Bull Shit.
Okay, I'm being unfair. I can sort of see why he'd write such things. I love reading about Arthurian lore- it's magical, grand, adventurous. Plus, I often look back to past blog posts and ask myself: What the hell was I thinking when I wrote that? But I know I had a reason for writing what I did; there was some angle from which it made sense.
But the qualm I have with this article is the way he views revelations of modern science as stark and demystifying and cold. He clearly has no idea about string theory or relativity, which simultaneously demystify and mystify further, somehow...they are far from cold and unimaginative. Dare I say it? There is more imagination in physics today than in all the Harry Potter books put together, what with scientists waxing poetic about the quantum world, parallel universes, dark energy, different concepts of time.
Writer Muriel Rukeyser once said that "the universe is made up of stories, not of atoms". She was right (in more than one respect since the smallest components are now quarks and leptons, not atoms), but these stories are stories of a truth that is much stranger and more imaginative than any fiction. In my non-humble opinion.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I completely agree with you! Scientific explanations are so much deeper and more interesting than just coming up with a fictional characters and attributing stuff to them. The other part I find super cool is I can take of some those rules of science, do some math, and make a prediction - then build something and see the predictions come true. Every once in a while this strikes me and I'm just so amazed.
That author should think about what is going on when he's writing the article. There are hundreds of millions of little switches with dimensions that can be measured in tens of atoms turning on and off together billions of times a second that take his input, display it on a screen and make miniscule magnetic changes to a metal platter which remembers what he writes. Then that is one tiny piece of what it takes to propagate that information across the internet. And it all freakin works!!! How mind blowing is that? Parts of the trip involve rapidly changing lasers, moving electrons along wires that connect to nothing, but send the signals to other wires sticking in the air and co-existing with many other such signals. And that's just the signal path. You could get into what it takes to power all of that. Then moving past the man made stuff you can get into the biology of how he came up with those thoughts and turned them into the motion of his hands. Every little piece of it is just incredible.
Guess there's not much point in continuing to write about how much I agree with you. Although I will through out the Douglas Adams quote:
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Post a Comment