Since I was going on vacation and several of the books I'm reading haven't been holding my full, unwavering attention, and since this book just arrived and when I left the office it was sitting there like a cat in heat, it's labia red and swollen, I decided to read it because it was fluff, and when mentioning it to my co-worker, Thomas, I laughed at my choice of words because I think most people would not classify a book about superstring theory and quantum mechanics as "fluffy," but I really do, though not in the way most people would. Specifically, we were talking about my reading, as another option, a book about web development, which, to me, seems much more labor intensive, mainly because while reading about it, I will be constantly be thinking of real-world applications to the knowledge, whereas with the physics book, all that is required of me for understanding is pure abstract thinking (well, ok, not pure, there's some analogies that refer to the physical world - strictly for the reader's benefit, I assure). I get to focus on the information in a more daydream-like way, and therefore it seems less of an effort.
It's probably this same phenomenon that caused me, as a young student, to suffer agonizingly slowly through school-assigned reading while at the same time breezing through 30-page comic books in three minutes or several-hundred-page fantasy novels in less than a week. Perhaps it's the anxiety of having to
assimilate the information, rather than just
enjoy it.
The Elegant Universe is written by
Brian Greene. Greene is a specialist in "string theory," which (at least as far as I can tell so far) basically posits that subatomic particles such as quarks, muons and taus are all actually 1 dimensional loops, or "strings." This theory, supposedly, reconciles quantum mechanics (the science of small things) and Einstein's theory of relativity (the science of big stuff), which were up til now at odds. Apparently, this is what Einstein was trying to do for most of his life.
I eventually may add a "science" page to my
hub. A statement in this book sort of solidified the reasoning behind my impulse:
"When science is widely seen as an integral part of what makes us human, our own connection to the cosmos will be significantly strenghened; truly, science is the thread that weaves us all into the fabric of reality." Although, because of my own spiritual beliefs, I agree much more with the first phrase than with the second.
Speaking of which, I am reminded of yet another quote from the book which I think I've heard echoed in another book (perhaps it was in the preface of
The Essential Kabbalah by Daniel C. Matt?):
The [subatomic particles] are the 'letters' of all matter. Just like their linguistic counterparts, they appear to have no further internal substructure." This whole concept touches on quite a few topics that have been of especial interest to me over the last few years or so. Particularly, 1) Kabbalah, and it's intimations of the correlation between language and spirituality; 2)
Ken Wilber's discussion of the nature of the nature (or ontology) of universe (including spirituality) with regard to evolution and holarchies and; 3) quantum mechanics/science, which, it seems to me, to be moving a bit more into the forefront of cultural awareness; and, 4) how these different topics seem to increasingly be related in surprising ways.
"Time dilation" and "Lorenz Contraction" are terms used to describe aspects of matter with regard to Special Relativity. These two are among those cool-sounding phrases like "Munchausen's by Proxy."
One thing I'm definitely grappling with is the fact that light supposedly
always appears to behave the same way, regardless of the other objects' relative movement, meaning that if you were in a spaceship travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light, say 5/8ths, light would still approach you at the speed of light. This makes NO SENSE to me. I feel like I'm misunderstanding it, but the book's telling me that it doesn't make logical sense, so maybe I just need to keep reading to get the gist of it.
At every turn, I would feel like I got it only to again
not get it. So far, I'm at about page 150. More to come...
bhofmeister13