• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Show Me Wonders ...

A

Anonymous

Guest
I want you, dear Fortean reader, to imagine a world where the cold and impersonal mechanics of simple chemical processes rule the roost.

Where the appearance of entities able to contemplate their own existence is an accidental by-product of the emergence of life, itself a meaningless, chance event.

Do we live in such a world?

Are all of our efforts to investigate the hidden underbelly of day-to-day reality doomed to end in mundane explanations and ultimate disappointment?

Can anyone show me one, just one, incident in recorded or known history that can rightly be called paranormal?

One unequivocal example of something that defies the laws of physics?

One fairy photo that wasn't a fake?

One poltergeist that wasn't an attention-seeking kid?

One sea monster that was actually found?

I'll settle for one man who lived for 150 years, hell, a dowsing rod that actually worked.

I'm playing devil's advocate a little here, but now more than ever, when the board is at least as much a forum for social and political discourse as it is for the dissemination of the weird and wonderful, I beg you, people.......show me wonders!!
 
I wish I had written that post:)

But, yet we seach - and we carry on searching........

The accidental, mechanical processes of my brain make me do it. It is my version of the opium of religion.

Most importantly, I can't help it. I am slave to my chemicals. Not my fault guv'
 
Conners_76:

I can definately relate to the perspective you describe.
In my younger days, it was my primary worldview.

Even if the world is truely completely 100.000000% ruled by mechanistic laws, there are still what Larry Niven described as thermodynamic miracles. Things that are technically possible, but so rare, it boggles the mind when they actually happen.

(To be fair, in the context HE used, he was talking about the probabillistics involved in genetics to produce one specific person. That is, the general case happens many times every day, but when you look at a specific specimen, the odds are (more than) astronomical against it.

Ok, so the obvious example sounds awful soft and fuzzy, like something from a self-help book. It's also possible to toss a penny in the air and have it land and stay on edge, just very unlikely.)
 
I have used dowsing rods that have worked.
In fact dowing rods of a form are used by the british forces
i posted a news item about it on the board somewhere, I'll see if I can find it.
 
Conners_76 said:
One sea monster that was actually found?
Click to expand...

Collossal squid. If that's not a monster, I don't know what is. Besides, if we did prove that, for example, ghosts were the spirits of the dead, that would become the 'rational explanation' and would no longer be a wonder...
 
I concur entirely. I think the problem we are having here is that an 'ordered system' i.e. the human being, is constantly attempting to make sense of the infinitely complex environment it is presented with - a seemingly unordered world of chaos. The mere terms chaos, order, probability or even time are effectively attempts by an 'ordered' system to put labels upon the observation and behaviour of matter within the environment the system is exposed to. With such observations and rules being applied to only our visible layer of the multiverse, be it a sub- atomic level or as far as we can see out with Hubble or deduce from microwave background interpretations, I think we are destined to be banging our heads against the wall indefinitely whenever something completely inexplicable crops up. We can make some damn good guesses at general explanations, some more accurate than others, but you can be certain that the complete picture will always remain ever elusive.

As the famous chemist and Nobel Laureate Alan J Vibert once put it - "Walton you ignoramus! Take that bunsen burner out of your arse and get out! In Lab 8, I am the rules! We've had enough methane in here for one day Walton."

Not even remotely relevant but a good quote none the less.

:confused:
 
whippetsrus said:
As the famous chemist and Nobel Laureate Alan J Vibert once put it - "Walton you ignoramus! Take that bunsen burner out of your arse and get out! In Lab 8, I am the rules! We've had enough methane in here for one day Walton."

Not even remotely relevant but a good quote none the less.

:confused:
Click to expand...

Alright, whippetsrus, who are you?!

*edit : remembered I'm not allowed to speculate on real life identity of posters*
 
Re: Re: Show me wonders.......

Inverurie Jones said:
Collossal squid. If that's not a monster, I don't know what is. Besides, if we did prove that, for example, ghosts were the spirits of the dead, that would become the 'rational explanation' and would no longer be a wonder...
Click to expand...

about the giant squid though.....it's just a big eff off version of something we always knew about though, ain't it?

It's not something alien to the modern world, like a plesiosaur, or a bipedal reptile.

