On Oct 30, 2012, at 9:35 AM, John Wager wrote: > David Ritchie wrote: >> We are really quite small. Some of us are smaller than others, and some of >> us act as if we are bigger or more important than others but the facts are >> clear: on any continent you care to name, no matter how tall we stand, we >> are smaller than space, that whole big thing with twinkles in. It's huge. >> You know that; me too. Every time I try to compass or even simply to watch >> it go about its business my little mind, possibly to prove a point, just >> says no. > Equally fascinating and equally important: We are really quite enormous. > We're bigger than half the stuff around us, and smaller than half the stuff, > give or take 1 or 2 powers of ten. From the largest expanses of > inter-galactic spaces to us is just about as big a difference as that between > us and the quarks that make us up. There is just as much empty space inside > us, relatively speaking, as there is "out there." > > We're really where Pascal said we were: Half-way between the infinitely large > and infinitely small. > > This is also true in terms of knowledge; We don't know much, but we're able > to at least imagine the vast sizes we occupy and are occupied by, something > nothing else we are aware of can do. Our imaginations can spin out a term > like "universe" or "quark" or "galaxy" and then wonder what's for lunch. > That's a pretty big imagination, if you ask me! Damn, there goes next week's subject :) Of course A.A. Milne said it better than I could: http://allpoetry.com/poem/8518993-Halfway_Down-by-A.A._Milne One of the first things I remember reading, and very much still with. David Ritchie, imagining Lewis and Clarke's experience of heavy rain, Portland, Oregon ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html