Nothing lasts forever — not even eternity

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nothing lasts forever — not even eternity, as we learned from Steven Hawking a few years ago. The recent discovery of what may be the Higgs boson made me aware again of how little I understand about the universe. Or even about the questions now being posed by cosmologists. Greene makes it all about as clear as it can possibly be to someone — like me — who can't follow the math. For those who can follow it, he offers many of the necessary equations in the endnotes, which also include numerous references for further reading. To substitute for the math, Greene uses metaphors, generally pretty silly ones — Bart Simpson on a supersonic skateboard, for example — that at least give us an idea of, for example, what Einstein meant about space-time in the general theory of relativity. And then beyond Einstein, to quantum mechanics, and why the world and the whole universe appear to us in only three space dimensions (forward and back, side to side, up and down) and one time dimension, when quantum theory, confirmed experimentally, demonstrates that there must be ten space dimensions (but still only one time dimension). Is our universe really a kind of hologram projected by forces outside it, that is, beyond the universe we are capable of perceiving directly? Could be; Greene considers that hypothesis as at least plausible. And how did it all, everything, begin? Or did it? Was the Big Bang, the initial expansion of matter and energy that set everything in motion, just a new configuration of energy that is always, and that therefore may have been dispersed in some other entropic system(s), and may again — if our universe ever reaches the limit of its continuing expansion — shrink to extreme density, preparatory to a new explosion ("Big Bang") some billions of years hence? It took me weeks to get through this book, not because it was unclear, but because the news about the universe seemed so strange, so oddly contrary to our ordinary experience, that I had to keep checking back to re-understand parts of earlier chapters necessary for following the later ones. I remain amazed, and inspired with new speculations about philosophy and existence and what we do and cannot know. Guess it's time for me to learn some math.

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'Quixote,' Colbert and the Reality of Fiction - NYTimes.com

I enjoyed this and found it persuasive:

'Quixote,' Colbert and the Reality of Fiction - NYTimes.com

I'm puzzled, though, by one long sentence that appears to express an important idea:

“In fact, the common notion of objective reality that most of us would recognize today and the one on which Professor Rosenberg’s defense of naturalism rests — as that which persists independent of our subjective perspectives — is mutually dependent on the multiple perspectives cultivated by the fictional worldview.”

I suppose that what he means is that what we think we know "independent of our subjective perspectives," that is, what we take to be testable "reality" outside of our optical or other illusions, depends on our ability to assume other, different points of view. Even, in the case of Pasteur for example, the point of view of a germ cell, or for Darwin the point of view of any animal with an urge to mate. Or for a sociologist, the point of view of a person in a different culture or a different social situation from one's own. And that ability to imagine oneself as different "selves," that is, with different possible narrative points of view, is what fiction teaches us.

Now that is an important idea. I'm just not sure that it was the idea William Egginton meant to convey.
(The image above, of course, is Pablo Ruiz Picasso's famous drawing.)

The origin of life on earth: the real story

Now we know! Thanks to Ruben Varda (and Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno). 
Consultation : Cambridge Book Review

This story is from Voice from the Planet: An Anthology of Living Fiction. Edited by Charles Degelman.
Harvard Square Editions 2010  

Oh, God, not again!

Sam Harris is perhaps too generous with this purveyor of ignorance garbed in a lab coat.
Op-Ed Contributor - Science Is in the Details - NYTimes.com

Falling apples, projecting fire extinguishers

The weekend before last, we were guests of our friend Michael Aizenman at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, UK. Fortunately, like most very bright people, Michael has many interests besides his specialty, mathematics, so we were able to find things to talk about.

Nevertheless, wandering through the institute and peering at Newton's walking stick and his notebook of living expenses (he'd bought Stilton cheese) got me thinking about math (sort of) as I tried to assemble the bits of Newtoniana scattered through my memory, mainly his three laws of motion (alas, I have yet to master calculus). And the only reason I, science-averse as I was in my student days, have any clear notion of those three laws is the amazing Leonard K. Nash who taught a Natural Science course for nonscientific freshmen at that other Cambridge, the one in Massachusetts. His classes were theatrical performances, with explosions to demonstrate Boyle's Law and, most memorable of all, his lecture on Newton's third law of motion. It came near the end of the hour. An assistant wheeled out a low cart with an upright fire extinguisher mounted behind a padded seat. Without interrupting his talk, Nash sat himself on the cart and pressed the levers of the extinguisher as he declared, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." And propelled himself offstage at precisely the last minute of class.

This was in 1959, and still I remember. And as I looked at the Newton memorabilia, I I began wondering if Newton's Three Laws of Motion might not be applicable to political science. The first one, the law of inertia certainly seems applicable to American politics (and all other social behavior): the parties just continue doing whatever they have been doing forever, unless and until some external force -- riots, a stock market crash, public outrage over the disaster in Iraq -- makes them change course. And once that force is applied, it will keep propelling the pols until friction (there's a lot of that in politics) slows them down (2nd Law). And of course the 3rd Law, which I think of as the fire extinguisher law. We can easily come up with examples of "equal and opposite" political reactions, e.g., to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

I was sure that this could not be a new idea, so I looked up "Newtonian political science" on Google. And sure enough, there's a whole book on "Quantum Politics," claiming to go beyond Newton to base political science on quantum mechanics. And I found this very
amusing review by Ingemar Nordin, Linkiping University, Sweden, who finds that although this whole approach is scientifically absurd (social behavior is not like physics), it may still generate valuable insights.