from Frank Wilczek's Nobel (physics) lecture, 2004 ("Asymptotic Freedom")

[fflo]

In theoretical physics, paradoxes are good. That's paradoxical, since a paradox appears to be a contradiction, and contradictions imply serious error. But Nature cannot realize contradictions. When our physical theories lead to paradox we must find a way out. Paradoxes focus our attention, and we think harder.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

IF nature realizes it, it ain't a contradiction. It just looks like one to our limited minds.

[homovegetarian.livejournal.com]

i know. thus my sadness over the degree to which we collectively fail to comprehend this.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I actually think a lot of people understand this, but that they turn their disagreements on which ways our minds are limited into bizzare battles. I'm quite certain a physicist and a spiritualist both see gaping holes in our understanding, but percieve those gaping holes very differently, and imagine the posibilities for filling them very differently.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

In the lecture the guy went on, at the end, about the moral and philosophical meaning of how... wait, let me see if I can still fetch the journal...

[fflo.livejournal.com]

toward the end of his talk:

Evidentally asymptotic freedom, besides resolving the paradoxes that originally concerned us, provides a conceptual foundation for several major insights into Nature's fundamental workings, and a versatile instrument for futher investigation.

The greatest lesson, however, is a moral and philosophical one. It is truly awesome to discover, by example, that we humans can come to comprehend Nature's deepest principles, even when they are hidden in remote and alien realms. Our minds were not created for this task, nor were appropriate tools ready at hand. Understanding was achieved through a vast international effort involving thousands of people working hard for decades, competing in the small but cooperating in the large, abiding by rules of openness and honesty. Using these methods --- which do not come to us effortlessly, but require nurture and vigilance --- we can accomplish wonders.

I dig that many humans working and passing it on thing. On the shoulders of giants. Multi-generational and quite apart from (and even contrary to) nationalism and tribalism and other sub-humanity divisions.

Not that I'm contributing anything to any ongoingly building knowledge of the species myself, or particularly intend to, but it does lend a certain meaning or mere grooviness, if you will, to the chain of generations of our kind and its passing along of wisdom, in fits and starts, to those who follow. Not having religion, it's sorta nice to have something good to think about people as a sort, giving how much ill there is to think about us (and which I've been keenly aware of much further back into childhood than is good). (I mean, I musta heard about the cruel failings of humanity and base selfishness and people stampeding each other and stuff like that in enough ways before I was even in school that it was old news by then---I swear to ---well, not God, but I swear on somethin'. I mean, I'm tellin' ya true, best I know it.)

Seems like it's in the sciences that we do our best at remembering lessons from the past. The rest of it is mostly replaying the freakin' Spanish Inquisition and the War of the Whatever. (Poets remind us of old lessons al the time, but nobody listens to poets, or does much with the knowledge if they do.)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm contributing anything to any ongoingly building knowledge of the species myself, or particularly intend to

I beg to differ. It strikes me that the only reason you can pay your rent/mortgage is because your boss can see that you are part of that "cooperating in the large" by making it possible for the mathematicians to keep track of whatever the hell the other mathematicians are up to. Which sounds exactly like you are contributing something to the ongoinglyfulness of building Human Knowledge.

I'm really in a similar position, trying to get a little science into a fresh wad of brains every term. No original contributions here, but I'm another cog the communications machine. Doing my little part to try to hold back the waters of deliberate ignorance.

begging to differ

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i also beg to differ, not because any individual profession x is particularly good at transfer. i think perfecting the transfer will obviously be the end of us.

what moves is the ability to *notice these sorts of ideas -- to know that you can't know it, or touch it, and that it's not yours to have, or to keep, or to give. not the quarks, or the photons, or the mathematical formulas, or the hair-dryer. or the house, or the car, or the love. none of it. and you know it.

Re: begging to differ

[(Anonymous)]

Well, indeed. And oh my. Here kicks in the really deep philosophy, curiously also the least deep.

No attachment is "safe" or "real", perhaps, but there may be comfort in the collective realization (there's that word again) of that reality (and there it is again).

That second sentence of yours really has me pondering. It's rad. "Why might that be?" I ask myself, and I'm off to the races.

Seems like the forbidden territory in social discourse that I'm thinking of is the deconstruction of identity itself. Which sorta takes care of the mortality conundrum, but at the cost of the very thing the mortality hang up is hung on.

Maybe I'd better drink that coffee now, and come to---I feel my mental day on a slippery slope on the edge of a whirling gyre/drain, like at the end of that hybrid video game at Pinball Pete's with the raft and the rowing---a big drain I've not yet figured out how to avoid slowly succumbing to, despite rowing like a nut. (And am not likely to figure it out, at $1 a play---it's a nice long play, but my hunch estimate is that it'd take at least about a dozen tries to learn how to get out of that ending.) (At least after you bite it, though, you're transported up into a white light, and it doesn't seem unpleasant.)

Re: begging to differ

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

most literally/directly, i mean that the transparency of 'science' makes science and its findings accessible. in itself, not a bad thing, unless pharmaceutical companies and crazed politicians get a hold of them, in which case (as we're experiencing now) we can all know how it works, but they'll be the ones deciding on the application.

they'll be selling the 'knowledge' and they'll sell it to whoever will pay. if you don't want to pay, you can always 'steal' it. either way, it's the 'knowledge' that can't be hidden.

the sad twist is that these people who enjoy the asymptotic freedom are generally funded by the zealots, who suck the juice of their joy, but there would be no conditions for asymptotic freedom without the leeches. so the point is, i think, to strike some balance about how much joy you let on to those who would sell it.

won't even get into identity politics -- makes me gag.

Re: begging to differ

[fflo.livejournal.com]

that was me, btw

in case you couldn't tell