A Dose of Wonder

Just finished Atheist Universe, but in the midst of reading it, I ran across this interesting--among many--paragraph:


Cosmologists have described the sudden appearance of matter out of what appears to e completely empty space. Matter may spontaneously appear in one of two ways: (1) from a preexisting energy field, or (2) from quite literally nothing. The reason why this later appearance of matter--i.e., the zero-state theory--does not violate the mass-energy conservation law is that the matter produced in this way is composed equally of positive and negative energy in the generation of accompanying gravitational fields. When combined mathematically, both forms of energy precisely cancel out each other, resulting in a :zero state". It is quite possible that the universe as a while may have a sum total of zero energy. Vacuum fluctuation physics is an esoteric field of study, but the important point to remember here is that, once again, the universe may be understood and explained through natural science, rather than supernatural mysticism.

(My bold.)

There aren't even enough exclamation points to describe my excitement over this branch of Physics--one that I literally can't quite wrap my brain around yet.

There's something thrilling and delicious about a science that just yesterday, I hadn't even suspected existed. I was literally dancing in my chair to finish the book--which only had, like, twenty pages left at that point--so I could wiki these two new-to-me terms. Didn't find zero-state in the Great Repository of all semi-factual knowledge, but I did find vacuum fluctuations. Well, I was redirected from there to "Virtual Particles".

As predicted, my brain is too confoozled to spasm, too dazzled to even say, "WTF?!"

I'm in love with something I don't understand, simply because there's some hope, however slight, that I may someday understand it, and therefore understand something significant about the way our universe works, and how it got this way.

I'm still new to all this anti-woo, to excercising my brain to understand answers, rather than just taking them on faith, however well-placed. It's kinda bracing to be a little less intellectually lazy.

In not-entirely-unrelated news, watching Cosmos, Sagan does this formula for calculating how many planets in the universe might have intelligent life. It was algebra, of course, my arch-nemesis, and bane of my existence. The thing that toppled me from the honor-roll in junior high and kept me off permanently (though, yeah, physical science kinda helped. It was a tag-team beat-down).

Anyway, I could follow the formula.

It made sense, didn't seem to have all the crazy moving parts that algebra used to when I was in school. It was simple (thankfully, he only used round numbers, no decimals), and yes, elegant. Beautiful.

And not because I suddenly love algebra and wanna marry it, though I'm starting to see the use of it--as opposed to merely being told it's useful. Algebra was used to calculate something I actually enjoy comtemplating, rather than the time of the crash of trains rushing, for no reason I could ever see, toward each other at varying rates of speed.

I'm now firmly of the opinion that, if in school, we'd been shown how to calculate the possibility of intelligent life on other planets instead of the precise time of train crashes, maybe I'd have done better at algebra. Not necessarily Will Hunting-better at it, but at least better than my usual hard-won C-.

Which isn't to say the blame isn't mostly mine--if I can't motivate me to learn, no one else will, corporal punishment quite aside. I decided fairly early that algebra was useless to me, and so never took to it. But everything is marketing. English and history were marketed to me in a way that made them attractive. Why so many teachers drop the ball in math and science is beyond me. Just a little razzmatazz with the numbers and voila! You've made a difference in a young student's life . . . or whatever.

Well, my primary and secondary schools were religious in nature, Baptist then Catholic. I suppose algebra taught as a series of fiery, awful deaths would be more in keeping with the overall themes of the religions themselves. . . .



"If wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin' steak."--Jayne Cobb

A Dose of Dr. Myers

"All those surveys of people's attitudes towards evolution experience major shifts if the questions are simply reworded: ask whether they believe humans evolved from apes, and half of Americans will say no. Ask them if animals evolved from simpler forms, and the yes answers surge upwards by tens of percentage points. It is not an objection to evolution in principle, but to evolution as an explanation of their personal history. I'm sure there's a marketing principle to be stated there.

The second objection is to chance and the lack of purpose. People really, desperately want there to be a personal agency to causality — they become utterly irrational about it all if you try to imply that no, fate, destiny, and ultimate cosmic purpose guided them to their mate, for instance. It couldn't have been just chance. I suspect this is a consequence of the first contention: people want to believe that they are important agents in the universe, and one of the implications of evolution is that they aren't."

--PZ Meyers, "Marketing Evolution" on Pharyngula, December 6, 2008 12:33 PM



Yes. Exactly. I can see myself in the second paragraph, with all my fears and mile-high angst. Though I was never bothered that I evolved from primordial ooze and apes. That's fine. The part that bothered me was that I evolved only for evolution's sake, as opposed to some grand purpose (though I'm realizing that's the grandest purpose there could ever be: to change, and avoid stagnation).

I think, speaking as someone who threw money down the shitter chasing the speckled-advertising degree, that Evolution is a wonderful product, especially since it's impossible to dispute, the more you know about it. But there does need to be better marketing. Teachers can only do so much. Civilian atheists have to get out there and support them, because they're ultimately supporting their children, and their community.

I can't stand people, but . . . if I had a head for science, I'd teach it. Physics, if I could wrap my brain around it, or biology, if I couldn't. I think, in the absence of an Objective Reason, dedicating a portion of, or one's entire life to eradicating ignorance wherever one finds it is quite a fine Subjective Reason.

I find myself hopeful, lately :)

Also? I didn't write the parts of the post you can click on, and mean no stealy-stealy. So please don't sue or otherwise prosecute me. Thanks.



"The Seether is neither big nor small. The Seether is the center of it all."--Veruca Salt