“What’s on your mind today? You’ve been wandering around wondering, apparently, probably because you’ve written 1,000 little essays, and your brain is empty. After all, how many thoughts could you possibly hide in there, that is, how many thoughts that would inspire essay number 1,001?” you ask.
“This is where I am, somewhat lost in a field that is full of fields,” I say.
“Okay, I see you haven’t stopped thinking. I can sense the birth of a little essay. You’re going to make me think just when I thought I might get a rest. This better be good.”
“Physicists tell us that we should abandon our notions of solidity, that we aren’t composed of matter as we have understood it. Think the force between north ends of two magnets and Faraday. There’s evidence of the magnetic field in that force. And when physicists look more closely at the subatomic world that makes up the atomic world that makes up the world, they say they are looking at fields and that I should abandon my long imagined atoms as little building blocks of solid matter. Electrons and quarks, baby; that’s it; that’s everything in the world we deal with daily. That’s me. That’s you. Somehow, ‘fields.’ Neither electrons or quarks are solid as we like to think of solids. And that’s the universe in which we live. Impossible to imagine, the composition of everything can be reduced to fields. The protons and neutrons we see in our elementary school textbooks are just models without substance as we normally define ‘substance.’
“Could someone please show me a quark? No, I don’t want a graph or diagram of some kind. I want to hold a quark or see one under some microscope. I know they are little, but don’t we have some kind of technology that lets us see them? Otherwise, what am I supposed to think when I look in a mirror? That I’m not really there as I see myself? That I’m composed of ‘particles’ that aren’t really particles, that ‘wave functions’ and ‘fields’ are my composition? That I am more emptiness than non-emptiness because the electrons orbit or shroud a nucleus of up and down quarks so tiny that much of what we call atoms is empty space? The diameter of an ‘atom’ some 100,000 times larger than the nucleus of quarks, a pea in the middle of a football field.
“This is very disheartening. I’ve been working all my life to understand myself, and now I realize that the ‘myself’ I want to understand can only be understood physically as it is understood mentally, that is, that my body is as fluid as my mind. Is this the endpoint of knowledge? Am I a set of fields in a larger set of fields? Isn’t all matter the same fundamental composition? Even two magnets themselves are composed of the very kinds of fields to which they respond with resistance or attraction. Am I living in something akin to virtual reality? Am I a fractal? Should I start looking at everyone and everything as though they are screen savers?
“Or, should I do what I have always done? Ignore matters I can’t resolve to concentrate on matters that I can resolve? Isn’t everything in our lives a matter of context, anyway? What difference does it make if I merely assume that I am solid and the world I deal with is also solid? What difference does it make if I don’t dwell on touch as a product of the electromagnetic force in action? Don’t I already do that? After all, how can I account for my feelings? They certainly can’t be the same as touch and sight, can’t be mere products of overcrowded electrons resisting one another like similar poles of two bar magnets. And what about consciousness? How does a physical body that is composed of fields make a brain capable of coherent thought or consistent self-awareness? How is my identity derived from fields interacting through forces? Seems strange, but I guess my identity is the same as the identity of any field I see: ‘Look, a field of flowers. There’s a corn field. The cows are in the field. And there’s a field of Donald.'
“Maybe I should ignore the physical fields althogether and just concentrate on the social ones. All those people out there are also a combination of fields interacting through just four fundamental forces (weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational), and the only reason they have mass is the Higgs field through which matter wades like a senior citizen in an exercise pool.
“Those people out there, those other ‘fields’ which they represent (or parts of fields of which I am also a part—or particle), all together make social, religious, and political fields through which I wade. Are they my Higgs fields? Sometimes the walking is difficult; I acquire more mass, becoming something like a heavy metal because of the resistance of the fluid, the field, almost as though I am walking through mercury instead of water or less dense air. Yes, maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the reason that we have the problems we have. We move sluggishly because of the ‘mass’ we acquire when we move through certain social fields. We plow through social, political, and religious ‘fields,’ meeting various degrees of resistance.
“I don’t really need to prove that I am ‘solid.’ Physical mass isn’t what occupies my mind. I’m always wading in fluids of different densities, always encountering various levels of resistance in my interactions with others. Occasionally, I move through the fields of human interactions with little resistance, and life becomes exhilarating. I can move as a glider through air, seeming to defy all forces of society, politics, and religion, or maybe even aided in my flight by them.”
“This is it?” you ask. “This is what you want to give me to think about?”
“Look about. You are acquiring some mass by some field. You can abandon your walk through the resistant fields, the ones that slow your progress. The physicists tell us that the Higgs field, for example, is what gives matter mass and that things with more ‘mass’ are simply interacting with the field more than things with less mass. We all have some choices here. No, we can’t eliminate our moving as fields through fields, but we can sometimes choose the fields through which we wander. I’m just wondering which field to wander today. Do I pick one through which I can move easily or one through which I must struggle?”
