Consider the scale

February 18 2018

Here is a perceptual process

Transmitting information

Into and out of a bundle of memory cells

Housed in a bag of protoplasm

This calls itself “I”

It thinks that it is the center,

That its consciousness is all

And that its boundaries are the limits.

 

I look closely at my hand,

Focus on a fingertip

See the whorled ridges of my fingerprint

Without a tool I cannot see the cells

I cannot see the atomic structure

I cannot fathom beyond this.

 

But those few who use the tools conceptualize

And they intuit and imagine and finally obtain evidence

Within my fingertip

There are quarks in numbers

They are too small for me to comprehend

There are particles that come into existence

And are annihilated at the same instant

Higgs conceived a field that binds all together

The most sophisticated instrument on Earth

After millions of subatomic collisions

Has detected the boson that is the basis

I cannot fathom this.

 

I look at the night sky

Focus on the field of stars

See the Milky Way

Without an instrument I cannot know

Of the countless galaxies

Speeding away constantly expanding

I cannot fathom this

 

There is the audacious Hubble

There are the complex tools of mathematics and physics

They tell me that beyond this galaxy

And the billions of others

There may be no boundary

There may be vibrating strings of energy

Permeating all that is

There may be a space-time foam

Out of which multiple universes continue to emerge

As it was without beginning or end

I cannot fathom this

 

With the tools available to me

I can see between infrared and ultraviolet

An infinitesimally small spectrum

I can perceive vibrations of a tiny range of frequencies

Of the billions of vibrations passing through me at every moment

That I might be an almost invisible speck

Immeasurable in the vastness

Coming into existence and annihilated in the same instant

I cannot fathom this

 

So I imagine myself

A bundle of memories in a sack of protoplasm

I might imagine that I am the center of it all

That it is focused on me

I create god in my own image

This is hubris

 

What other response might I have

Look in wonder and amazement

Stand in awe

Keep silent