Richard Feynman put it best: “Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen… Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone.”
The same could be said about things on a very large scale, such as planets and galaxies. It could also be said about extremes of time and temperature – we have no direct experience with microseconds and millions of years, or with what happens at thousands of degrees or near absolute zero. Scientific concepts that deal with such extremes defy our meso-scale common sense.
We respond to these assaults on our intuition sometimes with gee-whiz fascination, and at other times, when cherished beliefs are on the line, with resistance. Can our mundane actions really change the climate of something so large as the earth? How could we possibly have descended from small, furry dinosaur prey? And if a tornado whipping through a junkyard can’t spontaneously create a Boeing 747, can it really be true that complex, living, self-directing beings are formed out of molecules that merely follow the laws of physics and chemistry, without the guiding influence of vital spirits? Continue reading “Life versus the molecular storm”
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