When Carl Sagan died, my heart hurt and I felt like the light of the
world had noticeably dimmed. Carl Sagan was my generation’s Neil deGrasse
Tyson. Dr. Tyson shares his life
changing experience as a young student spending time with Dr. Sagan in one of
the COSMOS episodes. Dr. Sagan offered
to share his home on a snowy night if Neil became stranded. Dr. Tyson said that after meeting with Dr.
Sagan as a young man, he was inspired to not only become a scientist, but to
become the sort of man that Carl Sagan was.
Every time I saw Dr. Sagan on TV, it was evident that he not only loved
science, he was passionate about sharing science. His excitement was the genesis for my
curiosity about all things science. 
As I read the chapter from THE DEMON
HAUNTED WORLD, I could hear Dr. Sagan’s distinct voice imparting his
brilliant wisdoms. The book, written in
1995, was a haunting foretelling of the world in which we live in today --- “…no one representing the public
interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to
set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority;…” Chillingly true today.
If he were alive today, I think he might apply his statement, “Because science carries us toward an understanding of how the world is, rather than how we would wish it to be, its findings may not in all cases be immediately comprehensible or satisfying,” to some of the politicians’ attitudes about climate change.
The many facets of
Carl Sagan’s personality are endearing and I feel the loss of him in the world all
over again as I read this chapter. He
summed up my feelings about science perfectly when he said, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a source of spirituality. The notion that science and spirituality are
somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
I MISS YOU, CARL!
I MISS YOU, CARL!
One of the most intriguing
ideas we discussed last semester in the Origins
seminar was:
“ Is math an
inherent part of the
universe that we just ‘discovered’
or is it an ‘invention’
of man?”
Reading the excerpt from
Chandrasekhar’s TRUTH and BEAUTY brought the realization that many of
the greatest scientific/mathematical minds ponder that same question. Heisenberg’s statement,
“If nature leads us
to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty…to forms that no one has previously
encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are ‘true’, that they reveal a genuine feature of nature.”
That statement leads me to believe that Heisenberg felt the scientific principles were out there to be discovered, not created. I am anything but a mathematician, but I think these beautiful truths are waiting to be discovered.
Newton was not alone when he “invented” Calculus. At the same time in the 17th century, Gottfried Leibniz also uncovered the calculus principles. I guess it’s possible they both invented the same thing at the same time, it’s happened before. But I prefer to look at nature’s principles as gifts to unwrap when humanity is ready for the knowledge they will impart.
After spending 14 hours yesterday studying for my Physics
exam on Thursday (no, I am not exaggerating), reading the selection from Lewis
Wolpert’s THE UNNATURAL NATURE OF SCIENCE, generated a “Ugh, are you kidding
me?” response.
But, I actually find
physics extremely fascinating --- the concepts anyway --- just please don't make me do the math. In fact, I think quantum physics will one day explain many of the phenomena that is currently categorized as 'woo woo pseudoscience'.
Since we are studying motion and velocity in physics, I actually learned
something here that will help me with my exam this week. Time well spent.
Weird thought if you think about it, “Is math an inherent part of the universe that we just ‘discovered’ or is it an ‘invention’ of man?” Kind of like thinking that anything undiscovered is just out there somewhere waiting for the discovery- like Schrödinger’s cat or maybe Sasquatch.
ReplyDeleteI read the articles a bit different than you. I guess it just shows how readers shape narrative based on interpretation; kind of the ideas Graves and Fisher discussed. I saw the articles as more of an Ozian type of discussion- who is that behind the science curtain? Why, geez, science isn’t really that hard, huh. These big brain types are really human, who’d a thunk?
But I get your take on it too, and I can see how you, a science person would see the articles different than I would; the nerd book worm who can describe a flower in 40, 000 different ways, but who has no clue the flower’s poisonous and just infected me with the next Zombie plague. Goes to show you that our audience can never be truly chosen, only hoped for.
The Wolpert article reminded me of an old Redd Foxx joke. Redd discovers his neighbor is banging his wife so he goes across the street and raps on the guy’s door. When the guy answers, Foxx throws him a bullet, just tosses it to him. The guy looks at it and then at Foxx and says, “what the fuck is this?” Foxx grins, pats the guy on the shoulder and says, “ It’s a bullet. If you don’t quit bangin’ my wife, the next one will be coming at ya a fuck of a lot faster.”
Physics. Hehe.
I’m sure I heard Carl Sagan’s name growing up (I come from a family of scientists in various different disciplines) but since I was 2 when he died I don’t have any memory of him. Instead, my science childhood was full of Richard Feynman (my grandpa got to spend a lot of time with him), Bill Nye, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and Blue Planet.
ReplyDeleteI love the quote you included “Is math an inherent part of the universe that we just ‘discovered’ or is it an ‘invention’ of man?” Like the universe ideas that I brought up in one of my first posts, my family has also devoted quite a bit of discussion to the ideas behind this quote. Currently, humanity has found math to fit nature’s processes and my grandpa believes that nature and the world surrounding it is driven by math. I, however, wonder if we’ve only discovered things that FIT the math we can explain, and if somewhere in the future we will find things that we can’t explain with the math we know.
I love the pictures that you put in here with the lines showing the summitry of the plants and flowers. The structure of plants is so fascinating. Many of them are fractals and they follow these grate patterns. It is funny because it seems that in general people love summitry and find it beautiful. Yet there is plenty of beautiful asymmetrical art. So who is to say what beauty is? I just find that such a fascinating concept and the flower pictures made me think about it more.
ReplyDelete