Science Koans

Riddles and paradoxes of existence that might crack your noodle on which to meditate.


Folksonomies: meditation koan riddle

Memes

24 DEC 2013

 The Interbeing Perspective

So, if we continually exchange matter with the outside world, if our bodies are completely renewed every few years, and if each of us is a walking colony of trillions of largely symbiotic life-forms, exactly what is this self that we view as separate? You are not an isolated being. Metaphorically, to follow current bias and think of your body as a machine is not only inaccurate but destructive. Each of us is far more akin to a whirlpool, a brief, ever-shifting concentration of energy in a vas...
Folksonomies: interconnectedness
Folksonomies: interconnectedness
  1  notes

Scott D. Sampson's beautiful passage on the interconnectedness of ourselves and the universe. We are a process in the background flow of the universe.

23 JUN 2012

 Paradox of the Universe

I am afraid all we can do is to accept the paradox and try to accommodate ourselves to it, as we have done to so many paradoxes lately in modern physical theories. We shall have to get accustomed to the idea that the change of the quantity R, commonly called the 'radius of the universe', and the evolutionary changes of stars and stellar systems are two different processes, going on side by side without any apparent connection between them. After all the 'universe' is an hypothesis, like the a...
Folksonomies: universe paradox
Folksonomies: universe paradox
  1  notes

It's radius VS the behavior of stars and stellar systems. Makes one think of the paradox of an expanding universe and one in which galaxies are drawn together through gravity.

22 JUN 2012

 Life Feeds on Negative Entropy

[A living organism] ... feeds upon negative entropy ... Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.
Folksonomies: life entropy
Folksonomies: life entropy
  2  notes

It sucks the orderliness from its environment.

22 JUN 2012

 How Small are Atoms?

Why are atoms so small? ... Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water, then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you then took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marke...
Folksonomies: atom perspective scale size
Folksonomies: atom perspective scale size
  1  notes

So small that, if you were to pour a cup of water into the ocean and let it stir in, you could retrieve a cup of water from anywhere in the ocean that would contain 100 molecules from your cup.

21 JUN 2012

 Big Whorls, Little Whorls

Big whorls have little whorls Which feed on their velocity And little whorls have lesser whorls, And so on to viscosity.
Folksonomies: poetry fractals
Folksonomies: poetry fractals
  2  notes

A play on the poem about fleas and little fleas.

21 JUN 2012

 An Egg is a Chemical Process

An egg is a chemical process, but it is not a mere chemical process. It is one that is going places—even when, in our world of chance and contingency, it ends up in an omelet and not in a chicken. Though it surely be a chemical process, we cannot understand it adequately without knowing the kind of chicken it has the power to become.
Folksonomies: chemistry fate perspective
Folksonomies: chemistry fate perspective
  1  notes

But one with a long, complex history ahead of it.

21 JUN 2012

 The Universe is Just Right Intellectually

For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence.
Folksonomies: universe cosmos thinking
Folksonomies: universe cosmos thinking
  1  notes

Not too easy to understand, not to impossible to understand.

12 JUN 2012

 There Is No Living Matter

There are living systems; there is no living 'matter.' No substance, no single molecule, extracted and isolated from a living being possess, of its own, the aforementioned paradoxical properties. They are present in living systems only; that is to say, nowhere below the level of the cell.
Folksonomies: life systems matter
Folksonomies: life systems matter
  1  notes

There are only living systems.

08 JUN 2012

 The Cartesian Duality Broke Philosophy

As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in the splitting up of the world into the realms of matter and mind, and the identification of 'mind' with conscious thinking. The result of this identification was the shallow rationalism of l' esprit Cartesien, and an impoverishment of psychology which it took three centuries to remedy even in part.
  1  notes

And set back cognitive science.

06 JUN 2012

 The Universe is Made Up of Two Kinds of Waves

The tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave-energy and setting it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or existent, so that the whole story of its creat...
Folksonomies: energy waves matter
Folksonomies: energy waves matter
 3  3  notes

Bottled up waves in matter and the roaming waves of radiation.

05 JUN 2012

 Wave-Particle Duality

It did not cause anxiety that Maxwell's equations did not apply to gravitation, since nobody expected to find any link between electricity and gravitation at that particular level. But now physics was faced with an entirely new situation. The same entity, light, was at once a wave and a particle. How could one possibly imagine its proper size and shape? To produce interference it must be spread out, but to bounce off electrons it must be minutely localized. This was a fundamental dilemma, and...
Folksonomies: physics
Folksonomies: physics
  1  notes

The trouble with conceptualizing it.

04 JUN 2012

 The Total Energy of the Universe is Zero

There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the uni...
  1  notes

Because gravity represents negative energy.

