THE SHAPE OF THINGS

I have decided to get in shape. And the shape I have chosen is a triangle.

On second thought, all those sines and cosines would probably confuse me. I have enough trouble following street signs. But the shape of things, including signs and sines, have always interested me. Why do things even have shapes? I mean, a chair has a shape suited to sitting in. But why do things like rocks, trees, rivers, and crickets have the shape they have? And who gets to decide what shape they will be? No one ever asked me. As you can see I also have problems with tangents.

But to have a shape, something must be a solid. It’s hard to have a shape if you can’t hold it, and only solids can hold their shape. Solids are a result of the interface between order and disorder, and the arrangements of elemental particles called atoms.

Atoms always strike me as odd things. I think of them as particles, but I am told they are mostly empty space, with a few smaller particles like electrons and protons floating around. But these packages of mostly space can be packaged together in different ways to make what we call the three states of matter.
The nature of what physical state we perceive is less about which specific atoms are involved, although that is often important, and more about how close together these packets of space are packaged. Atoms, which are mostly empty space, when packed close together become the thing we call a solid. And solid things have shapes.

Someone has said that “solids are those parts of the physical world which support when sat on, which hurt when kicked, and kill when shot.” So if I understand this correctly, if we pack something that is mostly empty space closely enough together we get a solid.

But of course, the space in atoms isn’t really empty, it is just empty of material. Uhm, what else is there? Well, I am told that the space in atoms is filled with things such as electronic fields. Fields are empty space so you see the space inside atoms is filled with fields. Is this getting more clear?
But electronic fields actually can fill space, in the same way that a magnetic field can fill space. If one take two magnets and bring like poles together you will feel a resistance filling the space between the two magnets. Depending on how strong the magnets are, and how strong you are, it may be very difficult, or impossible, to push the two together. The space between the two magnets seems to be full of something.

So it doesn’t really matter which atoms we are talking about, just how close together they are, for us to experience solidarity. (Wait, isn’t that a political movement?) Anyway, a solid is a substance in which atoms and their accompanying fields are packed together very closely. If the atoms are not closely packed they can slide around across each other, much like two magnets with like poles seem to slide around each other, instead of ever actually touching. Such a substance can’t hold a shape and is called a liquid.

So, much of what we experience in the physical world, the shape of things, depends simply on how close together the atoms are packaged. Solids are closely packed empty spaces, liquids are less closely packed empty spaces, and gasses are empty spaces packed into a larger empty space, loosely. Seems perfectly clear to me.
Of course, once atoms are brought into close proximity to one another, they have to fit together according to their shape, like a pattern on wall paper. That is where it becomes important which shape of atom is involved. Some fit together in hexagons, some as cubes, and some even as triangles. That’s my kind of shape.

PROGRESS

I have just recently been through a time of perplexity and complexity. It occurs to me that whatever good we might accomplish in this life is not done by raw intelligence, information, or determination alone. It requires knowledge, skill, and subtle characteristics such as restraint and judgment. Much knowledge, and many of these characteristics, come from our past, handed down through generations. There are at least two forces in our modern world that threaten past knowledge and character development.

In our modern world, run as it is from electronic connections, we value the ‘new and improved’ over the ‘tried and true’. The newest electronic equipment or software package is desired, even when older ones perform tasks perfectly well. Often the promise of the new simply means more applications that are seldom, or never, used anyway. Progress is always seen as forward and upward towards something better. But, of course that assumption depends entirely on what one defines as better. A straight line can also go straight down. Without the past we have no way of knowing what trajectory we are on.

Another difficulty we face today is the question, which past do we learn from? Multiculturalism has clouded this issue by attempting to make all pasts equally valuable. To the individual all pasts may be equally valid. But to a culture it is not so simple. The past that has given us freedom, democracy, order, the rule of law, and economic opportunity is not the same past that is based upon tyrants, social justice, bribery, or the collective domination of community. For example, science, which today is often seen as anti-religious, was born only from Christianity where the habit of reason and critical thinking was actually encouraged for centuries. Science did not arise spontaneously in other cultures where different religions held sway such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism. Not all pasts are of the same significance in the modern culture.

At one time, humans were thought to exist in our own sphere, somewhere between the angels and the animals. With this knowledge we were able to act benevolently towards the latter and reverentially towards the former. It generated a thoughtful approach to life and our own proper role. This idea has been mostly abandoned, and modern man sees himself as just another animal. Animals are seldom benevolent towards one another, and have little regard for the future. They do not plan ahead and the capacity of self-restraint or wisdom. That’s progress, of a sort.