Paul R. Fleischman's Blog
December 2, 2013
Wonder: When and Why the World Appears Radiant
Wonder has inspired beautiful poetry and great science, from Dylan Thomas and Rachel Carson to Newton and Einstein.
Wonder was once thought to be a religious emotion, but now we know that the more information we have, the more likely we are to feel wonder. The book, "Wonder: When and Why the World Appears Radiant" leads the reader through the voices of famous scientists and poets, up to the modern vision of reality, where trillions of cells configure life out of octillions of atoms, where space telescopes peer across billions of light years, and where scientific laws themselves must be re-invented to account for the new world unfolding around us.
The more deeply we feel, think, and explore, and the more open-minded we remain, the more wonder can become the center of our life. Wonder is a state of mind and body in which we can simultaneously hold the most information, the most complex insights, and our deepest feeling about the nature of the world out of which we have emerged.
Most wonderful of all to us is our own bodies built with atoms, some of which may be as old as the universe, and with unique information systems that make every person an advancing edge of a newly rearranged universe.
For readers of poetry, philosophy, theology, and science alike, this book integrates a lifetime of thought into a new way to see, think and feel. It is rigorously scientific and emotionally elevating.
Wonder was once thought to be a religious emotion, but now we know that the more information we have, the more likely we are to feel wonder. The book, "Wonder: When and Why the World Appears Radiant" leads the reader through the voices of famous scientists and poets, up to the modern vision of reality, where trillions of cells configure life out of octillions of atoms, where space telescopes peer across billions of light years, and where scientific laws themselves must be re-invented to account for the new world unfolding around us.
The more deeply we feel, think, and explore, and the more open-minded we remain, the more wonder can become the center of our life. Wonder is a state of mind and body in which we can simultaneously hold the most information, the most complex insights, and our deepest feeling about the nature of the world out of which we have emerged.
Most wonderful of all to us is our own bodies built with atoms, some of which may be as old as the universe, and with unique information systems that make every person an advancing edge of a newly rearranged universe.
For readers of poetry, philosophy, theology, and science alike, this book integrates a lifetime of thought into a new way to see, think and feel. It is rigorously scientific and emotionally elevating.
November 21, 2013
Wonder:When and Why the World Appears Radiant
The topic I find most urgent and compelling is my sense of wonder. This sense feels salvational. I would like to understand it, amplify it, and convey it as widely as possible to as many people as possible.
There is a large gap between the modern scientific worldview and the way that we typically construct personal meaning. What does our life mean in a universe that is so big? We typically think about our life in terms of a first person narrative that is set in our local time and place, and yet we also know that there are billions of galaxies in the universe, and that we are products of billions of years of organic evolution here on our planet Earth. How can I relate myself to the facts I learned in medical school, that I consist of trillions of tiny cells that somehow communicate and cohere into an intergated whole that I feel is my "self"?
All of the massive evidence of the global scientific enterprise reveals that somewhere in the deep pulsations of the world there is inbuilt information, directives that act like barriers, currents, and channels to the flow of events, creating order, loose patterns, disorder, and varied melodies. Some mix of rules and happenstance has touched and placed each one of the octillions of atoms that currently reside in me, each atom itself a creation and residue of the cosmic origins.
There is a large gap between the modern scientific worldview and the way that we typically construct personal meaning. What does our life mean in a universe that is so big? We typically think about our life in terms of a first person narrative that is set in our local time and place, and yet we also know that there are billions of galaxies in the universe, and that we are products of billions of years of organic evolution here on our planet Earth. How can I relate myself to the facts I learned in medical school, that I consist of trillions of tiny cells that somehow communicate and cohere into an intergated whole that I feel is my "self"?
All of the massive evidence of the global scientific enterprise reveals that somewhere in the deep pulsations of the world there is inbuilt information, directives that act like barriers, currents, and channels to the flow of events, creating order, loose patterns, disorder, and varied melodies. Some mix of rules and happenstance has touched and placed each one of the octillions of atoms that currently reside in me, each atom itself a creation and residue of the cosmic origins.
