As is often the case, my thinking has been dominated by what I am reading. This week it is Knowing Christ Today, by Dallas Willard.
One of the central points of the book (so far) is the inseparable link between knowledge (primarily of God) and our life as a follower of God - and our life as a human being, for that matter! It struck me that the study of the world through physics is at its heart very similar to the study of God through theology (and living as a Christian): both are a means of seeking truth. Knowledge of the first is important, practical and fascinating; knowledge of the latter is something absolutely crucial to the life of our soul, and thus our whole being. Perhaps that is why I find the two so compelling. It is also interesting to consider that, while science cannot tell us who God is, or in any way provide moral knowledge, it can draw us to him and make us aware of his glory.
That is really all my thoughts for today, but I'll leave you to ponder some questions that Willard asks and discusses at length in his book. Try asking one of them to a friend this week (in the context of a meaningful conversation, of course!).
What is reality?
Who is well off or blessed?
Who is a truly good person?
How does one become a truly good person?
Finally, how do we know which answers to these questions are true?
A question has increasingly been taking on personal significance to me: what motivates a follower of Christ to work in the field of science? Is there some disconnect, or does one flow naturally with the other?
An answer most easily offered is that science benefits people. Those who pray, "thy kingdom come" are motivated to be a part of changing our world for the better. Most advances in medicine and other areas which aid people have been inextricably linked to scientific progress. Yet this statement cannot go the other way. All advances in science did not lead to the aid of humanity. Nuclear medicine developed alongside nuclear weapons. Even excepting that rather negative view, I find this answer rather far-fetched. Belief in the abstract ability of science to benefit people in the future does not seem like motivation enough to go back to the lab each day.
Another possible motivation is simply the sheer delight in the natural world as the invention of an incredibly creative and intelligent God. There is a fine line here. The Christian scientist does not merely love the created world, for that would be idolatry. He or she loves the exploration of the natural world because it enables them to see just a bit more clearly how beautiful and awesome is the God who made it. Piper has pointed out that God is glorified when his people delight in him. I agree, and find this answer much more plausible than the first.
Yet I am still troubled by this: the God revealed in the bible is not only a creative and majestic and awesome God; he is also the God who brings good news to the poor and justice to the oppressed. It seems to me that any follower of Christ, including the scientist, must also care about this. So what does this mean for the Christian scientist, or for anyone whose vocation does not directly help the poor or oppressed? I can suggest three possible answers to this question:
We have to remember that we are not the only member of the church, and trust God that he uses many different people to work in myriads of ways. Surely our creative God does not need to limit all of his people to the same type of vocation. This may be true, but is it a satisfying answer?
Science is only done with part of our lives; the rest of the time is also valuable time in which God can use us in other ways. Unless my second "answer" above is true, this point makes almost no sense. Even so, it stands on shaky ground. If the scientist can best glorify God by doing science, then why worry about doing anything else? On the other hand, if it is the evenings and weekends that really make a difference in God's kingdom, why bother doing working in the lab in the first place?
There is a way of living that glorifies God and brings his kingdom on earth that is not limited by a career in science. Perhaps in one small but important sense, it doesn't really matter what career we choose. I am not saying our actions are meaningless. On the contrary, it is what we do all the time - the things we say, the way we interact with people, our priorities, the way that we praise God through our work - these are the things that matter. Surely God could provide opportunities to bring freedom and comfort and justice to those who need it, right in the midst of a scientific vocation.
I am still far from being comfortable with any of these answers. In the meantime, I am going to continue to delight in God, and to trust him in his incredible creativity and wisdom.
Today I will briefly comment on some of the most commonly referenced (and likely most misunderstood!) quantum ideas in popular culture.
You may have seen the play/film Copenhagen, about Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. The play mostly investigates the idea of psychological uncertainty; not only do memories claim different 'facts', but even the attitudes and memories of the persons involved change with each retelling. This is compared to the uncertainty principle of QM, in which the momentum (closely related to the speed something is moving) and the position of a particle cannot be exactly specified. While this is a good film, the definition of uncertainty leans more toward the English language use of it (not able to know something for certain) rather than the mathematical definition.
