COGNITIVE HEARTHS
Science always begins with
a question. Some days I wonder what it must be like to be a professor
of say....chemistry....a discipline, of absolutes? None of this
ambiguity or equivocation over politically correct cultural concepts
or values. Every time the chemistry professor asks, "Class,
what's the atomic number of Au?" the answer is always invariably
"79!" And whether the alchemist knew it or not, or the
priests who gilded the acacia wood box reflecting the Shikinah
glory of God...... even then it was 79. I like that consistency.
So...the Holy Grail of every chemistry classroom is the periodic
table. Is that the immutable face of God hanging on the wall? He claims
to be an ontologically unchanging being..the alpha and omega,
the beginning and the end. But God is Spirit not atomistic substance.
And I am reminded....the chart will change; it has since
my 53 years of existence on this planet...a couple of neutron
collisions and bang!.....Meitnerium! But God knew that one eh? We just had
to ask the right questions to fuse nickel and lead together to
get to number 110. However from here on in...most physicists would
probably agree...Meitnerium...will be number
110...always. And one hundred years from now.....a chemistry professor
with a periodic table filled with new elements will ask? "What's
the atomic number of Meitnerium?"
There is a certain sense of serenity at the purely atomistic level...that consistency...that unchanging world. Once however, at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, while waiting for the elevator, I decided to be an atomist. Just for a little while. I was not on drugs. It was just one of those reductionist kinds of days, so as I rolled into the elevator, I just shut my eyes and when I opened them everything was nothing but elemental matter. It was very scary, I felt like dust. Risking being blown away in the West Texas wind...I quickly shifted my paradigm by the time I made it to the car. I'm too human to be that consistent. But there is this dichotomy that resides in my soul. God I want consistency! At least for me, there is a certain kind of comfort to be had when I scuba dive to the bottom off Alki Point, and tangle with cephalopods and crustacean in a landscape that hasn't changed much for millennia. Then, someone reminds me...what about that "end-Permian bolide?" So many questions?
It is a world of change. My good friend, Chan, now in his nineties, pontificates to me; Life is a series of ever changing pictures, and those not able to adapt to these images will be left behind in time. Is there nothing in this human existence not subject to this law of change? What about love? So if not...what then is real?
CONDITIONS
That same old question
keeps coming to mind.....you know....the metaphysical question: That same old question
won't leave me alone? The axiological question: What is
this game you keep on playing with our souls? The logical
question: But you said you loved me? You said you'd never leave
me? ....could love be here at all? And the epistemology
question: ....your eyes tell me that you're someone I've never
known? The irony? The very thing that makes us very human,
it seems, can make us very alone.
Thank you for listening