{"id":44736,"date":"2017-10-30T08:27:59","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T14:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44736"},"modified":"2017-10-30T08:27:59","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T14:27:59","slug":"science-mystery-metaphor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/10\/science-mystery-metaphor.html","title":{"rendered":"Science, mystery, and metaphor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"King<\/a>
This 1932 serialization of the story of \u201cKing Kong\u201d was based upon one of my previous visits to the city of New York.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The late anthropologist Loren Eiseley, in The Firmament of Time<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

A scientist writing around the turn of the century remarked that all of the past generations of men have lived and died in a world of illusions.\u00a0 The unconscious irony in his observation consists in the fact that this man assumed the progress of science to have been so great that a clear vision of the world without illusion was, by his own time, possible.\u00a0 It is needless to add that he wrote before Einstein, before the spread of Freud\u2019s doctrines, at a time when Mendel was just about to be rediscovered, and before advances in the study of radioactivity had made their impact\u2014of both illumination and confusion\u2014upon this century.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Certainly science has moved forward.\u00a0 But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze.\u00a0 Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed.\u00a0 Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned.\u00a0 The simplistic idea that science marches undeviatingly down an ever broadening highway can scarcely be sustained by the historian of ideas.<\/strong>[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Science writer K. C. Cole:<\/span><\/p>\n

So much of science consists of things we can never see: light \u201cwaves\u201d and charged \u201cparticles\u201d; magnetic \u201cfields\u201d and gravitational \u201cforces\u201d; quantum \u201cjumps\u201d and electron \u201corbits.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, none of these phenomena is literally what we say it is.\u00a0 Light waves do not undulate through empty space in the same way that water waves ripple over a still pond; a field is only a mathematical description of the strength and direction of a force; an atom does not literally jump from one quantum state to another, and electrons do not really travel around the atomic nucleus in orbits.\u00a0 The words we use are merely metaphors.\u00a0 \u201cWhen it comes to atoms,\u201d wrote Niels Bohr, \u201clanguage can be used only as in poetry.\u00a0 The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.\u201d<\/strong>[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Loren Eiseley, The Firmament of Time<\/em> (New York: Atheneum, 1984), 5.\u00a0 [Check original.]<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> K. C. Cole, \u201cOn Imagining the Unseeable,\u201d Discover<\/em> (December 1982): 70.\u00a0 [Check original.]<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As objective science has rigorously demonstrated, I\u2019m a horrible, pathological person and, specifically, someone who suffers from \u201cnarcissistic personal disorder.\u201d \u00a0(See \u201cOf politics, personality disorders, and me.\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I was intrigued to read the following article, which may provide the vital key for understanding me and all my works:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNarcissism and Self-Esteem Are Very Different\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This line in the article, which was written by Professor Scott Barry Kaufmann of the University of Pennsylvania, stood out to me in particular:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prototypical grandiose narcissist is characterized by arrogance, superiority, vanity, entitlement, exploitativeness, exhibitionism, and the incessant need for acclaim from others.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if, by some miracle, Professor Kaufmann has somehow been able to gaze deep into my staggeringly\u00a0depraved soul. \u00a0In fact,\u00a0Arrogance<\/em>, Superiority<\/em>, Vanity<\/em>, Entitlement<\/em>, Exploitativeness<\/em>, Exhibitionism<\/em>, and The Incessant Need for Acclaim from Others\u00a0<\/em>sound like excellent chapter titles, should anybody ever write a biography of me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other science news:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWow! \u00a0Asteroid\/Dwarf Planet Ceres Once Had an Ocean?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And a slightly related story:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Earth\u2019s interior is teeming with dead plates: \u00a0We finally have a map of Earth\u2019s former surface, which now resides in the mantle.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from New York City<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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