As Alistair P said,
Even this 'Collossal' squid is too bloody small. Chuck it back.
Click to expand...

And if we did prove the existence of ghosts, as you postulate, yes that knowledge would become part of orthodox science, but it would be a whole new paradigm. Something totally beyond everything we'd know about the world up till then.
 
Personally I like mysteries and wonders, I believe that it adds a bit of spice to life. I truly hope that somewhere paranormal entities are reading The Fortean Times and giggling to themselves.....

;)
 
The truth is out there.












Sorry, I couldn't help myself.....


*crawls away into corner*

I agree with Hallybods though. If you explain everything away the magic and wonder goes, and what's the fun in that?
 
"Thermo-Dynamic Miracles ...Events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.

"And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter...

"...Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged.

"To distill so specific a form from that chaos of impobability, like turning Air to [/b]Gold[/b]... That is the crowning unlikelihood.

"The Thermo-Dynamic Miracle."

"But... if me, my birth, if that's a thermo-dynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the World!"

"Yes. Anybody in the World.

"...But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget...

"I forget.

"We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may take the breath away.

"Come... dry your eyes, for you are are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.

"Dry your eyes... and let's go home."
Click to expand...

Name that tune in one... ;)
 
Spooky angel said:
...I agree with Hallybods though. If you explain everything away the magic and wonder goes, and what's the fun in that?
Click to expand...

Was it the UK or US patent office that some 'expert' said should be shut down late in the 19th century because everything that could be invented had been? Or is that a UL?

The point, and there is one, is that it's a big universe and we'll always run into inexplicable phenomena, no matter how many we explain. Answering one question always produces new ones that we don't know the answer to.

And even explanations are provisional.

And the song you're thinking of could be from Monty Python's Meaning of Life:
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Click to expand...
 
Timble said:
And even explanations are provisional.

And the song you're thinking of could be from Monty Python's Meaning of Life:
Click to expand...

A thought that crosses my mind on occasions is what if we're wrong? What if everything we hold to be true is completely fake?

And the only intellegent life I see on earth is the dolphins

*see So Long and Thanks for the Fish*

:D
 
Niles:

I stand corrected, that's a soliloquy from Dr. Manhatten from Alan Moore's "Watchmen".

For some reason, I had confabulated that togther with Teela Brown being spoken to/about in Larry Niven's "Ringworld". (Although I remembered a Pak protector speaking, possibly near the end of "Protector").

Guess I'll have to move those to the top of the reading pile just to figure out how I got those confused.
 
I was going to say the flight of the bumblebee, which is scientificaly impossible, but apparently that statement is mostly myth and misunderstanding:

http://physicsweb.org/article/news/5/10/9

But here is one that gets me (and this may be outrageously wonky science, so watch out). We are people on a planet in a solar system in a galaxy in an outrageously large universe. Now, our understanding starts to break down in the very small things in the world (build-up of atoms, etc) and the very large (is the universe finite? or infinate?)

This leads me to more questions - if the smaller things keep on being discovered as smaller and smaller versions of fast spinning energy that are hardly there at all (the atom is 99% non solid, as I understand it, and the things that are spinning in atoms are 99% not their either) then that is amazing that we are here at all. Maybe all we are is energy with a shared outlook. Or interlocking energy fields.

And with the large side of the universe, if we are in an infinate universe, what else is out there? And if we are in a finite univerese, what is the "finite" universe sitting in? and is there a universe right next door, and another, and another?

:)
 
So I guess if you could go back a thousand years and show someone a computer it would appear supernatural to them, the devils work even, but if someone from the future came and told us they had a time machine, we would be amazed but we would still call it science...the magic is dead.
 
A wonder, once known, becomes seen by most people as no longer a wonder. If Bigfoots drove scooters to work on Wallstreet, there would be no mystery in the world of Bigfoot, it would be the everyday. If irrefutable evidence of mermaids, or fairies, or UFO's were ever found, the "sense of wonder" would cease immediately about those subjects.

Wonder lives at the cusp of discovery. And every day that you looks for something new and find it, or fail but continue to search, wonder will be a part of your life. It is a state you pursue looking for some wild new thing rather than an inherent property of the object of wonder itself.

