Sunday, January 03, 2010
Everyting except the last
This is heady stuff. My understanding of quarks and relativity is pretty limited. My preferred domain is that of poetry, not physics. Physicists tend to get irritated when poets attempt to turn mathematical formulations into metaphors. Nevertheless, the two domains share a similar appetite for knowledge: Why are we here? How does something come from nothing? How did the universe begin? Is there a supreme intelligence behind creation?
John Olson's "Strange Matter", The American Scholar, Winter 2010, p. 66.
I had always thought that physics was concerned with the processes of the universe, not with those beyond the universe. To some, however, the subatomic structure of matter is somehow related to religion.
I think those may be orthogonal issues, insofar as knowing a lot about exotic states of matter doesn't really tell you a lot about exotic concepts of the afterlife.
Metaphysics, I think that's the word he's looking for. Beyond physics.
