Sunday, February 11, 2007

The Tao of Quantum Physics

Caution! I am not a trained physicist! Although I do have cats named after brilliant guys in that field. But I love quantum physics. I love how science could possibly explain everything. And not by displacing magick and mysticism, but by actually showing how they are very real things as their inner workings are revealed. I once captured the adoring attention of two very nice, very attractive, very smart men at a party by rattling off a list of the names of quarks. What I thought would surely be a slam-dunk conversation stopper ended up to be a very interesting exchange of ideas. Up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. I further astonished them by understanding why they had been given these names. Quarks are almost never found singly, they usually appear in groups of two or three. Which sort of explains the pairing off of mammals and the common occurrence of groups of three as back-up singers. Maybe not. In the last ten years I have adopted an Eastern thought process that has given me greater insight and more patience than I thought I was capable of. In Western culture we tend to be bottom line, result oriented thinkers. We want things explained before we accept them. Often we demand this order of thought which can cause great frustration and unhappiness. Instead, I accept things, particularly things that make absolutely no sense to me. In the hopes that acceptance will free up my brain and break down any mental roadblocks that are in there, thereby leading me to understanding. A good example would be trying to understand men. Why on earth do I want one when they make me crazy? Instead, I simply accept that I want one and am currently in the process of coming to a greater understanding of why they are the way they are. Maybe some things don't have to make sense, that's a big one to accept. I accept the idea that quantum physics and String Theory, two things that on the surface that seem to be mutually exclusive, could explain the mysteries of the universe. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is my current mantra. The very act of observing a process alters its outcome. Thereby explaining why a watched pot doesn't boil. Especially if you forget to turn on the burner.

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