Ever decreasing circles

Conditions | authors | revised perspective | Lesson | Into the unseen world

Consider the above metaphor to describe the revelations recent scientific discoveries from viruses and prions in the genetic world to the quarks and gamma radiation of the sub-atomic world, modern science today is counter-intuitive and less widely understood or comprehensible by more and more people today.

When searching for simplicity at ever smaller levels of material organization, scientific experimentation has discovered complexity instead.

At decreasing levels of organization there is less clarity or predictability than was promised a century ago. As this process of abstraction in biology and physics occurred, fewer and fewer people could fully grasp the meaning of biological, chemical, and physical existence.

For a peek into the quantum world see:

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module6_Planck.htm

Conditions | authors | revised perspective | Lesson | Into the unseen world

Our physical world's smallest components seem less and less tangible today. Based on popular works describing current science's discoveries, there exists a world we cannot see and never fully fathom. These worlds, nonetheless, influence our daily lives and all of existence. This is but one example of how twentieth century discoveries have created a serious problem for educated people.

There is a growing problem that divides scientific reality from the popular imagination. The power that the science has given society far exceeds the public's grasp of the details of forces that exist. And these forces are largely beyond our control. Thus the themes of ambivalence and fear that many of these 20th century authors --based on a nineteenth century anxiety about technology-- is widespread. To understand the growing gulf between the public's imagination and the findings of scientists is to discover an understated, if not precisely accurate, anxiety among the population when facts contradict or fail to support emotionally powerful beliefs to which people cling.

Each scientific discovery moves us to a more fully intricate and exceptionally effective apprehension of the facets of life and order of which we are not always aware. But with every discovery of radio waves, electrical disturbances, the speed of light as a barrier, or "jumping genes" there is a concurrent growth of people's beliefs in familiar, if unfounded, faith in ghosts, paranormal activity, instant cures, blaming people's genes, or thinking that humans are so special that we are not related to animals in any way, despite evidence to the contrary.

Authors | revised perspective | Lesson | conditions | Into the unseen world

Consider the meanings of these works:

Revised perspective | Lesson | Conditions | Authors

Depending on your perspective, either God or the Devil (or both coexist) dwell in the details!

Digging deeply into the world down to the level of the femto-universe of the unimaginably small.
	The details of modern physics, chemistry, geology and biology reveal that hidden in the very small things, are clues the the beauty, the agonizingly ancient, and the functionally superb world in which we dwell. Pictured at the top to the left is the femto universe where quantum theory describes a incredibly miniature world of evanescent matter and energy where a sea of sixty or more sub atomic units seem to us as both waves and particles simultaneously. In a very real sense our macrocosmic laws of mechanics appear to break down as you move from the bottom of this drawing depicting the scale at which we perceive the biological world.
	Michio Kaku, physicist, insists that we are now experiencing a convergence of three revolutions: the quantum discoveries of the microcosm the bio molecular discoveries in genetics, proteins and rna, and the computer's mass application to quantitative problems
	Experience hides the smaller scaled worlds we inhabit but do not fully sense. These worlds we co-inhabit with the unseen organisms that maintain life are composed of cells, molecules, atoms, quarks and leptons.
In this graphic above, the scale, measure, or size of the world we inhabit is at the bottom; as you move to the top of the graphic each layer is an ever tinier --yet coherently interactive-- world. Rarely do these discrete worlds act in isolation, but our senses confine us to the bottom two or three layers depicted here.

Into the unseen world | Revised perspective | Lesson | Conditions | Authors

Consider the power, scope and work of these unseen --yet nonetheless real-- conditions:

Curve of binding energy

Electromagnetic spectrum

special relativity Gravitational constantThe disequilibrium of atmospheric gasses on EarthSufficient water, oxygen and sunlight

A menagerie of organisms that make the place function at an optimal level

All of these concepts and their related behavior have been examined and clarified with respect to how humans depend on physical and biological systems to live as we do, yet all are to varying degrees hard to envision and thus are not widely known nor are many people aware of their underlying significance to effective functioning of current technology.

Lesson | Conditions | Authors | Revised perspective | The unseen world

Unseen but eventually lethal in large doses, radiation arises from the quantum and femto-cosmos.

Hopefully we will always have the good sense to, admit our errors, change our mind and care for the things that instinctively care for us -- even if they are beyond our senses to apprehend and our intellect to understand.

Why?

Because we all inhabit the borders of a dimly appreciated reality where the counter-intuitive underlying reality generates stochastic variations in the conditions of existence to which all life adapts and all materials respond.

• Two Cultures.
• Murray Gell-man.
• Richard Lewontin.
• Richard Feynman.
• Michio Kaku.
• Cosmic levels
• dimensions
• unseen
• scales

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Last Updated on July 30, 2007.

By Joseph Siry

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