"The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.
"We can think of the world as made up of things. Of substances. Of entities. Of something that is. Or we can think of it as made up of events. Of happenings. Of processes. Of something that occurs. Something that does not last, and that undergoes continual transformation, that is not permanent in time.
[…]
"Thinking of the world as a collection of events, of processes, is the way that allows us to better grasp, comprehend, and describe it. […] The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.
[…]
"A stone is a prototypical 'thing': we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an 'event.' It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.
"The basic units in terms of which we comprehend the world are not located in some specific point in space. […] They are spatially but also temporally delimited: they are events."
Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time
What Dr. Rovelli, internationally noted theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, is saying here, is that a rock isn't an object; it's an event. Which is true of literally every "thing"; they're phenomena, not matter. They only exist for a specific time, their natures changing from moment to moment. So time is the only thing objectively present in that space.
We think objects are solid and exist because we can't grasp the temporary (the word means "subject to time") nature of matter and energy – which are the components of "stuff".
But stuff is an illusion. (More accurately, it's a hasty conclusion, leading to a practical fiction.)
So the good doctor has at long last caught science up with Zen, of which this notion of an "empty" universe, where things don't really exist, but are instead an ever-changing stream of dependent co-arising (scientists call it "attraction") that never attains stasis, is a fundamental teaching.
Which is why every "thing" in the universe – you and me and rocks and trees and amœbas and planets and galaxies and Labrador retrievers – aren't objects or things at all, or even matter, but events.
Literal products of time, having a beginning and end, because the agglomeration of attractions that make us all up never settles on a permanent relationship, and eventually dissipates entirely, its components running off to join other processes, in the manner of a wave or a cloud.
Thanks to Brad Warner, whose latest book, The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being, alerted me to Dr. Rovelli's thoughts on this matter.
(By the way, Dr. Rovelli also turns out to be a professor emeritus of L'Université Aix-Marseille Luminy, where I spent a year in the late 80s. An observation à propos of nothing but my startled satisfaction.)
(Photo courtesy of Neil Owen and Wikimedia.com.)
(Emblem and patron of my father's people, as any who know us will understand, this well-armed weed flowers in surpassing beauty on the North Coast this time of year. Hated invader notwithstanding, compromising pastureland, and misguidedly considered coarse and unseemly.
As are we.
Cirsium vulgare; though this being the avatar of Scotland, disputes abide over which exact species is truly the authentic Scottish thistle, amongst the many, well... er...
pretenders.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
(I made this fudo [look left; hanging from the bell] in 2009, for friends in Spokane County. When I took care of their farm for a few weeks 6 years later, I posted a photo of it here. It was still looking pretty smart then, all things considered.
On a visit last month I noted that 16 years' continuous duty in the desert hadn't done it any favours. But given the conditions, the old warrior still serves our patron well.)
Over the past eight years I've posted regular reports on the welfare of local starfish as they endured (and some populations became extinct due to) a mysterious contagion that makes them rot alive. Now American television network CBS has announced that the cause of Sea Star Wasting Disease has been firmly established, and it's not a virus as suspected, but a bacteria.
As noted before, several species have developed a measure of immunity to this pathogen since it first appeared in 2013, but a few have been wiped out, at least in shallower, warmer water. One of my favourites, the sunflower star (Pynopodia helianthoides), once omnipresent on the North Coast, is now basically exterminated; according to the article, less than 10% of the original count still exist, all in cold, deep water. But efforts to breed them in captivity have been successful, so there's hope they might be reintroduced to their old habitat one day.
A little Googling verified that another old friend, the giant pink Pacific starfish (Pisaster brevispinus) also lives on in colder water.
As suspected, the underlying cause of this pandemic is climate disruption, which has allowed the bacteria to flow north along the eastern Pacific Coast, to warming waters where sea stars have no defence against it.
But we've got an important scientific advance in the identification of the pathogen. Together with significant rebounding on my local beaches and location of surviving populations of much-mourned MIAs, I'm taking delivery.
