We live in a material world; when you punch a brick wall it hurts - the strong nuclear force holding the atoms that constitute the brick and your fist see to that. Your fist does not pass effortlessly through the wall. Yet particle physics - subatomic science - suggests that it should do.
We now know that each of the individual atoms in brick and fist are merely clouds of probabilities - nothing more than electrons orbiting nuclei; shells that are largely empty. Imagine a hydrogen atom blown up to the size of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral. If a single pea in the middle of that hemisphere represents the nucleus, a single grain of sand in motion around it, representing the electron, would form a cloud that reaches all the way out to the ceiling of the dome. Look carefully at that cloud to find the electron - you can either determine its position (but not its velocity) or its velocity (not its position).
So down at the subatomic level, our intuitive notions of what is 'material' and 'physical' break down. Quantum mechanics tells us that the grain of sand is both a particle and a wave - until we look at it. Then, confronted by a conscious observer - it becomes one or the other. And then there is quantum entanglement - Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance' - separate two entangled atoms by whatever distance, and when the electron in one spins one way, the corresponding electron in the other will spin the other way*. This isn't anything that we can grasp at our scale, in the way that we instinctively get Newtonian billiard balls bouncing off each other.
Our day-to-day lives are normal, natural and physical. I lift a glass of water off my table. Three separate things. Glass, water and table. I bring the glass to my lips and drink the water. We know how this world of ours functions. So do other living organisms. Watch a dog catching a stick in mid-air; it calculates the speed and trajectory of the stick and leaps up, jaws open, to snatch it at the right moment. Yet the dog has no knowledge of laws of motion or trigonometry. It's instinctive.
Solids, liquids, gases and plasma - our world has been made clear to us by centuries of scientific progress - there is no need for the paranormal, supernatural or metaphysical to explain the phenomena we witness each day.
However, the science that we've come to depend upon for our comfortable standard of living, the science that has brought us electricity - bright, warm homes and much more - is beginning to realise that there's much that we don't know.
Is consciousness a fundamental property of the Universe - or an emergent property that exists only within the brains of highly evolved creatures? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? Is the speed of light an absolute limit? What happened before the Big Bang? How will the Universe end? Why do physical constants seem to be fine-tuned for life? How (and why!) did the jump from non-life to life occur?
As old certainties begin to break down at the edges of science, so the fringes start to creep back; that which was once considered 'flaky woo-woo' and 'mystical pseudoscience' begin to take on a new respectability. Our old folk-beliefs in elves and pixies in the dark forests return as little green men in UFOs hovering over our houses. Though I've never seen a UFO, nor do things go bump in the night when I'm around. I live surrounded by orchards, forests and fields and feel no fear when it's dark.
[Here I insert a paragraph referring to the asterisk above:]
* I was just contemplating this when I had a sudden unbidden flashback. To two places at the same time. Both happen to be in Buckinghamshire. One: the A40 Oxford Road, approaching Denham from the west on a summer evening; the other: the A41 as it passes the former RAF base at Westcott, heading towards Bicester, a winter afternoon. Bare hedgerows. Instant, precise, entirely congruous with the qualia I had once experienced as I drove past. It took me a moment or two to unscramble the locations, but I did so successfully. The experience felt utterly real; I have trained myself to return to the original qualia moments and define them, to nail them down in place and time. And yet the real unexplainable anomaly is when the same phenomenon occurs - instantly familiar, an experience I've consciously experienced - but it is not from this life. This is my mystery to unravel.
If there is anything inexplicable that happens in my day-to-day life, it's not witnessing UFOs or cryptozoological life forms; rather, it is located in my dreams and flashbacks (aka the déjà vu).
Take a look at how hard materialist-reductionist science tries to rationalise away my experiences as described above: [from Wikipedia]
"Déjà vu - the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. It is an anomaly of memory whereby, despite the strong sense of recollection, the time, place, and practical context of the 'previous' experience are uncertain or believed to be impossible. Two types of déjà vu are recognized: the pathological déjà vu usually associated with epilepsy or that which, when unusually prolonged or frequent, or associated with other symptoms such as hallucinations, may be an indicator of neurological or psychiatric illness, and the non-pathological type characteristic of healthy people, about two-thirds of whom have had déjà vu experiences. People who travel often or frequently watch films are more likely to experience déjà vu than others. Furthermore, people also tend to experience déjà vu more in fragile conditions or under high pressure, and research shows that the experience of déjà vu also decreases with age.
This is just not right; the above paragraph sounds like an 18th century treatise on phlogiston or aether. It's an attempt to explain something away, something mysterious that occurs to many minds but is far from universal.
We are but adolescents, beginning to grasp the fact that our understanding of the physical world around us is limited - there are far greater wonders woven into the fabric of the Cosmos than we currently allow ourselves to admit to. In the meanwhile, my search continues.
This time last year:
Governments' actions and climate change
This time seven years ago:
Cultural differences - PL & UK in the country
This time eight years ago:
Schadenfreude! The downfall of Hofman & Co.
This time nine years ago:
From the Mersey to the Tyne
This time ten years ago
Autumnal Gdańsk
This time 11 years ago:
What Independence Day means for Poles
This time 12 years ago:
Words fail me: what's the Polish for 'to fail'?
This time 13 years ago:
Autumn in Dobra
This time 15 years ago:
Autumn ploughing
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