Since before we as humans could write, there have been oral stories passed from generation to generation. There are stories explaining the consciousness of human beings, such as creation myths, divine benefactors, wars of the gods, people coming into this world from another world, and so many more...too numerous to identify. Human being's self-awareness is the driving force behind such oral traditions. I wrote a poem a few months ago called Sagacity's Folly. It is a lamentation of sorts, an expression of the pain that comes with "knowing too much." In the last 3000 years, our hunger for knowledge has outstripped our capacity to use such knowledge in a manner that does not destroy ourselves, our fellow creatures that are alive, and Mother Earth herself.
As befits each human generation that lives on this small rock orbiting our sun, in a backwater part of our galaxy, we approach self-awareness through ordering our surroundings to fit our perceptions. Hence, many of the world's great belief systems, such as science, mythology, religions, stories regarding the end of the world as we know it, offer perspectives on life, our place in the cosmos, something we can call life everlasting (consciousness after death), the world we live on, with our fellow animate creatures, and the inner world we know from observation.
Because of my dad's job, working in one of the largest research labs in existence for 30+ years, I have struggled in my heart and my mind, as Thomas Jefferson once described this need to order our world, swinging from one belief system to another. In recent years, the burgeoning and dramatic manner of observation called quantum mechanics has opened a door (some say a Pandora's Box) to the world beyond logic, beyond order, and many physicists have had the dilemma of trying to describe and explain observations that simply do not conform to what we have known as the scientific method.
I read the other day in an internet physics site that a group of researchers have actually observed anti-matter for the first time. What has been a theory for roughly the last hundred years has moved beyond theoretical physics into applied physics. I do not pretend to comprehend the world these people are observing. The quantum world has thrown many of our basic assumptions about our universe into question, having formally been accepted as proven to be true. The Hadron Collider in Switzerland has brought to light so many new and exciting ideas regarding our universe. The Higgs Boson theory was verified by observation on on the Hadron. What I have found fascinating is that the Higgs Boson was thought to be the particle of assembling matter. I am not explaining this well, but hopefully readers will understand what I am alluding to.
After the Higgs Boson became a reality observed and verified, some of my recent reading of science news explained that observation of the Higgs Boson has led to the identification of two particles smaller than Higgs, which leads to the old chicken and egg problem...do the two particles exist because of the Higgs, or is the existence of the Higgs dependent upon the existence of the two smaller particles....or are they not related at all? If all of our observations come through what is called the Observer, our own brain, is all of this information developed in our minds just to satisfy our unending inquiries about the universe?
I am left asking myself---was Chicken Little right after all, is science another manner of our own mind trying to make order out of chaos, or, is there an objective reality separate from the observer in our minds, that only science can explain? One of the interesting debates the physicists at Hadron were having when I watched this program on the search for the Higgs Boson on PBS (thank you, public tv) was whether the sub-atomic world opened by the Hadron Collider was formed by chance or by what I will call a Prime Mover. Several teams observed the data from the Higgs, and the teams theorized that there was a certain level of data that would support the chaos explanation, and another that would support the Prime Mover explanation, both of these being theories themselves, by the way. Maddeningly, the data revealed a number roughly halfway between the Chaos and Prime Mover theories of how the universe was formed.
To extend this question...is our human existence due to billions of years of chance, or, is human existence a result of the work of a Prime Mover?
Copyright 2016 by Peter Reum-all rights reserved
To my friends who are scientists, I apologize for this rather simplistic explanation of a profoundly difficult physics question.
For more information, use the Hadron Collider website:http://www.stfc.ac.uk/research/particle-physics-and-particle-astrophysics/large-hadron-collider/lhc-large-hadron-collider-resource-portal/Hadron Collider Site
For a fairly understandable explanation of the Higgs Boson Particle: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/research/particle-physics-and-particle-astrophysics/peter-higgs-a-truly-british-scientistDr. Higgs Biography and Higgs Boson
As befits each human generation that lives on this small rock orbiting our sun, in a backwater part of our galaxy, we approach self-awareness through ordering our surroundings to fit our perceptions. Hence, many of the world's great belief systems, such as science, mythology, religions, stories regarding the end of the world as we know it, offer perspectives on life, our place in the cosmos, something we can call life everlasting (consciousness after death), the world we live on, with our fellow animate creatures, and the inner world we know from observation.
Because of my dad's job, working in one of the largest research labs in existence for 30+ years, I have struggled in my heart and my mind, as Thomas Jefferson once described this need to order our world, swinging from one belief system to another. In recent years, the burgeoning and dramatic manner of observation called quantum mechanics has opened a door (some say a Pandora's Box) to the world beyond logic, beyond order, and many physicists have had the dilemma of trying to describe and explain observations that simply do not conform to what we have known as the scientific method.
I read the other day in an internet physics site that a group of researchers have actually observed anti-matter for the first time. What has been a theory for roughly the last hundred years has moved beyond theoretical physics into applied physics. I do not pretend to comprehend the world these people are observing. The quantum world has thrown many of our basic assumptions about our universe into question, having formally been accepted as proven to be true. The Hadron Collider in Switzerland has brought to light so many new and exciting ideas regarding our universe. The Higgs Boson theory was verified by observation on on the Hadron. What I have found fascinating is that the Higgs Boson was thought to be the particle of assembling matter. I am not explaining this well, but hopefully readers will understand what I am alluding to.
Hadron Collider - World's Largest Particle Accelerator-Switzerland
After the Higgs Boson became a reality observed and verified, some of my recent reading of science news explained that observation of the Higgs Boson has led to the identification of two particles smaller than Higgs, which leads to the old chicken and egg problem...do the two particles exist because of the Higgs, or is the existence of the Higgs dependent upon the existence of the two smaller particles....or are they not related at all? If all of our observations come through what is called the Observer, our own brain, is all of this information developed in our minds just to satisfy our unending inquiries about the universe?
Dr, Higgs and a Cross Section of the Hadron Collider
I am left asking myself---was Chicken Little right after all, is science another manner of our own mind trying to make order out of chaos, or, is there an objective reality separate from the observer in our minds, that only science can explain? One of the interesting debates the physicists at Hadron were having when I watched this program on the search for the Higgs Boson on PBS (thank you, public tv) was whether the sub-atomic world opened by the Hadron Collider was formed by chance or by what I will call a Prime Mover. Several teams observed the data from the Higgs, and the teams theorized that there was a certain level of data that would support the chaos explanation, and another that would support the Prime Mover explanation, both of these being theories themselves, by the way. Maddeningly, the data revealed a number roughly halfway between the Chaos and Prime Mover theories of how the universe was formed.
Layperson's Explanation of Higgs-Boson Particle
Copyright 2016 by Peter Reum-all rights reserved
To my friends who are scientists, I apologize for this rather simplistic explanation of a profoundly difficult physics question.
For more information, use the Hadron Collider website:http://www.stfc.ac.uk/research/particle-physics-and-particle-astrophysics/large-hadron-collider/lhc-large-hadron-collider-resource-portal/Hadron Collider Site
For a fairly understandable explanation of the Higgs Boson Particle: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/research/particle-physics-and-particle-astrophysics/peter-higgs-a-truly-british-scientistDr. Higgs Biography and Higgs Boson
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