Scale invariance "From a billionth the size of the atom to the scale of the universe" - difference yet similarity, .. it's the code we have to crack.
"To see the world in a grain of sand" (.. and a galaxy in a sea-shell ..)
Long ago when I was a student we had a visiting speaker at the geological society meeting. It was a talk on palaeontology. I remember very clearly the old man who came slowly into the room on his walking stick and sat down in the front row, and who after the meeting got slowly to his feet and quietly left. Ninety if he was a day. Our palaeontology lecturer turned to us and said "That old fellow there, .." [name, .. I never remembered] ".. he's come to hear the speaker (meaning that particular speaker). He was extremely bright in his day, and very highly thought of, but in his later years he lost his mind. He got this strange idea (laugh) that the reason ammonites and other shells spiral, and that the Earth rotates, are related. It was a great shame. He lost all credibility in the profession..".
[Distant connections :- There's another picture I like to illustrate this here ("The sun and the seed") out of which all of life progresses. Well, maybe not all, .. but a lot worth thinking about (including the threat of pollution killing it)] .. if one is so inclined - [1] [2] [3]
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Strange to think how when young we generally believe in the certitude of knowledge. When older we brashly question it only (eventually) to realise its possible validity, then when older still and with deeper insight we return to original questioning confirming the truism that the more we know, the more we find we don't.
That's the tremendous advantage consensus has over our own enquiry and understanding, and why there is security and certainty in what others generally believe. That in itself is the reason why consensus 'has to be right'.
What is it then, that turns us aside from the consensus path and question it?, .. Is it just sheer cussedness? I don't think so. I think happens when we make a connection on a deeper level than just the intellectual, when something just doesn't 'feel' quite right and common sense is called for, you know, the sense that links the other five.
We make that connection through the power of analogy. We cognitively register (/re-cognise) that things are "just like", but "different" - that when Nature finds a successful way of doing something she keeps doing it over and over, .. in different but similar ways.
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Difference - yet similarity. It's the code we have to crack, and the dichotomy we continually have to weigh in all our dealings. The +ve and -ve of our neurological system equips us for rationalising self-similar patterns and scale differences.
[note to add]
"Ratio" (ratio-nality) - sense of proportion. It's the highest functionality we have. It's the edge we walk every day, in the yes/ no of basic cognition, in the communication of speech and in body language. Children have it instinctively, and trust it, but we lose it as we grow older, as self-serving 'logic' takes over. We become less than rational. We become clever.
"Children have this habit of thinking for themselves, and the point of education is to cure them of this habit" - Bertrand Russell
"There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." ~ Robert Oppenheimer
"I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment" - George Orwell
(The Goodies, ... the Baddies,... the Force, ..)
...and zombies...
"Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules repeated without end."
(Beniot Mandelbrot on Youtube @ 16:36mins)
1 comment:
I enjoyed reading your blog, all synchronous - science and (not) knowing, children and fractals. Thanks for sharing. (The seeds and the sun picture seems to be gone)
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