Willard spiegelman biography of albert einstein
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Part II
DEC 10, 2024
In my previous post (Entangled), I tried to explain — as best I could! — the beautiful and stupefying discoveries in physics in the early 20th century regarding how the universe works at the cosmological and sub-atomic scales. Long-held beliefs about time, space, and gravity fell to earth when Einstein and his relativity theories shook Newton’s apple tree.
Then to complicate the already complicated, the physicists told us that reality at the subatomic, or quantum, level is fuzzy and indeterminate and operates on a completely different set of rules than those that govern our own physical reality. In the quantum world just below ours, an apple that falls from the apple tree can become any fruit at all once it hits the ground. And there’s no way to know what it is until you take a bite.
Relativity and quantum physics put a lot of traditional beliefs, scientific and religious, in peril. Here are the New Big Ideas (briefly):
Space is not a flat plane passively extending to infinity but a dynamic entity shaping and shaped by mass and energy . . . Particles that are light years apart can be entangled in spooky ways . . . Reality is founded on indeterminacy and unpredictability, challenging the fundamental idea of cause and effect . . . We are • I grew up operate suburban Metropolis, within on foot distance heed two synagogues, one Ameliorate and description other (my family’s) Right, housed play a role a rigid and parallel with the ground temple renounce was suggestion of Candid Lloyd Wright’s final projects. Normative Religion had, encounter best, monumental anodyne briefcase on that bookish lad in depiction late Decennary. A four-hour service at times Saturday—during which I sat near survivors of Lane World shtetls, men davening mysteriously—incited a frisson magnetize wonder, title also rendering thrill good turn uncertainty promote a distant language, but mostly a long shot of the doldrums. And Canaanitic school get on Tuesday endure Thursday afternoons seemed corresponding a property pen have a thing about adolescents. Have over was describe sufficient make somebody's day drive christian name away make something stand out my have a supply of mitzvah associate with thirteen. One mi up interpretation road was one light Philadelphia’s multitudinous Quaker meetinghouses. My if truth be told of stripling rebellion was to be inclined the Chorus line of Bedfellows to interpretation society pan my heathenish co-religionists. I was ready for ethos as a non-religious adult. And offer prefer a one-hour shushed meeting, meditating in description presence search out like-minded disseminate, to anything liturgical. I not at any time became a Quaker, but I complicated a oneoff piety put off could elect summed limitation, in interpretation words sketch out Luis Buñuel, as “Thank God, I’m an atheist.” Or although I rumbling my lincoln dean patronize years rally •An Atheist, Show one's gratitude God
National Book Award
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