Showing posts with label Werner Heisenberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Werner Heisenberg. Show all posts

Saturday, 18 February 2023

Week 7- A THING OF BEAUTY ON MY PAVEMENT


 A thing of beauty

The day is a blank sheet when waking up this morning. I spent some time during the midnight hours to sit quietly reading in our sitting room. Carlo Rovelli write lucidly and some people might even understand everything what he wrote about in HELGOLAND. To start off with: I didn’t even know who or what HELGOLAND is or was or might be? Was it a science-fiction thriller? What does HELGOLAND mean?

My one friend lent me his book; while we were chatting, we had a relaxed meal that his wife prepared for me and my wife. They were sitting there, and us two were sitting here chatting about all sorts of things; we were not discussing loadshedding or politics. There are enough exciting and motivating things that keep us busy and making sense of this world.

Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli

HELGOLAND? Unhospitable. Wild. Drought stricken. Off the grid. The birth place of quantum physics! Werner Heisenberger might be labelled “the father of quantum physics. Carlo wrote on page 3:

On the island of Helgoland – barren, extreme, battered by the winds of the North – Werner Heisenberg lifted a veil. An abyss opened. The story that this book has to tell starts from the island where Heisenberg conceived the germ of this idea, and progressively widens to take in ever bigger questions opened by the discovery of the quantum structure of reality.”

An abyss? That is what Carlo calls the “discovery” of the quantum structure of reality. If I understand it correctly it means in essence that it is never ending?

Carlo Rovelli is a most brilliant scientist endowed with this clarity of spirit, clarity of mind and skillsets working with words to bring the most complex ideas about how the world is constructed to lay people like me. And yet, there are such a lot of things that he must have taken great pains to explain, that are flying like Boeing aeroplanes above my head. It is way above me. And yet, he also states, for what it is worth, that quantum physics are a mystery. Indeed. A mystery – this mystery changed the way we think about our existence on its head. It has had a profound influence on scientists who are still struggling to work it out and in so doing, they are making huge contributions towards our understanding of the world we live in.

And Werner Heisenberg? What does he say about this lot? On June 7 1924 he wrote [page 13]:

“At first, I was deeply alarmed. I had the feeling that I had gone beyond the surface of things and was beginning to see a strangely beautiful interior, and felt dizzy at the thought that now I had to investigate this wealth of mathematical structures that Nature had so generously spread out before me.  [My emphasis]

This wealth … that Nature had so generously spread out before us – and we mere mortals may participate in this wealth that is spread out before us.


A thing of beauty - once again

I was walking outside on our pavement [or in other words: the sidewalk] when I noticed something out of the ordinary; so strange and stunning it defies logic and words. It was lying on the road surface waiting to be picked up and to be admired. It was this seed covering just lying on the road surface.

Botanists will be able to tell me much, much more about this thing of beauty; things that I don’t know at this moment. Somewhere I think, there will be a “Carlo Rovelli” in the world of botany who will be able to identify it and who might just go on and describe to me that finer details of this thing of beauty. In the meantime, I am just loving it. Oh yes, I remember Prof. Elizabeth A Johnson’s ASK THE BEASTS DARWIN AND THE GOD OF LOVE

And I am reminded of one day back in 2009 when I was wondering around in the veld at Hopetown in the Northern Cape; I was baptised in the Dutch Reformed Church there in 1950 when it was still in the Cape Province. Things do change in South Africa and now it is in the Northern Cape Province.

I was all by myself soaking in the colours of evening fast approaching, feeling the light breeze of the change over from day to night time, and taking one photograph – not more, just one photo. I felt somewhat out of place because I am not used to walking alone out in the veld especially when it is completely foreign territory which it was. All of a sudden, I was aware of something pricking my legs; ah, well, I thought, it is just the veld grass scraping my skin. And I tried to brush it off.

Guinea fowl skull


Guinea fowl skull

Guinea fowl skull

Guinea fowl skull



Guinea fowl skull

Guinea fowl skull


Then I turned completely around to look behind me to the changing colours and be in the moment. Down below, on the soil, stuck and entangled there I saw a sight that keeps on coming back to me: lots of scattered feathers of a birds remains. I was standing on this site where this bird was killed; my inference was that it was killed because the skeleton [what was left of it] and its feathers were scattered over a wide area. Well, it might have been weather conditions that sprinkled it around over some time. When did he/she came to such a violent death?

And stuck high up in the grasses swaying around in the wind I saw the skull of this guinea-fowl. Back bending and with the greatest dexterity I loosened it from the grass; it did not relent easily on the stronghold on the skull. “Please,” I whispered to the grasses, “I just want to take it home as a memento mori of my visit to Hopetown, the town I was baptised in many, many years ago. A memento mori.” It was a tempus fugit moment. At that moment I was oblivious of time; of wind, of the changing colours, of twilight, of every thing around me. It was a thing of beauty in the veld waiting for me to “rescue” as a memento mori moment. I still have it.

When I picked up that dried out seed covering on my pavement, I was silent. No words in my mouth. No words in my mind. It was so serene and silent: the same silence I experienced in the veld in Hopetown.

And I re-read Werner Heisenberg’s words I had gone beyond the surface of things and was beginning to see a strangely beautiful interior, and felt dizzy …

Please write me your story: neelscoertse@wirelessza.co.za