“This is where I am, somewhat lost in a field that is full of fields,” I say.
“Okay, I see you haven’t stopped thinking. I can sense the birth of a little essay. You’re going to make me think just when I thought I might get a rest. This better be good.”
“Physicists tell us that we should abandon our notions of solidity, that we aren’t composed of matter as we have understood it. Think the force between north ends of two magnets and Faraday. There’s evidence of the magnetic field in that force. And when physicists look more closely at the subatomic world that makes up the atomic world that makes up the world, they say they are looking at fields and that I should abandon my long imagined atoms as little building blocks of solid matter. Electrons and quarks, baby; that’s it; that’s everything in the world we deal with daily. That’s me. That’s you. Somehow, ‘fields.’ Neither electrons or quarks are solid as we like to think of solids. And that’s the universe in which we live. Impossible to imagine, the composition of everything can be reduced to fields. The protons and neutrons we see in our elementary school textbooks are just models without substance as we normally define ‘substance.’
“Could someone please show me a quark? No, I don’t want a graph or diagram of some kind. I want to hold a quark or see one under some microscope. I know they are little, but don’t we have some kind of technology that lets us see them? Otherwise, what am I supposed to think when I look in a mirror? That I’m not really there as I see myself? That I’m composed of ‘particles’ that aren’t really particles, that ‘wave functions’ and ‘fields’ are my composition? That I am more emptiness than non-emptiness because the electrons orbit or shroud a nucleus of up and down quarks so tiny that much of what we call atoms is empty space? The diameter of an ‘atom’ some 100,000 times larger than the nucleus of quarks, a pea in the middle of a football field.
“This is very disheartening. I’ve been working all my life to understand myself, and now I realize that the ‘myself’ I want to understand can only be understood physically as it is understood mentally, that is, that my body is as fluid as my mind. Is this the endpoint of knowledge? Am I a set of fields in a larger set of fields? Isn’t all matter the same fundamental composition? Even two magnets themselves are composed of the very kinds of fields to which they respond with resistance or attraction. Am I living in something akin to virtual reality? Am I a fractal? Should I start looking at everyone and everything as though they are screen savers?
“Or, should I do what I have always done? Ignore matters I can’t resolve to concentrate on matters that I can resolve? Isn’t everything in our lives a matter of context, anyway? What difference does it make if I merely assume that I am solid and the world I deal with is also solid? What difference does it make if I don’t dwell on touch as a product of the electromagnetic force in action? Don’t I already do that? After all, how can I account for my feelings? They certainly can’t be the same as touch and sight, can’t be mere products of overcrowded electrons resisting one another like similar poles of two bar magnets. And what about consciousness? How does a physical body that is composed of fields make a brain capable of coherent thought or consistent self-awareness? How is my identity derived from fields interacting through forces? Seems strange, but I guess my identity is the same as the identity of any field I see: ‘Look, a field of flowers. There’s a corn field. The cows are in the field. And there’s a field of Donald.'
“Maybe I should ignore the physical fields althogether and just concentrate on the social ones. All those people out there are also a combination of fields interacting through just four fundamental forces (weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational), and the only reason they have mass is the Higgs field through which matter wades like a senior citizen in an exercise pool.
“Those people out there, those other ‘fields’ which they represent (or parts of fields of which I am also a part—or particle), all together make social, religious, and political fields through which I wade. Are they my Higgs fields? Sometimes the walking is difficult; I acquire more mass, becoming something like a heavy metal because of the resistance of the fluid, the field, almost as though I am walking through mercury instead of water or less dense air. Yes, maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the reason that we have the problems we have. We move sluggishly because of the ‘mass’ we acquire when we move through certain social fields. We plow through social, political, and religious ‘fields,’ meeting various degrees of resistance.
“I don’t really need to prove that I am ‘solid.’ Physical mass isn’t what occupies my mind. I’m always wading in fluids of different densities, always encountering various levels of resistance in my interactions with others. Occasionally, I move through the fields of human interactions with little resistance, and life becomes exhilarating. I can move as a glider through air, seeming to defy all forces of society, politics, and religion, or maybe even aided in my flight by them.”
“This is it?” you ask. “This is what you want to give me to think about?”
“Look about. You are acquiring some mass by some field. You can abandon your walk through the resistant fields, the ones that slow your progress. The physicists tell us that the Higgs field, for example, is what gives matter mass and that things with more ‘mass’ are simply interacting with the field more than things with less mass. We all have some choices here. No, we can’t eliminate our moving as fields through fields, but we can sometimes choose the fields through which we wander. I’m just wondering which field to wander today. Do I pick one through which I can move easily or one through which I must struggle?”
RSS Feed