Interlude 2: Reevaluation of my worldview
I’ve been reading all these crazy books recently about subatomic particles and quantum physics and magical numbers…. and they have totally changed my worldview. Here are some that I would recommend:
Cosmic Banditos — I feel I must give credit to my brother, his suggestion. It’s like Fear and Loathing with a splash of quantum physics. It’s not real academic, but it’s funny and enlightening and may just elucidate the meaning of life!
A BriefER History of Time, Stephen Hawking — or you can read a Brief History of Time, your choice, but the briefer one has all kinds of new info and up to date stuff. It’s a really easy to follow overview of current scientists beliefs about the world. Lots of easy to follow metaphors and stuff. A real good starting point for a delve into the brains and knowledge of physicists.
The Quark and the Jaguar — ok honestly I haven’t finnished this thing cause I don’t have it out here in Vermont with me, and it’s pretty hard to make it through fast. Lots of rabbit trailing and side tracking and DENSE STUFF. But the cool point I guess of the whole book is… there really aren’t biologists and chemists and physicists and philosophers and psychologists etc etc. Really all of the world, all of anyones “worldview” so to speak, is just one big interconnected mass of knowledge. So a biologist must also understand religion. And history. And astronomy. And everything else. In order to really fully understand a plant or an animal or a cell or whatever the heck he’s studying. Cool idea, hard to put into practice, but totally true and good to remember as we humans get all caught up in dividing and catagorizing our knowledge. I sure know I do that sometimes! The author, Murray Gell-Mann is to overall worldviewness what say Desmond Morris is to evolutionary psychology….. probably a straight up really cool guy to know but maybe a lot egocentric.
The Alquimist — I know it was a big hit a while back and it is a little cheesy in parts and a little too religious in other parts for my taste, but it has such a good point behind it. Follow your dreams! Put faith in yourself and in the world and just do what you know ought to be done, don’t let fear or comfort or habit hold you back from what you want to do. As you guys probably know, this is a message that I especially enjoy hearing. But I really think that I am supposed to go out and do great things in the world. Supposed to like it is my calling or my role in the universe, I don’t know about that, maybe just supposed to like that is what will make me most happy and be most likely to allow me to make those around me happy in return. And isn’t that kinda the purpose of life? I told you this would get cheesy. Enough of that!
Ok, now you are all caught up on my summer. I will write again soon with where I am now, what I”m doing, how it’s going, and all that. Hold your breathes expectantly, oh awaiting crowds of adorers!