started feeding,
tearing out chunks of its flesh,
still alive.
It’s the gazelle
that shocked me most:
head slightly raised,
just watching them,
with almost an interest.
I didn’t see hatred,
outrage or moral indignation
in those sad eyes,
I saw only pain,
acceptance,
fast fading light.
Not the gazelle,,
nor the wild dogs
knew about evil.
The dogs had to eat
what they could find,
they were hungry,
had pups to feed.
And then I knew:
for carnivores
life is just survival,
by hunting, killing, devouring,
by sheer force or deception…
…they have no choice…
…we do.
.
on TV, the other day,
they brought down a gazelle,
didn’t kill it outright but
started feeding,
tearing out chunks of its flesh,
still alive.
It’s the gazelle
that shocked me most:
head slightly raised,
just watching them,
with almost an interest.
I didn’t see hatred,
outrage or moral indignation
in those sad eyes,
I saw only pain,
acceptance,
fast fading light.
Not the gazelle,,
nor the wild dogs
knew about evil.
The dogs had to eat
what they could find,
they were hungry,
had pups to feed.
And then I knew:
for carnivores
life is just survival,
by hunting, killing, devouring,
by sheer force or deception…
…they have no choice…
…we do.
.
April 27, 2015
Humanity
Humanity, straddling this tiny planet,
barely off the trees, out of caves,
we try to fathom the meaning of existence,
while bosses rant and preachers rave.
We raise our kids,
pay the rent,
try to make sense of the madness around,
hoping we would find a solid ground
to plant our feet on, while we catch our breaths,
connect with a kindred soul
who would, somehow, make us whole.
We live like this,
year to year, decade to decade,
growing old, growing grey,
abandoned dreams litter our paths,
as we stagger from moment to moment,
never quite sure how we may
make it all the unique adventure
that we dreamed of in earlier time,
before we broke into the daily grind.
Yet, one day we may find peace,
knowing we did the best with the given
and find serenity in the thought
of a life lived well,
in the human drama,
the unfathomable.
barely off the trees, out of caves,
we try to fathom the meaning of existence,
while bosses rant and preachers rave.
We raise our kids,
pay the rent,
try to make sense of the madness around,
hoping we would find a solid ground
to plant our feet on, while we catch our breaths,
connect with a kindred soul
who would, somehow, make us whole.
We live like this,
year to year, decade to decade,
growing old, growing grey,
abandoned dreams litter our paths,
as we stagger from moment to moment,
never quite sure how we may
make it all the unique adventure
that we dreamed of in earlier time,
before we broke into the daily grind.
Yet, one day we may find peace,
knowing we did the best with the given
and find serenity in the thought
of a life lived well,
in the human drama,
the unfathomable.
April 3, 2015
Predation
If believed in god
I would have to hate 'his' 'Intelligent Design':
“Eat and be eaten!”,
that’s the commandment,
obeyed by ‘his’ creatures:
the lion rips the throat of the zebra,
a pack of wolves tears a deer apart,
the fox devours the rabbit,
the cat ‘plays’ with the mouse,
praying mantis munches on butterflies,
Venus flytrap digests insects,
humans, on top of the food chain,
kill, use, torture them all,
including their own kind.
If you are a true believer
how can’t you see that
it would have been nothing
to your ‘omnipotent’ ‘father’
to base 'his' design of all of us
on photosynthesis?
Did ‘he’ like pain, fear, suffering?
Is it divine entertainment?
We did not deserve
to be condemned
to live on a planet
dominated by teeth and claws!
This ‘design’ is anything but intelligent:
wasteful, cruel, inefficient;
needlessly too complicated:
we don’t absorb sunlight
as plants do, turning photons to food,
we receive it indirectly
in a parasitic way,
by devouring each other!
No loving god designed us…
blind, evolving nature is our true mother!
I would have to hate 'his' 'Intelligent Design':
“Eat and be eaten!”,
that’s the commandment,
obeyed by ‘his’ creatures:
the lion rips the throat of the zebra,
a pack of wolves tears a deer apart,
the fox devours the rabbit,
the cat ‘plays’ with the mouse,
praying mantis munches on butterflies,
Venus flytrap digests insects,
humans, on top of the food chain,
kill, use, torture them all,
including their own kind.
If you are a true believer
how can’t you see that
it would have been nothing
to your ‘omnipotent’ ‘father’
to base 'his' design of all of us
on photosynthesis?
Did ‘he’ like pain, fear, suffering?
Is it divine entertainment?
We did not deserve
to be condemned
to live on a planet
dominated by teeth and claws!
