Sympathetic Vibrations
Cole, K.C.
him almost in spite of, rather than because of, what he said." He was loyal: "in taking up with new friends [he] never dropped the old . . . . He lost almost no friends in the course of...
...That is why I am particularly grateful to K.C...
...Sympathetic Vibrations humanizes physics, which Einstein himself did to some extent...
...If someone is nice, the reverends would say that such an individual is a good Christian...
...And why is it troublesome for words to embody images...
...I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves...
...There is, however, a mathematical chill in his exposition of Einstein's theories that prevents someone unmathematical from developing any enthusiasm for the universe that physicists have mapped out...
...Does it frustrate you when the same event or conversation is interpreted in different ways by different people...
...She does make a few errors that need to be corrected...
...Gravity, electricity, and even nuclear forces work on us constantly...
...I hope that somebody will find a more realistic way, or a more tangible foundation for such a conception than that which is given to me...
...At other times irritatingly discordant...
...And it says "I burn...
...Cole/Morrow/S16.95 Mitchell S. Ross Late in his life, looking back upon his conquest of cosmic equations, Albert Einstein noted: "The road to this paradise was not so comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise...
...Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed...
...i suggest that an emotion which can be destroyed by a little mathematics is neither very genuine nor very valuable," Russell wrote...
...Cole not used words--and used them well-- I would know nothing whatever about physics, and I would be much the poorer...
...The living presence of the man who could inspire such a tribute is not captured by his biographers...
...Cole for the composition of Sympathetic Vibrations, a book that explains in layman's language many of the things that physicists have learned about the universe over the years...
...Cole (who is in turn grateful to the late Frank Oppenheimer, director of the Exploratorium in San Francisco) for the physics lesson...
...42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985...
...security and economic pressures on Japan have failed: because of naive and self-centered Japanese attitudes, and U.S...
...The work of mathematicians and physicists makes it possiblemindeed, necessarymfor intelligent human beings to acknowledge the value of perspectives other than those offered by ancient historical and theological writings...
...A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant Mitchell S. Ross is author of The Literary Politicians and An Invitation to Our Times...
...I would hope that this declaration by a genuine genius might reassure such personalities as the Rev...
...Warmth through stoicism...
...Even those happenings in my life that can be termed supernatural are for me best explained in terms of the natural universe...
...Edmund Burke was not a Prime Minister...
...I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature," I am not a physicist, and, despite my devotion to reason, I am relatively innocent of mathematical logic...
...Imvw ~ Press kllnlmt ~18 Stm'~l Mv~ltlt Credit Card ePdm~ mccepted by tolopllone [415] 497-3373 Olsen sketches the history of modern U.S.-lapanese ties and develops an analysis of first, the two country's national security interests-compatible and divergent-and second, the economic relationship, from cooperation to conflict...
...For what relativity means is that everybody can agree on the facts of a situationweven though everybody sees the problem from a vastly different point of view...
...The great initial success of quantum theory cannot convert me to believe in that fundamental game of dice...
...So may we say to the reverends: "You are not thinking...
...Does it seem to take a monumental effort to get going on a new task, or break the bonds of old habits...
...The hardness of the metal that makes up my typewriter, the softness of my baby's skin, the scent of flowers wafting in through the window--all are consequences of the quantum states of atoms...
...Index...
...It gives us strangely little aid, But does tell something in the end...
...and Japan in the form of a revised mutual security treaty, the terms of which will fulfill current rhetoric about interdependence by sharing decision-making powers and therefore constitute "neointernationalism:' Notes...
...Apart from his political excursions, Russell thought more clearly about more subjects than possibly anyone in the twentieth century...
...If I were to drink too much wine with my dinner tonight and then proceed to stumble down a flight of stairs, the reverends would be inclined to say that God was punishing me for being bad, or that such misfortune might be avoided in the future if I were to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior...
...It asks of us a certain height, So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may choose something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid...
...But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed...
