Thursday, March 18, 2004
Colors, Clouds, and Hell: Another science entry
I am reading a book for my literature class that some of you may be familiar with. It is called "Paradise Lost." It is a fictional poem about Satan's rebellion against God, his founding of Hell as a kingdom, and his plan to trick mankind into sinning (Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit). The story also discusses if God is a tyrant, and if evil really can exist.
The point I find interesting has a lot to do with a major misconception people have about science. This may be a bit confusing, so I am warning you ahead of time. This isn't romantic or funny, it is science. But I think it is enjoyable any way! :)
In our dealings with the natural world, we are familiar with boundaries. If a knife hits your skin, it meets a boundary (and if you are unfortunate, it breeches the boundary). We like to establish boundaries as often as we can, so that everything we experience is categorized and easily identified. Therefore we have earth, air, and space. We have ice, water, and clouds. We have fruits, vegetables, animals, and man. And so on.
The human mind is formed to make these connections between the incoming data sets it receives. Without organizational clustering, we would probably lose our sanity (but then again, sanity and insanity may be relative groupings as well).
This need for definite boundaries is seen even in our theology. In many religions, each aspect of life has a different god. Christianity has one God, but even he has three "personalities" that we separate and name (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).
In the book I am reading, it mentions the Abyss. Traditionally, this is the area that Christian thinkers have recognized as the region of existence between Heaven and Hell, as well as between Hell and Earth/Heaven and Earth. Why would we need such a place?
The reason is because we have a hard time when we start to ponder questions about where something ends, and another thing begins. We don't like to think that there is a place where you are suddenly in Hell... one step back and you are not.
(Actually this is an old theory, since we no longer think of Hell and Heaven as literal locations on our maps, but rather as dimensions, a concept unknown to early Christians... perhaps another sign that Kuhn was right about paradigms, and how our understanding of all things is tied to our temporal lifespans and collected knowledge.)
This logical hardship causes one to place boundaries on nature that may not exist. We like limits and boundaries because it is convenient, not because of truth. The truth is, nothing ever really touches anything else. That knife that cuts your skin never touches you... there are microscopic magnetic, steric, and other -ic interactions that cause bonds to break, and there for the skin loses its integrity and splits. It is hard to think thisway, because it seems contrary to what we perceive. But it is closer to the truth.
This is a misconception I hear a lot of students stumble over. In my anthropology class, students often struggle with concepts of civilizations that change, or animals that form new species. This is because they look at a line that suddenly branches, and think 'there must have been one morning that all of these villagers woke up and suddenly decided to farm rather than hunt and gather.' Similarly, people struggle with the idea that one animal comes from another. They demand fossil evidence, not realizing the gradual path that we assume life evolves on (unless you believe in punctuated equilibrium).
Such a hard view on how things exist is only human, but incorrect. We need to look at the universe AS IT IS, not as we like it. This can be scary for us, because we like things to be in 'black and white.' We like right and wrong, male and female, night and day, yin and yang. But we all know that there are grey areas in almost every endeavor.
Taking the mentality that things are either "X or not X" can lead to all sorts of troubles. First of all, we waste a lot of time categorizing, and little time understanding. If we argue about whether particular fossil is 'human' or 'hominid', we are taking time away from discovery of what how that creature lived.
Second, we can fall into the trap of stereotypes. Categorizing items by being one way or the other is behind all of the worst racism and prejudice in the world. When we break people down into 'white' and 'black,' we forget that there are so many shades of each color, and color has no signal as to where a person is from, or how they think. A friend of mine at college was frustrated one day because a classmate continually refers to her as "the Chinese girl." She is from Thailand.
So like Milton's Satan, who has to traverse the Abyss to peek in on the planet Earth, many students struggle in the abyss of incorrect logic when they try to limit and bind data into neat groups.
To close, there are two examples that I use to explain proper thinking. Here they are below.
1] The easy one - think of how a child draws a rainbow. Assuming that the child draws the colors in the proper "prism" order (based on mean wavelengths), you would see several colors. It is easy to point out blue, red, green, and yellow. But we know that a real rainbow doesn't just contain these definite hues. There is an endless variety of wavelengths of light, therefore an endless variety in hues. Where does purple end and red begin? We have affixed colors with names for convenience, but that is not an accurate label for what is really happening. We should refer to each color by its wavelength (but that is so much more boring on the side of a crayon).
2] the hard one. Water, ice, and vapor are all the same. H20. But we name them separately. What we are really doing is giving a one-word indication of the pressure and temperature exerted on two hydrogens bonded to one oxygen. But consider a cloud. Where does a cloud start and end? It is hard to say, as the edges are constantly in flux.
You see, all of the atmosphere is actually one big cloud. The fluffy pillows we see floating lazily about are just areas of dense occurrence of H2O. About teh edges, parts of the cloud are continually being added (as density increases) or lost. So, we have invented mathematics called 'fractals' which studies this flux, and statistics (which studies average densities). What we have found is that reality works in line with these maths, and not with our common perceptions. In other words, things are not "X or Not X." They are "more X like or less X like."
So what exists in the universe, whether it is light, clouds, or degrees of heaven and hell, is graded. If you study statistics at all, you will understand that data can be collected into a bell curve. The lions share of the data falls around a mean value. This would be the area where we would state that something is reasonably X-like, therefore it is safe to call it X (the wavelengths are centered beween yellow and red enough to be safely called orange). But there are always variations, 1 to 3 standard deviations away, that do not accurately represent X. This is where how we handle the 'misconception' makes all of the difference.
