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I would be very interested in reading the Lightman article. Thank you, Bonnie Weinstein > On Aug 3, 2018, at 11:54 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism > <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > As comrades know, I forward links to articles about black holes, particle > physics, quantum theory, big bang, etc. even if they have no direct > relationship to Marxism and are often difficult to wrap your head around. > > In the March 2018 Harpers, there's an article by physicist Alan Lightman > titled "The Infinity of the Small" that is just tremendous. Lightman is also > a novelist and able as such to bridge the two cultures that CP Snow referred > to. > > It is behind a paywall but don't hesitate to contact me for a copy. This will > give you a sense of his approach: > > Regardless of whether space is indeed grainy at very small scales, physicists > are confident that time and space must be chaotic at Planck. Because of the > indeterminate, probabilistic character of quantum physics, at the dimensions > of the Planck length, space and time churn and seethe, with the distance > between any two points wildly fluctuating from moment to moment. Indeed, at > the Planck scale, time itself randomly speeds up and slows down, perhaps even > going backward as well as forward. In such a situation, time and space no > longer exist in a way that has meaning to us. The sensation of smoothness and > substantiality that we experience in our large world of houses and trees > results only from averaging out this extreme lumpiness and chaos at the > Planck length, in the same way that the graininess of a beach disappears when > seen from a thousand feet up. > > Thus, if we relentlessly divide space into smaller and smaller pieces, as did > Zeno, searching for the smallest element of reality, we arrive at the > phantasmagoric world of Planck — where space no longer has meaning. Instead > of answering the question of what is the smallest unit of matter, we have > invalidated the words used to ask the question. Perhaps that is the way of > all ultimate reality, if such a thing exists. As we get closer, we lose the > vocabulary. Sitting at midnight on my wooden dock by the sea and imagining > myself falling and falling into smaller rooms of reality, I might continue to > fall without limit. But once I reach Planck, space as I know it no longer > exists. Space has been blown thin by an ancient glassblower, so thin that it > dissolves into nothingness. The Planck world is a ghost world. Perhaps that > is where we must look for the Absolutes, even if we no longer have the words > to describe them. > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/giobon%40comcast.net _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