This ‘design’ is anything but intelligent:
wasteful, cruel, inefficient;
needlessly too complicated:
we don’t absorb sunlight
as plants do, turning photons to food,
we receive it indirectly
in a parasitic way,
by devouring each other!
No loving god designed us…
blind, evolving nature is our true mother!
March 24, 2015
Shirley Valentine
In a movie called "Shirley Valentine"
there is an unforgettable line:
kissing her stretch marks he exclaims
"it’s beautiful, it’s life" -- he explains…
…to the heaven she rolls her eyes
and utters this oath to the skies:
"Oh god, aren’t men full of shit?!"
and, my friends,
in a nutshell,
this is it!
................................
and another for fun:
The other parish
The priest thundered from the pulpit:
“everyone in this parish is going to die”
but the man in the back only sniggered:
"Father, you don't scare me with this,
because, you see, I’m from another parish!"
there is an unforgettable line:
kissing her stretch marks he exclaims
"it’s beautiful, it’s life" -- he explains…
…to the heaven she rolls her eyes
and utters this oath to the skies:
"Oh god, aren’t men full of shit?!"
and, my friends,
in a nutshell,
this is it!
................................
and another for fun:
The other parish
The priest thundered from the pulpit:
“everyone in this parish is going to die”
but the man in the back only sniggered:
"Father, you don't scare me with this,
because, you see, I’m from another parish!"
February 28, 2015
Science and Religion
[Quoted from my book: Humane Physics]
We have seen how science attempts to acquire knowledge. It is a long established method that has produced tangible results: our lives depend on it every day.
When we talk about religion, first we have to ask: which religion? There have been hundreds in human history and countless people believed in each of them, convinced that their religion was the only true one and all the others were deluded. Just Google “World Religions” for a sample of dozens still practiced today by millions to billions.
I used to participate in internet forums for the discussion of scientific and philosophical ideas. On one of these forums I posted the following question:
“Would you have imagined a god if you had never heard of the concept?”
"Suppose, for argument's sake, that you grew up in a world where nobody ever talked about gods or supernatural of any kind. Suppose you had a totally secular education: you learned about nature, physics, scientific facts, technology, productive skills, social organization, project management, etc. No priests, no churches, no bibles, no superstition, no Santa Clauses, no tooth fairies - nothing but observable reality. Would you have ever thought of anything outside this? What, if anything, would have made you think that there might be something outside of your experience?"
The point I was trying to make is that ALL of our ‘knowledge’ concerning religious assertions were handed down to us by our cultures. None of us discovered it from personal experience. This question made many forum members think hard, asking themselves the same question: “What do I know from first-hand experience and what have I accepted from others, without really examining how they acquired that ‘knowledge’?”
You might be tempted to say that the same is true for science: after all, we learn it from textbooks written by others. However, there is a difference. We can find out how the authors made their discoveries, based on what experiments, and how they reached their conclusions. Interested amateurs can reproduce the simpler experiments themselves, at least in the domain of Classical Physics. You need not take anything on faith.
Obviously, there are historical reasons why religions were invented in the first place, thousands of years ago. Otherwise they would not exist today. However, religions were established before we had proper science as an alternative and superior way to explain the universe.
The reason science has not replaced religion in so many minds is that people often lie, are often deluded and, the saddest fact of all, they often use psychological manipulation to achieve their aims: wealth or power over other people. Religions have been used for both over the millennia. Many bloody wars were fought using religion as an excuse.
In view of this, how much should we trust religious assertions, handed down to us over history? Wouldn’t it be safer to rely on our own observations and our own minds? Scientific thinking offers exactly that.
I was once asked whether I ‘believed in’ electrons. My answer was: I don’t need to believe in electrons, because I have personally conducted experiments that proved to me that material particles with a definite mass, charge and spin exist, even if I can’t see them. I don’t believe – I know.
The other argument I often hear is based on lack of imagination. It goes like this: “How can you imagine that a world as complex and as perfectly interacting as ours, has evolved by chance? There had to be a creator”.
And, of course, this reply begs the question. If the world was created by a creator, then the creator had to be at least as complex as its creation. Then, using the same argument, the creator had to have a creator, so who created the creator?
The usual answer is: the creator has always existed, it was not created. Then, the question is: if we can assume that something complex and powerful always existed, then why can’t we just assume that the universe has always existed, without a creator? Whichever way we look at religion, we either run into contradictions or find ourselves inventing arbitrary and totally unnecessary concepts.
Science saves you from all these problems: it is simple, logical, available to everyone who wants to find out. You don’t have to take it on faith.