Whew. Believe it or not, that was my condensed version. I hope that didn't turn you all off from visiting again. The weekend is coming, and with it Spring (and lots of basketball on TV), so I am excited! Have a great day and see you next time!
ps- The "variations" I spoke about above are essential to biology. This may be something worth your time to think about, and maybe I will address it in the future. Our you can email me if that interests you further.
The point I find interesting has a lot to do with a major misconception people have about science. This may be a bit confusing, so I am warning you ahead of time. This isn't romantic or funny, it is science. But I think it is enjoyable any way! :)
In our dealings with the natural world, we are familiar with boundaries. If a knife hits your skin, it meets a boundary (and if you are unfortunate, it breeches the boundary). We like to establish boundaries as often as we can, so that everything we experience is categorized and easily identified. Therefore we have earth, air, and space. We have ice, water, and clouds. We have fruits, vegetables, animals, and man. And so on.
The human mind is formed to make these connections between the incoming data sets it receives. Without organizational clustering, we would probably lose our sanity (but then again, sanity and insanity may be relative groupings as well).
This need for definite boundaries is seen even in our theology. In many religions, each aspect of life has a different god. Christianity has one God, but even he has three "personalities" that we separate and name (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).
In the book I am reading, it mentions the Abyss. Traditionally, this is the area that Christian thinkers have recognized as the region of existence between Heaven and Hell, as well as between Hell and Earth/Heaven and Earth. Why would we need such a place?
The reason is because we have a hard time when we start to ponder questions about where something ends, and another thing begins. We don't like to think that there is a place where you are suddenly in Hell... one step back and you are not.
(Actually this is an old theory, since we no longer think of Hell and Heaven as literal locations on our maps, but rather as dimensions, a concept unknown to early Christians... perhaps another sign that Kuhn was right about paradigms, and how our understanding of all things is tied to our temporal lifespans and collected knowledge.)
This logical hardship causes one to place boundaries on nature that may not exist. We like limits and boundaries because it is convenient, not because of truth. The truth is, nothing ever really touches anything else. That knife that cuts your skin never touches you... there are microscopic magnetic, steric, and other -ic interactions that cause bonds to break, and there for the skin loses its integrity and splits. It is hard to think thisway, because it seems contrary to what we perceive. But it is closer to the truth.
This is a misconception I hear a lot of students stumble over. In my anthropology class, students often struggle with concepts of civilizations that change, or animals that form new species. This is because they look at a line that suddenly branches, and think 'there must have been one morning that all of these villagers woke up and suddenly decided to farm rather than hunt and gather.' Similarly, people struggle with the idea that one animal comes from another. They demand fossil evidence, not realizing the gradual path that we assume life evolves on (unless you believe in punctuated equilibrium).
Such a hard view on how things exist is only human, but incorrect. We need to look at the universe AS IT IS, not as we like it. This can be scary for us, because we like things to be in 'black and white.' We like right and wrong, male and female, night and day, yin and yang. But we all know that there are grey areas in almost every endeavor.
Taking the mentality that things are either "X or not X" can lead to all sorts of troubles. First of all, we waste a lot of time categorizing, and little time understanding. If we argue about whether particular fossil is 'human' or 'hominid', we are taking time away from discovery of what how that creature lived.
Second, we can fall into the trap of stereotypes. Categorizing items by being one way or the other is behind all of the worst racism and prejudice in the world. When we break people down into 'white' and 'black,' we forget that there are so many shades of each color, and color has no signal as to where a person is from, or how they think. A friend of mine at college was frustrated one day because a classmate continually refers to her as "the Chinese girl." She is from Thailand.
So like Milton's Satan, who has to traverse the Abyss to peek in on the planet Earth, many students struggle in the abyss of incorrect logic when they try to limit and bind data into neat groups.
To close, there are two examples that I use to explain proper thinking. Here they are below.
1] The easy one - think of how a child draws a rainbow. Assuming that the child draws the colors in the proper "prism" order (based on mean wavelengths), you would see several colors. It is easy to point out blue, red, green, and yellow. But we know that a real rainbow doesn't just contain these definite hues. There is an endless variety of wavelengths of light, therefore an endless variety in hues. Where does purple end and red begin? We have affixed colors with names for convenience, but that is not an accurate label for what is really happening. We should refer to each color by its wavelength (but that is so much more boring on the side of a crayon).
2] the hard one. Water, ice, and vapor are all the same. H20. But we name them separately. What we are really doing is giving a one-word indication of the pressure and temperature exerted on two hydrogens bonded to one oxygen. But consider a cloud. Where does a cloud start and end? It is hard to say, as the edges are constantly in flux.
You see, all of the atmosphere is actually one big cloud. The fluffy pillows we see floating lazily about are just areas of dense occurrence of H2O. About teh edges, parts of the cloud are continually being added (as density increases) or lost. So, we have invented mathematics called 'fractals' which studies this flux, and statistics (which studies average densities). What we have found is that reality works in line with these maths, and not with our common perceptions. In other words, things are not "X or Not X." They are "more X like or less X like."
So what exists in the universe, whether it is light, clouds, or degrees of heaven and hell, is graded. If you study statistics at all, you will understand that data can be collected into a bell curve. The lions share of the data falls around a mean value. This would be the area where we would state that something is reasonably X-like, therefore it is safe to call it X (the wavelengths are centered beween yellow and red enough to be safely called orange). But there are always variations, 1 to 3 standard deviations away, that do not accurately represent X. This is where how we handle the 'misconception' makes all of the difference.
Whew. Believe it or not, that was my condensed version. I hope that didn't turn you all off from visiting again. The weekend is coming, and with it Spring (and lots of basketball on TV), so I am excited! Have a great day and see you next time!
ps- The "variations" I spoke about above are essential to biology. This may be something worth your time to think about, and maybe I will address it in the future. Our you can email me if that interests you further.
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