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Maya Bohnhoff linked to this article on Facebook, with the words "I love science. I love religion. I love it when the two come together."
I don't especially love either one, though I don't hate them either. I love stories, and art, and music. But I certainly agree with the writer of the article that the advocates of science and those of religion will achieve a lot more in their respective spheres if they stop wasting their time and energies futilely fighting each other and learn to get along instead, and it really doesn't matter who goes first. Both are important to people, both are necessary to life, and neither is going away any time soon, so get it together, people, draw whatever lines you need to draw and let's concentrate on the important things.
But this is a digression. The writer ends by saying, "Reality, like fantasy and imagination, goes on forever. With its billions of galaxies, so does the universe." I thought science had decided that the universe didn't in fact go on forever, but that may have been last week; the paradigms seem to get revised almost on a daily basis these days. Certainly imagination does not go on forever, and I speak as one who's been using his all his life. Imagination works within clearly defined limits; we cannot imagine that which is utterly outside our experience, which is a good thing because we would never be able to communicate it.
In fact, everything in this universe has a limit. And that's also a good thing. I may grouse about the limiting velocity of light, but it's good that things can only go so fast and no faster; imagine if exploding stars could emit debris at three hundred times lightspeed. You wouldn't dare go outside. And anyway, we may find a way round that one day. Some limits are meant to be circumvented.
This line of thought was prompted by a mention of Moore's Law, which if I have it right states that computer processing power will double every two years. For ever, presumably. This seems to be part of a general perception these days that there are no limits, that everything will go on getting bigger and stronger and faster and better for ever. This strikes me as unlikely in the extreme. I don't know anything about electronics, but it seems likely that at some point we will hit an upper limit to the number of floating point calculations we can make a tiny chunk of silicon do, and quite likely that there simply won't be anything that works any better. Why should there be? And looking at it from the other side, I know for a fact that there is an upper limit to human performance, both physically and mentally. (I've wibbled about this before.) Why go on designing and building ever faster and whizzier computer chips, even if we can, and then coming up with ever larger and more cumbersome operating systems to slow them back down to the point where we can cope with them? (Did you not realise that's what's happening?) How much processing power do we actually need?
I realise I'm sounding rather like the brilliant minds who decided that 640k of memory was all anyone would ever need in a computer, or the chap who said there would only ever be five hundred motor cars in Britain because that was how many chauffeurs were available, but even though they were comically wrong in the specifics they had the right general idea. Infinite expansion is all very well as an abstract concept, but on a finite planet it doesn't work. There are limits, whether we like it or not. Some limits can be pushed, gently but firmly, and will give; our understanding of the universe has grown and will continue to grow, and I firmly believe that not only will we one day understand it all, all that there is to be understood (because there is a limit to that as well), but that on that glorious day the real adventure will at last begin. Some limits are hard and fast: you cannot get a quart into a pint pot, you cannot hold more than--is it five or seven?--things in your head at once, you cannot hold your breath for more than a certain number of minutes and you cannot achieve escape velocity on a bicycle (without alien assistance). But whether the limit is hard or soft, porous or non-porous, it's there, and it's good that it's there, because it gives us something to push against when we're fresh, and something to lean on when we're tired.
Creativity thrives on limits. Say to me "Write something," and I boggle. Tell me you want a cycle of eight sonnets, each describing a different kind of alien love affair and each containing the word "artichoke", by Tuesday week, and I might manage it. (I might not, of course, so preferably don't.) Where do we get our ideas from? We start by setting limits, defining what kind of idea we want. Only when we've done that do the ideas emerge.
Limits are good. May we always find more, and may we be wise enough to know which ones we can surpass, and which ones we should respect.
I don't especially love either one, though I don't hate them either. I love stories, and art, and music. But I certainly agree with the writer of the article that the advocates of science and those of religion will achieve a lot more in their respective spheres if they stop wasting their time and energies futilely fighting each other and learn to get along instead, and it really doesn't matter who goes first. Both are important to people, both are necessary to life, and neither is going away any time soon, so get it together, people, draw whatever lines you need to draw and let's concentrate on the important things.
But this is a digression. The writer ends by saying, "Reality, like fantasy and imagination, goes on forever. With its billions of galaxies, so does the universe." I thought science had decided that the universe didn't in fact go on forever, but that may have been last week; the paradigms seem to get revised almost on a daily basis these days. Certainly imagination does not go on forever, and I speak as one who's been using his all his life. Imagination works within clearly defined limits; we cannot imagine that which is utterly outside our experience, which is a good thing because we would never be able to communicate it.
In fact, everything in this universe has a limit. And that's also a good thing. I may grouse about the limiting velocity of light, but it's good that things can only go so fast and no faster; imagine if exploding stars could emit debris at three hundred times lightspeed. You wouldn't dare go outside. And anyway, we may find a way round that one day. Some limits are meant to be circumvented.
This line of thought was prompted by a mention of Moore's Law, which if I have it right states that computer processing power will double every two years. For ever, presumably. This seems to be part of a general perception these days that there are no limits, that everything will go on getting bigger and stronger and faster and better for ever. This strikes me as unlikely in the extreme. I don't know anything about electronics, but it seems likely that at some point we will hit an upper limit to the number of floating point calculations we can make a tiny chunk of silicon do, and quite likely that there simply won't be anything that works any better. Why should there be? And looking at it from the other side, I know for a fact that there is an upper limit to human performance, both physically and mentally. (I've wibbled about this before.) Why go on designing and building ever faster and whizzier computer chips, even if we can, and then coming up with ever larger and more cumbersome operating systems to slow them back down to the point where we can cope with them? (Did you not realise that's what's happening?) How much processing power do we actually need?
I realise I'm sounding rather like the brilliant minds who decided that 640k of memory was all anyone would ever need in a computer, or the chap who said there would only ever be five hundred motor cars in Britain because that was how many chauffeurs were available, but even though they were comically wrong in the specifics they had the right general idea. Infinite expansion is all very well as an abstract concept, but on a finite planet it doesn't work. There are limits, whether we like it or not. Some limits can be pushed, gently but firmly, and will give; our understanding of the universe has grown and will continue to grow, and I firmly believe that not only will we one day understand it all, all that there is to be understood (because there is a limit to that as well), but that on that glorious day the real adventure will at last begin. Some limits are hard and fast: you cannot get a quart into a pint pot, you cannot hold more than--is it five or seven?--things in your head at once, you cannot hold your breath for more than a certain number of minutes and you cannot achieve escape velocity on a bicycle (without alien assistance). But whether the limit is hard or soft, porous or non-porous, it's there, and it's good that it's there, because it gives us something to push against when we're fresh, and something to lean on when we're tired.
Creativity thrives on limits. Say to me "Write something," and I boggle. Tell me you want a cycle of eight sonnets, each describing a different kind of alien love affair and each containing the word "artichoke", by Tuesday week, and I might manage it. (I might not, of course, so preferably don't.) Where do we get our ideas from? We start by setting limits, defining what kind of idea we want. Only when we've done that do the ideas emerge.
Limits are good. May we always find more, and may we be wise enough to know which ones we can surpass, and which ones we should respect.