Saturday, January 17, 2015

Seeing Things

It can be difficult to get our heads around a concept like the electromagnetic field. It is a complex and extensive subject. Still, we need to know that what we call 'light' is more appropriately called "visible light," and resides in the electromagnetic spectrum. It makes up a very small fraction of the entire field, which consists of: Radio waves--Microwave--Infrared--Visible Light--Ultraviolet--X-Ray--Gamma Ray.

Within visible light there is a subset of 7 parts, as there is in the electromagnetic field. (it might be of interest to know there are 7 musical notes as well) These are what we call colors. Red--Orange--Yellow--Green--Blue--Indigo--Violet. Just as in the EM field, working from left to right, red is a lower frequency than orange; as radio waves are lower in frequency (energy) than microwaves.

So what does all this mean? What you perceive as color is just energy (light) operating at a particular frequency. The frequency of color is measured in 'terahertz,' which is the number of cycles per second. (terahertz = one trillion cycles per second) So red, which vibrates at 400 to 484 terahertz, is vibrating 400 trillion + times per second. And red is the "slow" one! (violet vibrates at 700 trillion + times per second) And that rate of speed is simply incomprehensible.

Understand, I am not disputing the science. I accept it. It's just too much for me to process. I can't wrap my head around it. I find this mindset beneficial when I talk to an agnostic or atheist. I contend that 'God' is everywhere and everything. As possible explanations go, atheist's "can't see it." And that's alright. But if something as simple as color vibrates at such velocity, then maybe what we call God vibrates at the rate of a centillion. (that's 303 zeros behind a number) After all, who can say? We'll just have to wait and see.

Monday, January 12, 2015

The Man Behind The Curtain

Thomas Kuhn (author of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," [one of the most influential books of the 20th century] and Professor of Philosophy at MIT) compares the way scientists perceive (or don't perceive) the unexpected in nature. "In science, as in the playing card experiment, [see; the Red Spade Experiment.] novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and the usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly [deviation] is later to be observed."

Like the rest of us, scientist tend to see WHAT THEY EXPECT TO SEE. Darwin once spent a whole day in a river valley and saw "nothing but water and plain rock." Eleven years later he walked in the same valley, this time looking for evidence of glaciers. "I assure you," he wrote a friend, "an extinct volcano could hardly leave more evident traces of its activity and vast powers...The valley about here must have once been covered by at least eight hundred or a thousand feet in thickness of solid ice!" Once Darwin knew what to look for, IT WAS EASY TO FIND. ~Mind Over Matter (Conversations with the Cosmos)  K.C. Cole pp 217 [emphasis mine]

Those that wander to this site are looking for something. My effort is to make it easier to find. To this end, we examine what we call reality and apply the lessons we learn from the world around us. All the while, we are aware of statements from the likes of Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles who says: "I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound--nothing of this kind; no texture, no patterns, no beauty, no scent."

What we learn is color is actually electromagnetic waves of different frequency. Sound is simply fluctuations of air pressure. Our interpretation of this phenomenon becomes our reality. We see blue, we hear trumpets, and we smell the chocolate chip cookies in the oven. That God is a construct of our mind in no way deters that He exists. Having the ability to infuse our world with texture, patterns, beauty, and scent, (though they don't exist) enhances our experience--exponentially! So, too, with God.