Mystery and Awe
“The highest happiness of man … is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“Knowledge…is not an accomplished fact… but only a goal, the end, the objective of a natural desire …to discover what is truly so and appreciate what is truly good.”
– Bernard Lonergan
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“This thing we speak of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.”
– Abu Yazid al-Bistami
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And yet it just won’t go away:
I feel it and cannot understand it;
cannot hold on to it;
nor yet forget it;
and if I grasp it wholly
I cannot measure it!
–Richard Wagner
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This mountaintop experience is given only rarely, and even those who see from on high must return to the valley, not telling anyone what they have seen (Luke 9:36)
– Henri Nouwen
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Try not to become a man of success
but rather to become a man of values.
– Albert Einstein
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There is no sequential order to this site, but there is an overarching theme. Reading the following excerpts of posts from this site will quickly give the curious reader an introduction to the passions behind this site.
But if I had to put it in words for you, I would say simply, it is all about mystery and awe. Richard Feynman says that there are “certain kinds of men” in every field, who, when they follow their passion to the end, inevitably find themselves “up against mysteries and awe” that are all around them.
This site is is for those men. This site is about the mystery and awe that is all around us.
Enjoy!
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0.999… = 1 (Intuition Failure – A Simple Proof)
x = 0.999…
10x = 9.99…
10x-x = 9.99… – 0.999…
9x = 9
x = 1
0.999… = 1
Welcome to wonderland.
I Think, Therefore I am Confused
If you are like me, you look at this equation and scoff. Common sense and years of math intuition tell you that what is on the left is not the same as what is on the right.
If you are like me, you are wrong. But if you are like me, you will look it up on wikipedia or at math wolfram, you will see that there are rigorous proofs… but you will yet still have doubts, unsatisfied.
You are not alone. This is one of those bedeviling problems that has worn many a thinker – from Pythagoras forward – bald with head scratching.
You see, it is not our fault. When you and I look at that equation, we imagine two distinct, finite numbers. This is what the form of these numbers want us to do. But this formulation is a visual shortcut to a deep, counter-intuitive concept that, if followed, will take you all the way down the rabbit hole; all the way back to Pythagoras and thousands of years of mathematical struggle and strife.
[more]
The Brink
A mystery is not the same as a puzzle. A puzzle can be figured out. A mystery, in the religious sense, cannot. A mystery cannot be figured out, because it defies figuring. … And yet here we are in the 21st century, with no explanation of light, no explanation of gravity, no explanation for inertia, no explanation of the strong force. Worse yet, the hardest of the hard sciences tell us without equivocation: there can be no explanation. This firm denial is paradoxically an essential law upon which all of physics – the Mother of all Scientific Knowledge – is built.
[more]
Fire
What thou wouldst learn I will make clear to thee,
Not weaving subtleties, but simple sooth
Unfolding as the mouth should speak to friends.
I am Prometheus, giver of fire to mortals.
[more]
The Great Equations
Feynman said that all good physicists sit up at night worrying about alpha: “is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.”
[more]
Reading (from Walden)
Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?
We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
[more]
Thomas Merton
Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life. for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes beyond reason and beyond simple faith… It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words, or even in clear concepts.
[more]
Sing O Muse (poetic collections)
I stand amid the roar
of a surf-tormented shore,
and I hold in my hand
grains of the golden sand -
how few! yet how they creep
through my fingers to the deep,
while I weep – while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
one from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
but a dream within a dream?
[more]
Heat
…Now, you may say that this is all metaphorical, to say that this thing is actually another, and you would be absolutely right. Metaphor is exactly that: an expression that equates two seemingly different things. In other words, mathematics. The equations of physics that describe the universe are metaphors that tell us that this equals that. E=MC2 is the mathematical metaphor that tells is that matter IS energy. We know that space is not separate from time, and yet we speak of time as if it flows through space. This is not correct. Neither is it correct to speak of light and radio as if these are two different phenomena. They are not. One just has more kinetic energy but they are, in fact, the same phenomena. The joy of physics and mathematics – and religious contemplation – is merely the joy in discovering the multifaceted unification of the variety of experiences and phenomena in the universe. In the religious sense, this experience begins with the discovery that you are not your mind; it is the discovery that to experience your true self is to experience the ever present communion with God. The progress of physics thus mirrors the progress of the spirituality that grows only by seeing the ever more connectedness of the universe as one vast, single multifaceted phenomenon. This should not come as a surprise, for both of these journeys are of men and the journeys of men have but one end.
[more]
What you don’t know that you don’t know
“There is nothing which you now know, and nothing about what you think you don’t know, that will help you create the success you desire.”
He paused for a moment, and continued.
“The key to your success lies only in what you don’t know that you don’t know. Do you understand?”
“No,” I told him truthfully. “I have no idea what you’re saying. How can I know what I don’t even know that I don’t know?”
“You can’t,” he said. “That’s the secret.”
[more]
The Ocean
“Excuse me,” said an ocean fish. “You are older than I, so can you tell me where to find this thing they call the ocean?”
“The ocean,” said the elder fish, “is the thing you are in now.”
“Oh this? But this is just water. What I am seeking is the ocean,” said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.
Stop searching, little fish. There isn’t anything to look for. All you have to do is look.
[more...]