Lawrence

Lawrence
My favorite hiking shirt

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

What am I?

Doesn't seem possible that I will die. I have been with me so long and I feel real, permanent, enduring. It doesn't seem right that I will disappear forever – I exist right now, I feel so real – just as real as the universe.

How can I feel so real and yet be disappearing, dying? Maybe that's because I AM REAL! Maybe I am the only real thing because I AM NOT A PHYSICAL THING.

Speaking of the physical world Heisenberg said: “There's nothing there.” Whatever I am, I am not physical. I am not matter – I'm pretty sure at this time, that, whatever I am, I am not the stuff my body is made of.*

* I must give Steve Grand credit for my thinking on this concept. I ran across his blog when I was in New Zealand last fall and have followed him ever since.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Is Order a Conserved Quantity?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that the universe moves from an ordered state to disorder: sometimes referred to as the “heat death of the universe" A nuclear physicist (I can't recall his name) once gave a talk about his findings on disordered nuclear states actually being a new form of order and suggested that ordered systems may not deteriorate into disorder but rather change into a different form of order. Could the second law be all wrong and "Order"actually be one of the conserved quantities in nature? That could have implications for the human spirit which seems to me to be a Chaotic "Strange Attractor" and not only an Ordered System but an ultimate "Orderer". Perhaps death is changing ones state of order.