The Potentiality of Matter

Early in the twenty-first century, the old dualism of matter and spirit seems irrelevant. In the new theories of physicists, the fundamental material particles—protons, neutrons, electrons—dissolve into a kind of cosmic music, all resonances, vibrations, and spooky entanglements. Matter has revealed itself as a thing of astonishing, almost immaterial subtlety The one property of matter that lingers is its potentiality. The hydrogen and helium atoms forged in the Big Bang possessed a built...

 Tracking the Trails of Ancient Glaciers

On an outcrop of volcanic bedrock near the paath sit half a dozen erratic boulders, some weighining as much as twenty tons, of a coarse-grainned pink granite. Once, I chipped off a sample of)f the rock and followed the bedrock scratches northth, looking for the source. Like an Indian trail of bent twigs. le scratches led me several miles out of Easton into the town of Stoughton, where I found what I was looking for, a south-facing ledge of bedrock that under the hand magnifier was identical t...