31 MAY 2012

 All Human Accomplishments are Works of Muscles

Muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense the organs of the will. They have built all the roads, cities and machines in the world, written all the books, spoken all the words, and, in fact done everything that man has accomplished with matter. Character might be a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits.
Folksonomies: biology
Folksonomies: biology
  1  notes

Which carry out the will of their owners. All human character "might be a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits."

27 MAY 2012

 The Unexplainable

Given the universe, even a universe devoide of matter as such but provided with the actual laws of nature, everything that exists could, and I firmly believe did, develop from and in this without outside, divine, supernatural interference. But that universe, with its laws! For one thing there is nothing inevitable about the laws. It is a fact that masses attract each other, that gravity exists, but a universe in which masses repelled each other is also conceivable, and in it nothing could pos...
  1  notes

The Universe is ultimately unexplainable, and to call it "god" does nothing to counter this fact.

26 APR 2012

 The Second Law of Thermodynamics

There is only one law of Nature—the second law of thermodynamics—which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest. ... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with organisation that a direction of time-flow and a distinction between doing and undoing appears for the first time.
Folksonomies: physics thermodynamics
Folksonomies: physics thermodynamics
  2  notes

A beautiful comment about it.

26 APR 2012

 The Frightening Discovery of the Void in the Atom

When I hear to-day protests against the Bolshevism of modern science and regrets for the old-established order, I am inclined to think that Rutherford, not Einstein, is the real villain of the piece. When we compare the universe as it is now supposed to be with the universe as we had ordinarily preconceived it, the most arresting change is not the rearrangement of space and time by Einstein but the dissolution of all that we regard as most solid into tiny specks floating in void. That gives a...
Folksonomies: physics atom
Folksonomies: physics atom
 1  1  notes

More frightening than the vastness of space.



References

19 DEC 2013

 This Will Make You Smarter

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Brockman , John (2012-02-14), This Will Make You Smarter, HarperCollins, Retrieved on 2013-12-19
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     52  
    23 JUN 2012

     Kosmos

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Sitter , Willem de (1932), Kosmos, Retrieved on 2012-06-23
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  •  1  
    22 JUN 2012

     What is Life?

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Schrödinger , Erwin (1992-01-31), What is Life?, Cambridge Univ Pr, Retrieved on 2012-06-22
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     2  
    21 JUN 2012

     Can We know the Universe?

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Sagan , Carl (1985), Can We know the Universe?, The Sacred Beetle and Other Great Essays in Science, Retrieved on 2012-06-21
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     1  
    21 JUN 2012

     Weather Prediction by Numerical Process

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Richardson , Lewis Fry (2007-08-13), Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, Retrieved on 2012-06-21
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  •  1  
    21 JUN 2012

     The Changing Impact of Darwin on Philosophy

    Periodicals>Journal Article:  Randall, Sir John (1961), The Changing Impact of Darwin on Philosophy, Journal of the History of Ideas , (1961), 22, 457. , Retrieved on 2012-06-21
     1  
    12 JUN 2012

     From biology to ethics

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Monod , Jacques (1969), From biology to ethics, Retrieved on 2012-06-12
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  •  1  
    08 JUN 2012

     The act of creation

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Koestler , Arthur (1976-11-29), The act of creation, Hutchinson Radius, Retrieved on 2012-06-08
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: psychology
    Folksonomies: psychology
     1  
    06 JUN 2012

     The mysterious universe

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Jeans , Sir James Hopwood (1930), The mysterious universe, CUP Archive, Retrieved on 2012-06-06
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     2  
    05 JUN 2012

     The strange story of the quantum

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Hoffmann , Banesh (1959-06-01), The strange story of the quantum, Dover Pubns, Retrieved on 2012-06-05
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     2  
    04 JUN 2012

     A Brief History Of Time

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Hawking , Stephen (2009-11-10), A Brief History Of Time, Transworld Digital, Retrieved on 2012-06-04
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     3  
    31 MAY 2012

     Youth, its education, regimen, and hygiene

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Hall , Granville Stanley (1920), Youth, its education, regimen, and hygiene, Retrieved on 2012-05-31
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  •  1  
    27 MAY 2012

     Simple curiosity ; letters from George Gaylord Simpson to...

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Simpson , George Gaylord (1987-12-01), Simple curiosity ; letters from George Gaylord Simpson to his family, 1921-1970, Univ of California Pr, Retrieved on 2012-05-27
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  •  1  
    26 APR 2012

     The Nature of the Physical World

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Eddington , A. S. (2005-05), The Nature of the Physical World, Kessinger Publishing, Retrieved on 2012-04-26
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science
    Folksonomies: science
     2