Fine-Tuning

"On one thing most physicists agree. If the amount of dark energy in our universe were only a little bit different than what it actually is, then life could never have emerged. A little larger, and the universe would have accelerated so rapidly that matter in the young universe could never have pulled itself together to form stars and hence complex atoms made in stars. And, going into negative values of dark energy, a little smaller and the universe would have decelerated so rapidly that it would have recollapsed before there was time to form even the simplest atoms. Out of all the possible amounts of dark energy that our universe might have, the actual amount lies in the tiny sliver of the range that allows life. As before, one is compelled to ask the question: Why does such fine-tuning occur?"

- Alan Lightman (1948 - )

The Accidental Universe

Postscript. And so, we have a repeat of the "apology" I made a bit over a week ago, after posting a "poor quality" iPhone image captured while out on my morning walk with my wife. But I continue to be mesmerized by the (unfortunately, dwindling number of) ice abstracts our walks sometimes reveal. This one is from this morning. And, as before, I am looking forward to resuming an earnest search for "otherworldly vistas" (with "real" camera in hand) tomorrow, as some cold weather is again predicted over the next few days. Stay tuned 🙂

Invisible Links

"In my youth I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of physical equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which in our rare moments of grace we are able to decipher a small fragment.

...

Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh’s sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist’s discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet.

...

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flashes, or short circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links."

- Arthur Koestler (1905 - 1983)

Different Schemes and Patterns

"It would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homogeneous thing; it is immensely diversified, having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different organisms. Every organism is, so to speak, a monadic being. It has a world of its own because it has an experience of its own. The phenomena that we find in the life of a certain biological species are not transferable to any other species. The experiences - and therefore the realities - of two different organisms are incommensurable with one another. In the world of a fly, says Uexkull, we find only "fly things"; in the world of a sea urchin we find only "sea urchin things."

Ernst Cassirer (1874 - 1945)
An Essay on Man

Ceaselessly Creative

"The past three centuries of science have been predominantly reductionist, attempting to break complex systems into simple parts, and those parts, in turn, into simpler parts. The reductionist program has been spectacularly successful, and will continue to be so. But it has often left a vacuum: How do we use the information gleaned about the parts to build up a theory of the whole? The deep difficulty here lies in the fact that the complex whole may exhibit properties that are not readily explained by understanding the parts. The complex whole, in a completely nonmystical sense, can often exhibit collective properties, “emergent” features that are lawful in their own right.

...

This web of life,
 the most complex system
we know of in the universe,
breaks no law of physics,
yet is partially lawless,
ceaselessly creative."

- Stuart Kauffman (1939 - )

Nonlinear, Experiential, and Receptive

"The creative process,
like a spiritual journey,
is intuitive, non-linear,
and experiential.
It points us toward
our essential nature,
which is a reflection of
the boundless creativity
of the universe.
...
To be still means to
empty yourself from the
incessant flow of thoughts
and create a state of
consciousness that is
open and receptive."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)

Postscript. My postscript to a blog entry I published a few days ago ("...Another Order") included an "apology" from me for the poor quality of the image I posted, which I made with an iPhone on a morning walk. I also said that I was looking forward to going out with my "real camera" on the weekend to hunt for "ice abstracts" (cold weather permitting). Well, today was the day. Our local forecast had overnight lows in the low 20s (F). So our younger son (Josh, the photographer), my wife and I all eagerly woke up early, warmed ourselves with a bit of coffee and breakfast, and drove to a nearby lake park. As Josh and I both bolted out the van with our cameras and ran to the water, our smiles immediately vanished. No ice! Or at least none of the symphony of abstract swirls and curlicues we both anticipated spending the morning reveling and composing in. Naturally, we were crestfallen, and had a depressed notion to traipse back home and crawl back into our beds. Luckily, my wife, who joined us more for the adventure and some exercise, is also our Zen master. "Just enjoy what's here," she said, "Have a bit of fun!" So we did; and, my oh my, what fun we all had 😊 I am embarrassed to admit that, though I've experienced this exact scenario countless times (here is one from almost 15 years ago), the basic lesson has apparently never stuck: there are always unexpected opportunities and joys waiting for us, if only (as John Daido Loori reminds us) we are open and receptive to the boundless creativity of the universe. There may have been no real ice, but after slowing down and emptying ourselves of our "incessant flow of thoughts," Josh and I discovered a veritable paradise of tiny "icelet universes," some free-standing, others entwined with small leaves, rocks, and twigs. Though these icelets were few in number, and some were so small that only Josh (who presciently attached a macro lens to his camera before leaving the house) was able to find workable compositions, we all felt like privileged visitors to a magnificent living museum of fleeting wonders. And so, bowing to my Zen master's sage wisdom, an early morning "disappointment" was quietly transformed into a stunningly joyous experience filled with the simplest pleasures of life: family, nature, and a total "loss of self" in the creative process. 

Josh and me "merrily composing whatever morsels of icelets we could find" (captured by my wife).

Wiggly Order

"When you look at the clouds they are not symmetrical. They do not form fours and they do not come along in cubes, but you know at once that they are not a mess...They are wiggly but in a way, orderly, although it is difficult for us to describe that kind of order. Now, take a look at yourselves. You are all wiggly...We are just like clouds, rocks and stars. Look at the way the stars are arranged. Do you criticize the way the stars are arranged?"

