A Universe from Nothing

Este libro me llama la atención.

Me fascina ;) la idea de que todo el universo no sea más que fruto de un «accidente» cuántico, que igual que existe podía no haber existido, que, de la misma forma que durante mucho tiempo hemos pensado que había un solo universo, ahora hay gente que piensa que puede haber muchos, infinitos universos, quizá incluso con leyes físicas distintas.


Krauss finds something in nothing from ASU News on Vimeo.

Además, Krauss ha escrito un libro sobre la contribución de Richard Feynman a la ciencia, Quantum Man, que empecé a leer hace unos días (iba a decir que «lo estoy leyendo», pero sería falsear la realidad...), que retomaré en algún momento, y que me estaba pareciendo, también, de lo más fascinante...

(Supe del libro por Brain Pickings, cómo no...)

Hitchens & Feynman

Religion is our first —that's why I'm so fascinated by it—, it's our first version of the truth, is our first attempt as a species, it's what we tried when we didn't know anything. We didn't know we lived on a spherical planet, we didn't know that our planet revolved around the Sun. We didn't know that there were microorganisms that explained disease. We thought diseases came from curses, or witches, or ill-wishing, or devils, or dust devils. We didn't know anything from the childish, terrified, ignorant origins of our animal primate species.

It's also our first attempt at philosophy, our first attempt at morality, our first attempt at healthcare, actually. But, because it was our first it is our worst. We now have better explanations for all these dreads and we have cleared up all these mysteries, yet we still dwell, and in some countries, in some societies, not just dwell, but live under a totalitarian regime that forbids us to think about the progress that has been made or denies us the knowledge that these advances have in fact occured. So it has become, where once it probably was an aid to our survival, a really great peril to our continued ability to live as a civilized species [...].

Christopher Hitchens


We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.

Richard Feynman, en The Value of Science (leído aquí)

Imagination

[0:01] It's interesting that some people find science so easy and others find it kind of dull and difficult. Specially kids. Some of them just eat it up and I don't know why it is. [F]or instance, lots of people love music, and I never could carry a tune. I lose a great deal of pleasure out of that. And I think people lose a lot of pleasure, who find science dull. In the case of science, one of the things that make it very difficult is it takes a lot of imagination. It's very hard to imagine all the crazy things that things really are like.

[4:13] I find myself trying to imagine all kinds of things all the time. And I get a kick out of it, just like a runner gets a kick out of sweating. I get a kick out of thinking about these things. I can't stop. I could talk forever.

:)

Belleza

Gracias a Brain Pickings, una página llena de recomendaciones interesantes y hermosas, que recomiendo vivamente yo a mi vez (se la puede seguir en Facebook y en Twitter), acabo de encontrar esta extraordinaria serie de vídeos que combina con maestría las palabras de Richard Feynman con bellas y sugerentes imágenes.

Solo he visto el primero, titulado Beauty, y me han entrado tantas ganas de subtitularlo que no descarto dedicar un rato a hacerlo cuando se me pase el resacón del bodorrio de ayer...

(Actualizo: Alguien ya se había encargado de subtitularlo en inglés; yo sólo lo he traducido. Se puede escoger el idioma en el menú bajo el vídeo.)



El vídeo está lleno de citas potenciales, porque realmente todo lo que dice Feyman es muy interesante; en particular, lo que explica sobre su forma de entender la ciencia. Como Brain Pickings, me quedo con esta frase, que para mí resume uno de los grandes problemas de la religión, que comparte con otras formas de buscar atajos hacia supuestas respuestas, de tapar rápido y mal los huecos que existen en nuestra comprensión del mundo:

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. [...] I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose.”

"Un tráiler en vídeo de una novela gráfica sobre la vida de un físico teórico"

¿Qué tal suena eso? Apasionante, ¿no? A mí, un poco raro, la verdad, pero cuando el físico en cuestión es nada menos que Richard Feynman, el vídeo hasta me parece emocionante y me pica la curiosidad de ver cómo es el cómic, por mucho que probablemente ya haya leído hace tiempo las anécdotas larger-than-life que contará.



(Vía openculture.org)

The central theme of Feynman’s work as a scientist was to explore a new way of thinking and working with quantum mechanics. The book succeeds in explaining without any mathematical jargon how Feynman thought and worked. This is possible because Feynman visualized the world with pictures rather than with equations. Other physicists in the past and present describe the laws of nature with equations and then solve the equations to find out what happens. Feynman skipped the equations and wrote down the solutions directly, using his pictures as a guide. Skipping the equations was his greatest contribution to science. By skipping the equations, he created the language that a majority of modern physicists speak. Incidentally, he created a language that ordinary people without mathematical training can understand. To use the language to do quantitative calculations requires training, but untrained people can use it to describe qualitatively how nature behaves.

Freeman Dyson, comentando en The New York Review of Books un reciente libro sobre Feynman.


Esta forma que tenía Feynman de ver la realidad, que trasluce claramente en sus extraordinarias clases y libros de texto, me ha hecho pensar en lo que he puesto hace un rato sobre las erratas y la ortografía. No sé si Feynman cometía muchas faltas o ponía bien las comas, pero de lo que no me cabe ninguna duda es de que poseía una capacidad absolutamente excepcional para describir el mundo en que vivimos.