Thursday 3 February 2011

Dialectical Sense-of-wonderism

Dialectical Sense-of-wonderism: the thesis is some commonplace comprehension or unthought error about the cosmos. The antithesis is the correction by actual facts. The synthesis is the sudden yawning mind-blowing apprehension of the vastness of things. For example:
THESIS: scientists say the moon is airless, windless and wave-less. But you can see on the Apollo footage how fine-ground is its sand! I know how sand is made, and you couldn’t do it without wind and waves. It only goes to show how ignorant scientists are!

ANTITHESIS: the lunar dust is ground by repeated meteor strikes. Which, since meteors don’t strike all that frequently means ...

SYNTHESIS: [as the intimation of the true scale of the timescale involved flushes through the brain ...] Oh. My God.
You can set out similar sense of wonder dialectics to do with the stars in the night sky, evolution, heavier elements and so on.

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