(Photo of pre-plague tidepool crammed with young Pycnopodia courtesy of the US National Park Service and Wikimedia.com)
(The Spokane Regional Health District is an arresting sight, inspired as it apparently was by the architecture of West and Central Africa. I can't remember seeing such a structure anywhere before. And I certainly wouldn't have expected to find one serving as a government building on the Gold Side of Washington – arid though it is. Hats off to an inspired county facilities committee.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
This graphic illustrates the grandfather paradox, a secular koan demonstrating the inability of the human mind to grasp reality.
Alright, it's actually La avo-paradokso, which means "the grandfather paradox" in Esperanto, because it's still July and I'm still licensed to go a bit off the rails. And as we'll see, those rails can be hard to discern, anyway.
For starters, let's acknowledge from the outset that the above premise cannot be tested, because we don't have a tempomaŝino (time machine). But that doesn't stop us using it to challenge our mental faculties.
So, starting at 12 o'clock and proceeding horloĝdirekte (clockwise):
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past.
I kill my grandfather.
My father isn't born.
I'm not born.
I don't invent a time machine.
I don't travel into the past.
My grandfather is born.
My father is born.
I'm born.
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past...
You can see that though the proposition is (science-)fictional, the conceptual challenge is real. It's an example of a reality that the human mind can't perceive:
– It's impossible to kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn't exist.
– But you do exist, so if you could go back in time you could totally kill your grandfather.
– Except you couldn't, because if you did, you'd never exist in the first place, so you couldn't kill anybody.
– But you do exist, therefore…
The solution? There isn't one.
Not if you're human.
Because your primitive reason runs on logic, which is why all the Vidyārājas are sniggering at you.
(However, consider that we might come to realise even this concept if we could live it. The human brain has the capacity to pencil out and penetrate circumstances that utterly lack logical sense, if it stands in front of them. I only hope our grandfathers arm themselves well if ever that comes to pass.)
Buddhism has long taught that time is neither linear nor universal; timelines are numberless, each running at its own speed and in its own direction. The variance between the classical reincarnation of Hindu and some Buddhist worldviews, and Zen's messy ad hoc concept of transmigration, originates in this contention.
That's why we developed koans, which are meant to jazz that part of the brain that can't grok the great stretch of reality that lies beyond dualistic perception. ("What was your face before your grandmother was born?" seems an appropriate example.) This also goes a long way toward explaining those wild tales of monastery practice: the decades of mu-pondering, the dharma combat, insight expressed by farting and slapping and barking like a dog. Because extracranial notions exceed language.
You can find an in-depth philosophical exploration of the grandfather paradox, as well as similar thought experiments, at BYJU'S page about it. And while you're there, take a moment to marvel that this page was uploaded by a company that educates children. I've got a feeling India's going to be running this popsicle stand in another generation.
In the meantime, why not just be nice to your grandfather? Ok, so maybe you can build your time machine without him, but who decided we needed that more than we need him?
See if you can wrap your choanocytes around that, Spongebob.
(This 20-odd year apple met its end last week, a victim of its own success. In the late 20th century, varieties such as these, bearing heavily but not growing very tall, became all the rage; they really pump out crop and it’s all in reach, at least of picking ladders and apple hooks. Since that time, little else has been planted.
Trouble is, this blueprint results in a top-heavy tree, balanced on a root ball smaller than evolutionary spec. So one good breeze on dry soil, and that’s that.
Sometimes traction and tree surgery can save such casualties. In fact, in the ancient abandoned orchards where I grew up, many of those old heirlooms actually bore from a reclining position, having fallen in some winter storm and retained enough root contact to keep producing.
But those were hardy, full-sized, union-built trees, falling where no-one cared what they looked like, of a wet, dormant season.
And so this beautiful new-guard girl is done for. How sad to lose a thing that gave so generously for so long.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
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