According to the theory of QM, electrons are best described by wave functions. For waves on a pond, the medium being "waved" is water. For sound, it is air. For electrons, it is probability density. Particles are described by waves "superimposed" on top of each other, with the peaks and valleys of some waves sometimes adding and sometimes canceling each other out. The direct result of this method of describing matter is the precise mathematical relationship:
∆x∆p≥ℏ/2
which reads: "the uncertainty in position, times the uncertainty in momemntum is greater than or equal to h-bar over two" While this is a strange and important result, it doesn't mean that we have reached a limit of understanding; rather, we have seen that the universe behaves in this predictable way which includes a fixed uncertainty.
You may have seen this talk by Rob Bell from "Everything is Spiritual", in which I believe this idea of uncertainty is taken a bit too far:
While it is interesting to compare our understanding of God to his creation, it is dangerous to say that there is something about the physical world that it so mysterious that "all [scientists] can come up with" is something they cannot "conquer or put in a box". You see, scientists are not trying to conquer anything. They are trying to describe and understand the wonders of the natural world. It is fun to draw parallels between God and the forces and energies of nature, but we must be cautious of saying we have found something only explicable by God. What will happen when this "gap" is filled in by some deeper theory? Let's not lose our sense of wonder, but let's not get overzealous with our theology.
Schrodinger, trying to understand and explain this idea of adding or "superimposing" wave functions and how this relates to the uncertainty principle, came up with his famous cat-in-a-box illustration:
Of course, this is just an illustration and wouldn't actually work in real life, but it does explain a little bit about how weird this understanding of matter really is. Isn't it wonderful that our world is so complex and surprising?
I frequently get blank looks when I mention Quantum Mechanics, so I thought I would take a moment this week to explain what it is, without actually going into the actual theory of it. The benefit of your reading this will be that, in addition to understanding my life a bit more, you will probably find that quantum will pop up in unexpected places and you will at least be intelligent about it, if not find that it helps you understand our world a bit better. Out of curiosity, and because it is often a good place to start when looking at things on the most general level, I checked what Wikipedia had to say about the topic. Here is what I found:
Quantum mechanics is a set of principles underlying the most fundamental known description of all physical systems at the submicroscopic scale.
Have you finished reading that three times? It's a bit of a mouthful, so I will try to make it more clear. Quantum mechanics explains how atoms behave. Atoms make up most of what we see every day, so QM (as I will refer to it from now on) explains why things (matter, mostly) are the way they are.
QM is surprising. For centuries, it was thought that Newtonian physics (what you learned in high school) explained the world we see. In fact, Newtonian physics is a pretty good approximation that explains our world. But if you get down small enough, things start to become weird. Imagine something moving down a hill, for example: me when I'm rushing to class in the morning. It's all one continuous motion of moving-down-hill-ness. As I go down the hill, I gain speed because the energy I had just by being at the top of the hill is being turned in to "kinetic" energy. Electrons are not like this. They are more like someone leaping down stairs. The energy still changes, but it is done in stages, with each stage having a fixed distance between it and the previous one.
This brings us to why it is called Quantum mechanics in the first place. Think of our English word "quantity". Matter and energy comes in discrete quantities, or quanta. If you think about this for a bit you will realize how surprising this really is.
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Next week, if you are interested, I will talk more about things of which you may have heard, such as "the uncertainty principle" and "Schrodinger's Cat".
What is time? We pass through it, yet we do not change it. We are shaped by its passage and yet it is in many ways intangible. How do we measure it? With ticking clocks or flashing lights, with beating of hearts and heavy eyelids. Everything with a constancy to it, a constancy unchanged by time, allows us to carefully mark out its passage.
How often we cling to the regularity of time; how often we bemoan its passage! During exam week, I remind myself "only a few more days and these things will pass" and I am comforted knowing that the relentless passage of time will bring an end to things I find challenging. Not an hour later, I might exclaim, "if only there was more time in this day!" How paradoxical are my attitudes towards time.
Since Einstein, time has been delightfully impossible to measure. We can imagine a spacecraft traveling past us quickly. To us it would seem that their clocks were ticking slowly. We move through space at a tremendous speed on this little blue and green ball, cartwheeling with our galaxy in a great dance of motion. At what speed does time progress, then, in other parts of the universe? How does God measure time? Sometimes I am astounded by this aspect of his creativity.
~This was taken from a recent journal entry of mine. I hope to explore this topic more in further posts, especially looking at the relationship between our lives and our view of time. I may also look at a bit more of the strangeness in our world that physics attempts to explain :)
am reading. This week it is Knowing Christ Today, by Dallas Willard.
