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schu's picture

about science and myth.

I have been staring at my story, notes and Turner’s story for more than an hour, but I still feel that my thought is so blurred. I listed a bunch of differences between science story and myth. Then I just scratched out all of them except the last one: our feelings. Science story let us feel humble and tiny, like we can never touch the edge of the universe. At the same time, the scientist-style confidence suggests that we have time to figure it out with accumulating observation and fast-developing technology. Meanwhile, a myth looks like grandma sitting beside the fireplace, smiling in peace. (Though everyone has a different grandma….)

 

I don’t know which makes me feel better, being respectful to the unknown and ruling the lower class world by gifts bestowed by god, or feeling little and lonely in the grand universe and trying to jump out of the human-dimension? Every time on a plane, I look down on the model-sized houses, highways, lakes and forests. It feels like I need to change my aspect of view to life. The toughness and personal feelings become smaller and smaller, just about to vanish, like us to the universe. The bad things are just gone, and I think myself a saint. But when the plane touches down, all of the tiny things come back at one second, flooding into my mind. Maybe we can sometimes be powerful or saint-like, or just view the world at the time human do not yet exist. But it’s our need to turn ourselves back to an ordinary human being who lives in such a thin layer above the surface of Earth in the galaxy in the universe.

 

 

 

We still need myths. Myths give us power and satisfaction that we are not alone, and we have grandmas sitting there in warm homes. That’s a tradition in human’s time dimension which provides us a sense of belonging. For example, I am lying under the dark sky and observing the half moon. When I learn the scientific fact of the moon, I try to imagine the other half moon in shadow, which builds up a three-dimensional sphere in my mind. Then I will tell myself, wow, what a big celestial body, and what a tremendous universe. But for some moment, this idea bothers me because I am thinking way too far. I’d rather believe that it is a bright circle attached to the sky, which will be my company for almost every night.

 

 

 

 

And in the book <Maya >, by Jostein Gaarder(which I read in Chinese, so I can only translate a sentence from it), there is a saying:” The eye to watch out the universe, is the eye of universe itself.” This is a really bad translation, but if you can get its meaning, you might think that the appearance or human consciousness might not only be a coincidence. There is a chance that, we, the child of the universe, represent the intention that the universe wants to learn about itself. But scientists want to find the ultimate truth, and the only truth of the world. So maybe, there is a limit that we can never get to.

 

 

 

It seems that most of the words will be a part of my analysis…forgive me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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