...It provides in Einsteinian physics a justification for democratic government and a rational basis for the resolution of the problems facing humanity...
...Perception is in the eye of the beholder...
...Jackson, and all the other reverent reverends...
...Use language we can comprehend...
...They render them somewhat ridiculous, is what...
...Does time seem sometimes to fly...
...They were both right, of course...
...Even such elementary constituents of atoms as quarks and the rarely seen and elusive W particles have more to do with our daily lives than we usually think...
...It encourages one to hope that Marxists can become sensible, and that intellectuals who assail moral relativism can understand the context in which they inveigh...
...I cannot recall any time when, in an adulthood filled with strenuous thought and numerous troubles, I have felt the slightest inclination to submit my mind to the sort of certitude offered by organized religion...
...Certainly it has reassured me...
...FalweU, the Rev...
...For I was Shakespeare's countryman And were not you my friend...
...Finally, there is this remarkably silly statement: "The real trouble with words is that they automatically embody images, whether we recognize this or not...
...Had K.C...
...It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science...
...Mathematical certitude runs its own risks...
...to resist enlightenment...
...East of the Elbe and throughout the dictatorships of the so-called Third World are people who yearn for the freedom of democratic life and would sacrifice much in order to attain it...
...in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man...
...Say something...
...He calls for true strategic reciprocity between the U.S...
...let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts...
...At other times to stand still...
...Tell that to the next person who thinks that quantum mechanics is something farfetched and far removed from the stuff of everyday life...
...services, is outlined...
...Many of them gave him a dinner on his 60th birthday at which G. K. Chesterton addressed his friend with this quotation of Sir William Watson's: Nor without honour my days ran Nor yet without a boast shall end...
...Say something to us we can learn By heart and when alone repeat...
...Einstein wrote to his colleague, Max Born, in 1944: "You believe in the diceplaying god, and I in the perfect rule of law in a world of something objectively existing which I try to catch in a wildly speculative way...
...He was loyal: "in taking up with new friends [he] never dropped the old . . . . He lost almost no friends in the course of his life, except through death...
...The most beautiful emotion we can have," wrote Einstein, "is the mysterious...
...to vote for ignorance, or at least innocence, over knowledge...
...And, as I know from my experience as a baseball umpire, you cannot play the game if you have no respect for the rules...
...One is the identification of Edmund Burke as a "British Prime Minister...
...U.S.-JAPAN STRATEGIC RECIPROCITY...
...When your toe hits the doorNew from Hoover InsUtution Press Managing Diplomacy: The United States and Japan Harrison M. Holland ISBN: 0-8179-8001-0 (hard): $24.95 Beginning with a comparison of Focusing on the "human factor" in diplomacy, M,m,L~m~ Dil,h,m,l~t,f is a comparative study of the American and Japanese Foreign Services --how the day-to-day workings of one of the most important international relationships are conducted by diplomats...
...It is a candid analysis of why U.S...
...You are merely being logical...
...I agree with him, but unless the mathematics can be rendered in verbal form, i cannot expect to understand it...
...Do you feel at times totally in tune with your job, your friends, your generation...
...Does everything around you seem to be falling apart...
...they record some of the evidence but fail to bring it to life...
...Whereas the theological or ideological mind insists on seeing things in the light of some sacred text, "the equations of relativity provide a kind of language--or better, a dictionarymthat translates from one frame of reference into another...
...Now, as Cole notes, "anyone who has sat through a typical physics class and suffered through pulleys and inclined planes has a right to be turned off for life...
...The energy from the egg you ate this morning (which came from the sun by way of the chicken that ate the corn that absorbed the sun and then laid the egg) is converted into the electrical energy of nerves which is converted into the kinetic (or motion) energy of your muscles...
...Bibliography...
...Index...
...This book is even better than Bertrand Russell's The ABC of Relativity...
...It is almost impossible to think of a wave without conjuring up an image of something that looks like a water wave...
...Such a statement could be said to have impact on me...
