Reality is Not as it Seems

Main Takeaways, Questions, Moments of Genius…

• Democritus [who, along with Leucippus and Epicurus, proposed the earliest views on the shapes and connectivity of atoms] authored a vast system, dealing with questions of physics, philosophies, ethics, and cosmology. All of these books have been lost. We know of his thoughts only through the quotations and references made by other ancient authors, and their summaries of their ideas. The thought that emerges is a kind of intense humanism, rationalist, and materialist. He combines a keen attention to nature, illuminated by a naturalistic clarity in which every residual system of mythic ideas is cleared away with a great attention to anticipating by some two thousand years the best aspects of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The ethical ideal of Democritus is that of a serenity of mind reached through moderation and balance, by trusting in reason and not allowing oneself to be overwhelmed by passions. {I believe it is important to study the story of how we evolved as extensions of nature trying to understand itself- our best technologies today will be archaic and barbaric to those who will follow us with more intelligent designs and intuition. Just as our humble heroes managed to glimpse nature in its purest form, or those in which the universe is undeniably illuminated- they became closer to themselves by asking questions, wondering, and experiencing. We cannot discredit or step away from some of these external means in which we stand a chance of experiencing reality on nature’s terms, not whatever reflections and projections the untrained mind allows reality to disguise itself in.} 

• After being inspired by Ernst Mach’s ideas on space, Einstein at the age of twenty-five provided the definite proof supporting the “atomic hypothesis”. He did this after not being able to find any employment as a scientist and made ends meet by working at the patent office in Berne. So how did he do this?! The idea goes like this: If we observe attentively very small particles, such as a speck of dust or a grain of pollen suspended in still air or in a liquid, we see them tremble and dance. Pushed by this trembling they move, randomly zigzagging drifting slowly, moving gradually away from their starting point. This motion of particles in a fluid is called Brownian motion, after Robert Brown, a biologist who described it in detail in the nineteenth century. The typical trajectory of a particle dancing in this manner is as if the small particle is receiving blows randomly from each side of it. In fact, it isn’t “as if” it were being hit; it really is hit. It trembles because it is hit by the individual molecules of air, which collide with the particle at times from the right and at times form the left. The subtle point is→if the air molecules were infinitely numerous, the effect of collisions from the right and from the left would balance, and cancel each other out at each instant, and the granule would not move. But the finite size of the molecules, the fact that these are present in finite rather than infinite number causes there to be fluctuations← this is the key word; that is to say the collisions never balance out exactly- they only balance out on average. It is possible with a little math to work back from the amount of movement of the granule, which can be observed, to the dimensions of the molecules.

• The very idea of Einstein’s, that the existence of atoms is revealed by the Brownian motion of minute particles immersed in a fluid, may be traced back to Lucretius. {Thank goodness he wasn’t slaughtered like all the other innocent people and books that died because people are insecure about the legitimacy of their constructed creator…}

  “Observe what happens when sunbeams are admitted into a building and shed light on its shadowy places. You will see a multitude of ways in the empty space within the light of the beam, as though contending in everlasting conflict, rushing into battle rank upon rank with never a moment’s pause in a rapid sequence of unions and disunions. From this you may picture what it is for the atoms to be perpetually tossed about in the illitable void. To some extent a small thing may afford an illustration and an imperfect image of great things. Besides there is a further reason why you should give your mind to these particles that are seen dancing in a sunbeam: their dancing is an actual indication of underlying movements of matter that are hidden from our sight. There you will see many particles under the impact of invisible blows , changing their course and driven back upon their tracks this way and that, in all directions. You must understand that they all derive this restlessness from the atoms. It originates with the atoms which move of themselves. Then those small compound bodies that are least removed from the impetus of the atoms are set in motion by the impact of their invisible blows and in turn cannon against slightly larger bodies. So the movement mounts up from the atoms and gradually emerges to the level of our senses, so that those bodies are in motion that we see in the sunbeams, moved by blows that remain invisible.”

  - On the Nature of the Universe pp 63-64, Lucretius

• The Catholic Church attempted to stop Lucretius: In the Florentine Synod of December 1516, the church prohibited the reading of Lucretius in schools. In 1551 the Council of Trent banned his work- but it was too late. An entire vision of the world that had been swept away by Medieval Christian Fundamentalism was re-emerging in a Europe that had reopened its eyes. It was not just the rationalism, atheism, and materialism of Lucretius that were being proposed in Europe. It was not merely a luminous and serene meditation on the beauty of the world. It was much more:it was an articulate and complex structure of thinking about reality, a new mode of thinking radically different from what had been for centuries the mind-set of the Middle Ages. Einstein resurrected the “living proof” of atoms presented by Lucretius, first concerned by Democritus and made it solid by translating it into “mathematical” terms- managing to calculate the size of the atoms. {Where would we be today if we encouraged scientific thinkers and naturalists instead of viciously murdering them and erasing their thoughts left to the world with self-righteous flames? Honestly, consider it… how many ways have we allowed one organized group to set back the successes and prosperity of humanity? Do we feel good now? Like we have a clue about those manipulating the public’s puppet strings…}