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
The Tao of Philosophy 

Being, Meaning, and Another Order

"Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.

...

The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.

...

"Space was still there; but it had lost its predominance. The mind was primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning."

- Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)

Postscript. My apologies for the poor quality of this image, but it was captured with a shivering cold hand tapping on an even colder iPhone while out on my morning walk with my wife (these now routine walks have been a very generous "gift" of our pandemic-ridden times). I had a thought to run back into the house to get one of my "real" cameras, but my brain and legs were colder still and simply refused to budge. Searching for otherworldly vistas in ice forms is one of my favorite pastimes in the winter, but I've had precious few days in which to do so (as yet, in northern VA). While work week constraints prevent me from truly indulging myself, the promise of some continued cold weather has me eagerly looking forward to continuing my search for "otherworldly vistas" this weekend!

Embodied Network

"We’re all—trees, humans, insects, birds, bacteria—pluralities. Life is embodied network. These living networks are not places of omnibenevolent Oneness. Instead, they are where ecological and evolutionary tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of the self into relationship. Because life is network, there is no 'nature' or 'environment,' separate and apart from humans. We are part of the community of life, composed of relationships with “others,” so the human/nature duality that lives near the heart of many philosophies is, from a biological perspective, illusory."

- David George Haskell (1969 - )
The Songs of Trees 

A Vast Pattern

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"

- Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)

Universal Spark

"Like an explosive awaiting a spark, unimaginably numerous environments in the universe are waiting out there, for aeons on end, doing nothing at all or blindly generating evidence and storing it up or pouring it out into space. Almost any of them would, if the right knowledge ever reached it, instantly and irrevocably burst into a radically different type of physical activity: intense knowledge-creation, displaying all the various kinds of complexity, universality and reach that are inherent in the laws of nature, and transforming that environment from what is typical today into what could become typical in the future. If we want to, we could be that spark."

- David Deutsch (1953 - )
The Beginning of Infinity 

Limits of Comprehension

"Man is not born to solve
the problem of the universe,
but to find out what he has to do;
and to restrain himself within
the limits of his comprehension."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

Perceive the Inconceivable

"What dreaming does is

give us the fluidity to

enter into other worlds by

destroying our sense of

knowing this world.

He called dreaming a journey

of unthinkable dimensions,

a journey that, after making us

perceive everything we

can humanly perceive,

makes the assemblage point

jump out side the

human domain and

perceive the inconceivable. "

- Carlos Castaneda (1925 - 1998)
The Art of Dreaming

Curious Air of Hyper-Reality

"I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?"

- W.G. Sebald (1944 - 2001)
The Rings of Saturn

Between Immensity and Eternity

"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky."

 - Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
Cosmos

Geological Time

"In reality, a river's basic shape... is not a line but a tree. A river is, in its essence, a thing that branches... Although it flows inward toward its trunk, in geological time it grew, and continues to grow, outward, like an organism, from its ocean outlet to its many headwaters. In the vernacular of a new science, it is fractal, its structure echoing itself on all scales, from river to stream to brook to creek to rivulet, branches too small to name and too many to count."

-  James Gleick (1954 - )
Nature's Chaos

Pure Experience

"Zen always aims at grasping the central fact of life, which can never be brought to the dissecting table of the intellect. To grasp this central fact of life, Zen is forced to propose a series of negations. Mere negation, however, is not the spirit of Zen, but as we are so accustomed to the dualistic way of thinking, this intellectual error must be cut at its root. Naturally Zen would proclaim, 'Not this, not that, not anything.' But we may insist upon asking Zen what it is that is left after all these denials, and the master will perhaps on such an occasion give us a slap in the face, exclaiming, 'You fool, what is this?' Some may take this as only an excuse to get away from the dilemma, or as having no more meaning than a practical example of ill-breeding. But when the spirit of Zen is grasped in its purity, it will be seen what a real thing that slap is. For here is no negation, no affirmation, but a plain fact, a pure experience, the very foundation of our being and thought. All the quietness and emptiness one might desire in the midst of most active mentation lies therein. Do not be carried away by anything outward or conventional. Zen must be seized with bare hands, with no gloves on."

- D.T. Suzuki (1870 - 1966) 
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism

The World is Sacred

"The world is sacred, of course,
it is full of gods, numina,
great powers and presences.
We give some of them names –
Mars of the fields and the war;
Vesta the fire;
Ceres the grain;
Mother Tellus the earth;
the Penates of the storehouse.
The rivers, the springs.
And in the stormcloud and
the light is the great power
called the father god.
But they aren’t people.
They don’t love and hate,
they aren’t for or against.
They accept the worship due them,
which augments their power,
through which we live."

- Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 - 2018)

World of Imagination

"I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

- William Blake (1757 - 1827)
The Portable Blake

 

Portals of Consciousness

"In its entirety, probably,
it follows us at every instant;
all that we have felt, thought
and willed from our earliest
infancy is there, leaning over the
present which is about to join it,
pressing against the portals of
consciousness that would
fain leave it outside."

- Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941)