...sill, some of that energy is exchanged with the doorsill...
...They reflect centuries of scientific research that the reverends virtuously ignore as they proceed with their pious piffle...
...May we all be blessed...
...It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion...
...It is a Rosetta stone for frames of reference...
...Graham, the Rev...
...You are merely preaching...
...This certainly represents a step in the right direction...
...Your problem might have something to do with inertia...
...Cole quotes Niels Bohr saying to Einstein" "You are not thinking...
...Then there is the declaration, "I never heard of a national population that didn't consider its own political ideas as normal and proper, and everybody else's somewhat skewed...
...If you throw out a compliment or a threat," Cole writes, "you exert a force on someone...
...However, as Cole writes, "the fact that you inherit stable genes from your parents is based on the inherent stability of the quantum states of the molecules that make up DNA...
...Far from clarifying our current miseries and mysteries, the reliance upon religious explanations of events tends merely to darken what is already obscure...
...An Internationalist View Edward A. Olsen 1SBN: 0-8179-8071-7 (hard): $24.95 1_l.5.-],ll,an 5trah'~,it Rt't il,rOdhl assesses contemporary problems in broad U.S.-Japan strategic relations...
...policies that have been overly sensitive to Japan's narrow views...
...They allow you to begin at your point of view and move step by step to somebody else's...
...much as Einstein himself did not destroy Newtonian physics, but improved upon it...
...Complementarity also explains how light can be both waves and particles...
...Yet, "willy-nilly, even the most esoteric aspects of science affect us all, almost all the time...
...Neither can I or would I want to conceive of an individual that survives its physical death...
...Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade...
...Would that the simultaneous translations at the United Nations had such a facility...
...And steadfast as Keats' Eremite, Not even stooping from its sphere, It asks a little of us here...
...This is a heartening message...
...Those who are unable to interpret the quality oflife except in terms of the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 41 Bible (which is the work of different authors, interpreting life in various ways over many generations) are engaged in an act of reduction which itself reduces the quality of life for those who are unwilling to accept them at their word...
...Sometimes it has the nature of a discrete event, or particle . . . . When two particles interact with each other, they exchange energy and/or momentum...
...Glossary...
...These are simple, reasonable ways of explaining complicated phenomena...
...I am grateful to K.C...
...Time is actually a lot more flexible than most of us think--both psychologically and physically...
...The role of the Japanese armed forces, in Japanese society and in relation to the U.S...
...What, it may be asked, have the laws of the physical universe to do with the Biblical exhortations of preachers...
...needs to study some history and to know more about this world...
...I, having been improved by her book about the dailiness of cosmological concerns, am moved to recall the Robert Frost poem I used to sing in chorus as a schoolboy, with music by Randall Thompson: O Star (the fairest one in sight) We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud-It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light...
...the historical development of diplomacy in Japan and the U.S., the differing organizational structures and personnel systems (recruitment, assignment procedures, training, and evaluation) of each service are presented in detail, including a glossary of Japanese terms...
...This is exactly what happens when you stub your toe...
...Some mystery becomes the proud...
...As Cole says, in her motherly way, "Despite all odds, flowers bloom in the desert and children bloom in slums...
...In physics, the term used to describe the increasing disorder in the universe is entropy...
...One way to took at it is the physical principle of resonance...
...Miss Cole begins...
...Do you find yourself agreeing with both sides of irreconcilable arguments...
...No, if you mention the word "wave" to me, I am as likely to think of fans at a sporting event rising from their seats and throwing up their arms, or an individual greeting me by flapping his hand...
...But say with what degree of heat...
...Tell us what elements you blend...
...Take the word 'wave,' for example...
...Notes...
...but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it...
...The energy of your kick heats up the molecules in the doorsill, and the doorsill kicks back some of the energy in the form of pressure you feel as pain...
...beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity...
...Fq SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS: REFLECTIONS ON PHYSICS AS A WAY OF LIFE K.C...
Vol. 18 • August 1985 • No. 8
