Just about everyone has some sense of what a crystal looks like. The typical imagery associates the word crystal with something that is relatively transparent, possibly of different colors, and ending in at least one pointed end. Such imagery is a gross generalization because crystals take many forms, such as the little cubic bits of salt that fall from the holes of a salt shaker or the flat sheets of graphite found in pencils. Yes, crystals can take many forms based on six underlying atomic or molecular arrangements, and the word arrangement is key here. Crystals are “ordered” atoms and molecules. The common crystal we call ice, for example, builds itself on hexagonal arrangements of hydrogen and oxygen. And many crystals, by the way, aren’t transparent. Having said the preceding, I recognize that my first sentence is erroneous. Probably few people have a sense of the many forms and colors of crystals.
And then there’s the “world crystal.” But first, this: We think minerals when we think crystals though glass “crystals” probably do pop into the mind. Forget glass. Both natural and artificial glasses are composed of unordered atoms that lack the arrangement necessary to qualify as a true crystal. Minerals are naturally formed inorganic crystalline substances that have definite physical and chemical properties. For example, a physical property of ice is its cold temperature, and physical properties of graphite are evident in its being so soft that rubbing it across your skin leaves a dark grey streak of pealed graphite flakes. A chemical property of salt is its dissolvability in water. And as for crystalline structure? Both snowflakes (crystals of ice) and salt grains (halite) are manifestations of internal molecular arrangements. Now, given that little explanation, here’s a question: What if the world itself—meaning the universe—were crystalline in some way?
A “world crystal” would imply some orderly arrangement and some identifiable properties. A number of people have jumped on the idea of spacetime that is fractal, and they have begun to apply the notion to understanding not just physics, but also biology and sociology. In general, the idea of fractality, that is, fractals, isn’t strange.* Because we’re used to both crystals and fractals in screen savers, we generally understand that regardless of the scale of those changing forms, they are manifestations of the same form. The scale is irrelevant. Parts of a pattern in a leaf’s edge match the entire leaf edge.
So, food for thought: What if all of us were part of one large fractal of humanity, in a sense, a regularly repeated pattern similar to mineral crystals? What if on the scale of a few of us we matched the scale of all of us, sort of a quantum-vs-cosmos in similarity? Would such a repeated arrangement explain our common humanity regardless of the scale on which we examined what it means to be human? Have the poets been right all along to suggest that individuals, couples, families, villages, and cities are simply microcosms and that the scales of humanity are very much like nested dolls?
And if all of us were part of a world crystal, all part of an arrangement that could be seen as similar on different scales, would we have a mechanism for reconciling our supposed differences? Or, are we farther away from reconciling than the physicists are from uniting all the fundamental forces, including gravity and spacetime in some Grand Theory?
If you haven’t sworn off salt, take a close look, maybe under a magnifying glass, at a grain of the substance on your dinner plate. Note its form and recognize that it is the result of about one quadrillion atoms lined up in a crystalline pattern. Somewhere within that little structure are two individual atoms, one of sodium and another of chlorine, and all the rest simply repeat the pattern that they set. Now look around at the people sitting nearby. See any analog?
* Nottale, L. (1993). Fractal Spacetime and Microphysics: Towards a Theory of Scale Relativity (World Scientific: Singapore)
And then there’s the “world crystal.” But first, this: We think minerals when we think crystals though glass “crystals” probably do pop into the mind. Forget glass. Both natural and artificial glasses are composed of unordered atoms that lack the arrangement necessary to qualify as a true crystal. Minerals are naturally formed inorganic crystalline substances that have definite physical and chemical properties. For example, a physical property of ice is its cold temperature, and physical properties of graphite are evident in its being so soft that rubbing it across your skin leaves a dark grey streak of pealed graphite flakes. A chemical property of salt is its dissolvability in water. And as for crystalline structure? Both snowflakes (crystals of ice) and salt grains (halite) are manifestations of internal molecular arrangements. Now, given that little explanation, here’s a question: What if the world itself—meaning the universe—were crystalline in some way?
A “world crystal” would imply some orderly arrangement and some identifiable properties. A number of people have jumped on the idea of spacetime that is fractal, and they have begun to apply the notion to understanding not just physics, but also biology and sociology. In general, the idea of fractality, that is, fractals, isn’t strange.* Because we’re used to both crystals and fractals in screen savers, we generally understand that regardless of the scale of those changing forms, they are manifestations of the same form. The scale is irrelevant. Parts of a pattern in a leaf’s edge match the entire leaf edge.
So, food for thought: What if all of us were part of one large fractal of humanity, in a sense, a regularly repeated pattern similar to mineral crystals? What if on the scale of a few of us we matched the scale of all of us, sort of a quantum-vs-cosmos in similarity? Would such a repeated arrangement explain our common humanity regardless of the scale on which we examined what it means to be human? Have the poets been right all along to suggest that individuals, couples, families, villages, and cities are simply microcosms and that the scales of humanity are very much like nested dolls?
And if all of us were part of a world crystal, all part of an arrangement that could be seen as similar on different scales, would we have a mechanism for reconciling our supposed differences? Or, are we farther away from reconciling than the physicists are from uniting all the fundamental forces, including gravity and spacetime in some Grand Theory?
If you haven’t sworn off salt, take a close look, maybe under a magnifying glass, at a grain of the substance on your dinner plate. Note its form and recognize that it is the result of about one quadrillion atoms lined up in a crystalline pattern. Somewhere within that little structure are two individual atoms, one of sodium and another of chlorine, and all the rest simply repeat the pattern that they set. Now look around at the people sitting nearby. See any analog?
* Nottale, L. (1993). Fractal Spacetime and Microphysics: Towards a Theory of Scale Relativity (World Scientific: Singapore)
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