[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Twofer

  • From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:32:20 -0700

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

Other related posts: