[散文分享] What does it all mean? Dan Falk (Universe on a T-Shirt)

What does it all mean? (excerpts) Dan Falk

For centuries, much of science has been tied up in a philosophy called reductionism. The idea is that you understand the parts, you understand the whole. ... Reductionist science, in fact, is one of the great success stories of the last 400 years. Its track record is stunning. ... Yet there are many systems, even in physics, where the reductionist approach fails -- systems in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The example mentioned most often is weather forecasting. ... The system is simply too complex to lend itself to precise predictions. (though we have good understanding of the mechanism of weather components like snow, wind or ocean currents)

In human affairs, a Theory of Everything will accomplish even less. It will do little to explain love, hatred, humor, music, or war -- simply because physics has relatively little to say about such matters in the first place. It all boils down to the "level of description" we're after. The descriptions in scientific terms would bring little understanding or appreciation such as in listening to a Beethoven symphony or reading a play such as Hamlet.

Whether a Theory of Everything would have practical applications in everyday life is more difficult to predict. ... More important, however, is the profound impact that such a theory would have -- in the long term -- on the human psyche. In time, it would lead to a  new view of our place in the cosmos, just as the work of Copernicus and Darwin did in the past. Those ideas have made us humble but wiser, and both met with resistance. 5 \3 f0 l; \1 t- A1 p

The remoteness of the scientific theory is unsettling; a few may even feel deeply alienated. This "physics angst" as described by historian Jacques Barzun of modern physics "deprived human beings of any object of cosmic contemplation. The actual order of the heavens and the workings of nature on earth were alike unimaginable -- no poet could make an epic out of them, as Lucretius and Milton had done, or address a lyric to the moon.... None of the new terms coined at the scientific mint were evocative. Electron, photon, and later:quark ... which popularizers keep idiotically calling "building blocks" of the universe, carry no suggestion of being blocks. Even "particle"  ... is a misnomer, since its instant-flash existence leaves but a dot on a sensitive plate; it never flies into one's eye and makes it water."5.39.217.77:8898( o. Z. k  F; K
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It is fruitless to ask for a definitive description of the atomic world. As John Gribbin explained:

The point is that not only do we not know what an atom is 'really,' we cannot ever know what an atom is 'really.' We can only know what an atom is like. By probing it in certain ways, we find that ... it is 'like' a billiard ball. Probe it another way and we find that it is 'like' the Solar Syatem. Ask a third set of questions, and the answer we get is that it is 'like' a positively charged nucleus surrounded by a fuzzy cloud of electrons. These are all images that we carry over from the everyday world to build up a picture of what the atom 'is.' We construct a model, or an image; but then, all too often, we forget what we have done, and we confuse the image with reality.

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