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A Unified Theory of Science and Art

Jan 18, 2013
by Caroline Miller
Jim Holt, Seven Weinberg, Why Does the World Exist?
5 Comments

I am still inching my way through Jim Holt’s, Why does the World Exist?  I’ll probably finish it in the same time frame it took to build a pyramid. The book is so rich in thought that it’s like wading through a vat of molasses. The concepts it teaches are stranger than any found in fiction.

 I’ve just completed a juicy chapter where the author interviews Steven Weinberg, a physicist who has spent his life looking for the unified theory of everything — a theory that would explain the fundamental forces of the universe: electromagnetism, strong and weak forces and gravity. As the author admits, the problem may be “that we are trying to be logical about a question that Is not really susceptible to logical argument.” (Ibid, pg. 160).

 Holt may be right. The universe could be illogical or organized along principles too large for our brains to grasp. Yet scientists continue to seek understanding, using instruments and equations in their quest. But is it reasonable to go on examining a seemingly infinite universe with finite minds? Steven Weinstein offered an elegant answer to this question:

 The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. (Ibid pg. 163)

 When I came upon this statement I paused, not only because it attempts to describe the human condition, but also because this statement about grace was graceful in itself — a sentence where meaning and expression mirrored one another in a way that made them one. That, I said to myself, is poetry.

Perhaps what the scientist and the artist share in common are moments of insight, times when logic or empirical studies do not apply. Pure mind finds its own way and then, as necessary, attempts to help others understand through a chosen medium. Insight is prior to knowledge. It is the unified field that binds us and transcends everything else.

Quantum Mechanics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Artist conception of Quantum Mechanics courtesy of psion005.deviantart.com) 

 

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5 Comments
  1. Pete January 18, 2013 at 1:23 pm Reply
    It's a fascinating post ... Freud famously wrote "the poets got there before me" ... So it is not surprising to read in Yeats's Autobiography (1922) his belief that "We begin to live only when we have conceived of life as tragedy" ... But what often goes unnoticed is the opening sentence of his next paragraph: "A conviction that the world was now but a bundle of fragments possessed me without ceasing" ... Far from unifying anything, science has succeeded merely in breaking our confidence in direct perception, undermining it with theories of the invisible ...
    • Caroline Miller January 18, 2013 at 4:45 pm Reply
      Glad you find the subject interesting, Pete. I will have a bit more to say on this subject down the road. Stay tunned.
  2. Don Merrill January 18, 2013 at 10:29 pm Reply
    Carl Sagan's novel, "Contact" had a line where Jodie Foster's character, upon coming face to face with the immensity and majesty of the cosmos, said "They should've sent a poet."
    • Caroline Miller January 19, 2013 at 8:36 am Reply
      Loved Sagan who was a poet. I'd forgotten that line. Or perhaps I wasn't as attunded then as I would be now now. Thank you for reminding me and welcome to my web, Don.
  3. Pete January 19, 2013 at 8:34 pm Reply
    That's a good line, Don ... We sent Dante in the 14th century and it took him 14,000 lines in poetry to tell us words failed him ... But he was still in Comedy mode ... Donne saw multiple universes -- now that's Tragic! ... Maybe we have a better shot with the scientists, but Schrödinger's cat, if he is reading Holt's book, must be wondering, Which world is he talking about? ...

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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