Two senior citizens, now both deceased, went to see the displays at Cape Kennedy some thirty or so years after Neil Armstrong stepped into moon dust. As they entered the Saturn V building to see the rocket, now separated into its component stages and set horizontally on supporting legs, their jaws dropped and eyes opened wide. One said, “I didn’t know it was this big. It looked like a pencil on TV.”
An understandable reaction: Most TVs at the time were black-and-white, rather small; and, because “rabbit-ear” and chimney antennae, sometimes enhanced with aluminum foil in artful designs in an age before cable and satellite dishes, provided grainy reception, many viewers didn’t quite understand what was required to launch three men toward the moon. A Saturn V on a 16-inch black-and-white screen would certainly have appeared no larger than a pencil. Standing beneath the giant rocket and looking up, the senior citizens were awestruck by its size.
Appearances are governed by perspectives. We see as our position allows us to see.
We are amazed by big things when we encounter them firsthand. Take Patagotitan mayoram, a dinosaur discovered in Patagonia: Seventy feet long and a mass equivalent to ten large African elephants. Some 100 million years ago this creature probably had few enemies once it reached its adult stage. Standing beside it, we feel small. If Jim Croce were around to compose a song at the time, he would have included Patagotitan mayoram as one “you don’t mess around with.” Stepping a the titanosaur’s tail would be equivalent to stepping on Superman’s cape.
The Sun is a big object, nearly 900,000 miles in diameter. With a diameter of only 8,000 miles, Earth is tiny by comparison. One could, the astronomers tell us, put over 300,000 Earths inside the Sun. Yet, there are other suns out there that dwarf ours, some into which one could put more than 300,000 suns like ours.
Why? Why do you think big rockets, dinosaurs, and suns capture our amazement? Are they reminders of our limitations, not just physical limitations, but rather also of our knowledge and mental capacities. It’s tough enough, for example, to imagine going around an object as big as our Sun. What could one’s brain do with Antares, a sun about 700 times our sun’s diameter?
When we stand beside a Saturn V or beside the reassembled bones of Patagotitan majoram, we have a perspective we can use to form a relationship between our size and something big. We get the same kind of perspective from a mountaintop as we look down, and from the mountain base as we look up. No doubt, first time visitors to cities with skyscrapers cast those wide-eyed glances upward in the same amazement.
And then there are those nagging little problems we face every day. Big to us individually, but small to outsiders: Titanosuars from the distant past looking down on creatures not much larger than their droppings, astronauts looking down from atop a rocket more than a football field tall, and, who knows, aliens looking at us from a planet circling distant gigantic Antares. Maybe we are in awe of big things because they give us a perspective on ostensibly big things. Maybe our big problems are only ostensible. Appearances are governed by perspectives. Perspectives derive from position. Put your eyes in the head of a long-necked dinosaur, inside an Apollo capsule orbiting the moon, or on a distant planet. Are the nagging problems really big?
I know. I should realize, you say, that just having a different perspective doesn’t make the nagging problems go away. You’re right. But a different perspective probably won’t make matters worse, and viewed from something larger or beside something larger, everything seems smaller.
An understandable reaction: Most TVs at the time were black-and-white, rather small; and, because “rabbit-ear” and chimney antennae, sometimes enhanced with aluminum foil in artful designs in an age before cable and satellite dishes, provided grainy reception, many viewers didn’t quite understand what was required to launch three men toward the moon. A Saturn V on a 16-inch black-and-white screen would certainly have appeared no larger than a pencil. Standing beneath the giant rocket and looking up, the senior citizens were awestruck by its size.
Appearances are governed by perspectives. We see as our position allows us to see.
We are amazed by big things when we encounter them firsthand. Take Patagotitan mayoram, a dinosaur discovered in Patagonia: Seventy feet long and a mass equivalent to ten large African elephants. Some 100 million years ago this creature probably had few enemies once it reached its adult stage. Standing beside it, we feel small. If Jim Croce were around to compose a song at the time, he would have included Patagotitan mayoram as one “you don’t mess around with.” Stepping a the titanosaur’s tail would be equivalent to stepping on Superman’s cape.
The Sun is a big object, nearly 900,000 miles in diameter. With a diameter of only 8,000 miles, Earth is tiny by comparison. One could, the astronomers tell us, put over 300,000 Earths inside the Sun. Yet, there are other suns out there that dwarf ours, some into which one could put more than 300,000 suns like ours.
Why? Why do you think big rockets, dinosaurs, and suns capture our amazement? Are they reminders of our limitations, not just physical limitations, but rather also of our knowledge and mental capacities. It’s tough enough, for example, to imagine going around an object as big as our Sun. What could one’s brain do with Antares, a sun about 700 times our sun’s diameter?
When we stand beside a Saturn V or beside the reassembled bones of Patagotitan majoram, we have a perspective we can use to form a relationship between our size and something big. We get the same kind of perspective from a mountaintop as we look down, and from the mountain base as we look up. No doubt, first time visitors to cities with skyscrapers cast those wide-eyed glances upward in the same amazement.
And then there are those nagging little problems we face every day. Big to us individually, but small to outsiders: Titanosuars from the distant past looking down on creatures not much larger than their droppings, astronauts looking down from atop a rocket more than a football field tall, and, who knows, aliens looking at us from a planet circling distant gigantic Antares. Maybe we are in awe of big things because they give us a perspective on ostensibly big things. Maybe our big problems are only ostensible. Appearances are governed by perspectives. Perspectives derive from position. Put your eyes in the head of a long-necked dinosaur, inside an Apollo capsule orbiting the moon, or on a distant planet. Are the nagging problems really big?
I know. I should realize, you say, that just having a different perspective doesn’t make the nagging problems go away. You’re right. But a different perspective probably won’t make matters worse, and viewed from something larger or beside something larger, everything seems smaller.
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