Bottom line: am I an atheist? If the word ‘atheist’ means that I am absolutely certain, beyond even a shadow of a doubt that there is no such thing as a ‘god’, then I am not an atheist. No self-respecting scientist can be 100% certain of anything in the universe. Only probabilities exist in science and I admit, for lack of evidence to the contrary, that I assign an extremely low probability to the idea of a creator.
However, nothing is proven one way or another. Yes, the universe could have been created by a god or any number of gods. Life and evolution could have been started on Earth by an alien culture of superhuman power and we would not know anything about it.
However, all the established religions with which I am familiar are so obviously man-made that I find it difficult to believe that anyone could take any of them seriously. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu said: “If triangles had a god, he would have three sides”.
We have seen how science attempts to acquire knowledge. It is a long established method that has produced tangible results: our lives depend on it every day.
When we talk about religion, first we have to ask: which religion? There have been hundreds in human history and countless people believed in each of them, convinced that their religion was the only true one and all the others were deluded. Just Google “World Religions” for a sample of dozens still practiced today by millions to billions.
I used to participate in internet forums for the discussion of scientific and philosophical ideas. On one of these forums I posted the following question:
“Would you have imagined a god if you had never heard of the concept?”
"Suppose, for argument's sake, that you grew up in a world where nobody ever talked about gods or supernatural of any kind. Suppose you had a totally secular education: you learned about nature, physics, scientific facts, technology, productive skills, social organization, project management, etc. No priests, no churches, no bibles, no superstition, no Santa Clauses, no tooth fairies - nothing but observable reality. Would you have ever thought of anything outside this? What, if anything, would have made you think that there might be something outside of your experience?"
The point I was trying to make is that ALL of our ‘knowledge’ concerning religious assertions were handed down to us by our cultures. None of us discovered it from personal experience. This question made many forum members think hard, asking themselves the same question: “What do I know from first-hand experience and what have I accepted from others, without really examining how they acquired that ‘knowledge’?”
You might be tempted to say that the same is true for science: after all, we learn it from textbooks written by others. However, there is a difference. We can find out how the authors made their discoveries, based on what experiments, and how they reached their conclusions. Interested amateurs can reproduce the simpler experiments themselves, at least in the domain of Classical Physics. You need not take anything on faith.
Obviously, there are historical reasons why religions were invented in the first place, thousands of years ago. Otherwise they would not exist today. However, religions were established before we had proper science as an alternative and superior way to explain the universe.
The reason science has not replaced religion in so many minds is that people often lie, are often deluded and, the saddest fact of all, they often use psychological manipulation to achieve their aims: wealth or power over other people. Religions have been used for both over the millennia. Many bloody wars were fought using religion as an excuse.
In view of this, how much should we trust religious assertions, handed down to us over history? Wouldn’t it be safer to rely on our own observations and our own minds? Scientific thinking offers exactly that.
I was once asked whether I ‘believed in’ electrons. My answer was: I don’t need to believe in electrons, because I have personally conducted experiments that proved to me that material particles with a definite mass, charge and spin exist, even if I can’t see them. I don’t believe – I know.
The other argument I often hear is based on lack of imagination. It goes like this: “How can you imagine that a world as complex and as perfectly interacting as ours, has evolved by chance? There had to be a creator”.
And, of course, this reply begs the question. If the world was created by a creator, then the creator had to be at least as complex as its creation. Then, using the same argument, the creator had to have a creator, so who created the creator?
The usual answer is: the creator has always existed, it was not created. Then, the question is: if we can assume that something complex and powerful always existed, then why can’t we just assume that the universe has always existed, without a creator? Whichever way we look at religion, we either run into contradictions or find ourselves inventing arbitrary and totally unnecessary concepts.
Science saves you from all these problems: it is simple, logical, available to everyone who wants to find out. You don’t have to take it on faith.
Bottom line: am I an atheist? If the word ‘atheist’ means that I am absolutely certain, beyond even a shadow of a doubt that there is no such thing as a ‘god’, then I am not an atheist. No self-respecting scientist can be 100% certain of anything in the universe. Only probabilities exist in science and I admit, for lack of evidence to the contrary, that I assign an extremely low probability to the idea of a creator.
However, nothing is proven one way or another. Yes, the universe could have been created by a god or any number of gods. Life and evolution could have been started on Earth by an alien culture of superhuman power and we would not know anything about it.
However, all the established religions with which I am familiar are so obviously man-made that I find it difficult to believe that anyone could take any of them seriously. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu said: “If triangles had a god, he would have three sides”.
