№ 770. "Hearsay is not excluded"

№ 618. Science & Reality

Erik Petri

 

In Labatut’s telling, Heisenberg then comes to recognize that the parameters of any given quantum object can never be identified with certainty. If the position of an electron is determined precisely, “arresting that particle in its orbit like an insect impaled on a pin,” then it becomes impossible to know its momentum, and vice versa. The variables are mathematically complementary, so that the more clearly we bring one into focus, the more it blurs our understanding of the other — as if, Heisenberg explains, “reality allowed us to perceive the world with crystalline clarity with one eye at a time, but never with both.”

With his slippery hybrid of fact and fiction, Labatut slyly applies the uncertainty principle to the human pursuit of knowledge itself. Abstraction and imagination, measurement and story coexist in a multidimensional reality containing infinite destinies and interpretations. At its furthest reaches, reason and scientific inquiry lead into the unknowable. As Labatut puts it, in words he ascribes to Schwarzschild: “Only a vision of the whole, like that of a saint, a madman or a mystic, will permit us to decipher the true organizing principles of the universe.”

№ 302. Notes from the Universe

“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment,” wrote Dostoevsky, “all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”

Know Thyself

№ 299. Six Degrees of Reset

After the Oscar mix-up, following the Brexit vote, FBI Investigation, Fukushima meltdown and the series of surreal events, will we finally witness some normalcy (please supply definition here)?

№ 291. In the Beginning was the Word

What is that which we call a "word"?

Calvin and His Logic

A word, according to the Oxford Dictionaries, is a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

Why do words matter?

№ 215. Daily Habits of Successful People

My T.R.A.N.S.C.R.I.P.T. / notes. Killing time and trying to be quasi-productive.

Aristotle said that 95% of what we do is the result of habits. Make good habits your masters.

№ 213. The Piano

I am laying down the piano.
Its voices are cords knotted on my thin frame.

№ 196. God's Search for Meaning

From the beginning there was God.
He was alone.
The void echoed with its emptiness.
In the vastness, God searches for himself.
Without his multiverses, he is incomplete.