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ED's picture

Thoughts on patterns, "truth", change

Humans cannot perceive...well, we can't perceive what we can't perceive. We used to not be able to see atom/molecules, cells in our bodies or bacteria; now we can. Now we can see photos of outer space and our world from afar. WE have seen patterns at many levels beyond organic human perception. It seems no matter what, we are still confined by the way our brains work, the way we sense/see. I am tempted to look for "objective" patterns-- patterns that 'just exist' without me just believing they exist-- by looking at atoms. My instinct says "atoms are uniform. Each element looks the same as other units of that element." Atoms might not necessarily be the smallest particles in the universe, however. Though WE can't cut an atom up, an atom is still a 3D something, and can therefore be divided. An another reality is that, although one carbon atom looks just like another carbon atom (I think?), they are still different carbon atoms even if they physically look the same. If there were a uniform smallest particle then I would hypothesize that patterns exist independent of human perception. But since there is no known limit to how big the universe is (even though we talked about its diameter...), there's probably no limit to how small something can be. What I'm saying is that the existence of infinitely small or infinitely big would mean that absolutely no two thing are identical in the universe. Infinite difference is too much for the human brain to handle. For the purposes of of human clarity and stability, it's OK to only see/sense what we can see/sense... we can construct the patterns we are able to organically observe (w/o microscopes or the hubble).... But we cannot let ourselves believe that any sort of human perception is sufficient enough for us to start announcing [T]ruths about patterns of life. 

 

Some poetry from a museum I went to in California:

"Ever present never twice the same" and "ever changing never less than whole" -December Robert

My last fortune cookie: The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Quotation from NYC sidewalk graffiti: "Change is the only constant"

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