I think the birth of a child is pretty much a miracle, considering everything that goes into it and all the biochemical changes that have to happen perfectly, but because it is a familiar event it doesn't seem as much a wonder as Nessie.

What I was getting at earlier was that the universe as science knows it, on the scale of small and large, starts to become so unknowable that's it's fascinating to imagine what form it might take. On maps of the universe and under electron microscopes everywhere, there should be a clearly delineated area labeled "Here Be Monsters"!)

:) :D ;) :p
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
I was going to say the flight of the bumblebee, which is scientificaly impossible, but apparently that statement is mostly myth and misunderstanding:
:)
Click to expand...

That's butterflies, isn't it?
 
So its wonders you be wantin? I don't know if our little brains can handle all that it takes to make up a "wonder". Right now scientists are toying around with the idea of nano-technology especially in the area of health. If we humans can get to the point of creating invisable bugs that flow in our blood streams and monitor our health, all the while self replicating themselves (the nano-bots) perpetually; then we will truely have imortality. That's a wonder! But at what cost?

At this moment in time humans barely understand how the body balances its internal life functions between neurological and
electro-chemical stimuli. Let alone the interplay of the exterior enviornment , air pressure, light, gravity and the countless other forces that have their way on our oh so sensitive forms.

And if current molecular speculation is correct the line between exterior and interior is a bit FUZZY to say the least.

To quote Mary Steenburgen in the Steve Martin movie "Parents"-
"Life is messy" and the WONDER that we can step aside from all that is going on and occationally reflect on some other wonder is....(do I have to say it?)...a wonder in itself.
 
Inverurie Jones said:
That's butterflies, isn't it?
Click to expand...

probably said of both... a misunderstanding of airodynamics, takeing the wings as a solid plate rather than a dynamic every changeing airofoil.
 
Also, when something is explained or discovered, sometimes doesn't make it any less spectacular:

A New Phylum: Cycliophora

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In December of 1995, two Danish biologists reported the discovery of a strange new kind of creature, smaller than a period on a printed page, with a striking circular mouth surrounded by a ring of fine hairlike cilia. The tiny organism was so unusual that they assigned it to an entirely new phylum, Cycliophora (Greek for "carrying a small wheel"). Found adhering to the mouthparts of a lobster like a suction cup, Cycliophora apparently sucks up stray food particles as the lobster eats. There are only about 35 known animal phyla, so finding a new one is an extremely rare event! The last new phylum -- also of a microscopic marine creature -- was proposed in 1983. So far there is only one species in the phylum, given the name Symbion pandora, the first word referring to the animal's life as a symbiont, the second an allusion to its intricate life cycle. While adhering to the lobster, the tiny animal reproduced asexually from buds, but when the lobster starts to molt, the symbiont begins a bizarre form of sexual reproduction. Dwarf males emerge, with nothing but brains and reproductive organs. Each dwarf male seeks out another female symbiont on the molting lobster and fertilizes its eggs, generating free-swimming individuals that can seek out another lobster and renew the life cycle. It is this highly unusual life cycle, with both asexual and sexual stages, that has prompted the Danish scientists to propose assigning S. pandora to a unique phylum all its own.

Source: "Flyspeck on a Lobster Lip Turns Biology on Its Ear" by Natalie Angier, New York Times, December 14, 1995.
Click to expand...


I know its an old story, but isn't it stunning, this little animal happily going about its business for Millions of years, unknown, then suddenly "Hello, I'm a new Phylum, pleased to meet you"
and there is no way that this can be an isolated event IMO, there are plenty of suprises left in the world/universe/reality (delete as required) and there will always be things that regardless wether they are understood by the few who can crunch the mental numbers, will always be a wonder to the rest of us
 
Polonium Halos.

They should not be in rocks according to science and are taken by Creationists as the single piece of scientific evidence that stands up to the empirical rigours indicating an instantly created earth.

A wonder I would say. Not sufficient evidence for me to give up a tithe, done a dress or start fishing for men, but a mystery nonetheless.

LD
 
Tubeworms are bordering on a Wonder:

http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/dlc-me/zoo/microbes/riftiasym.html

They are a lifeform that does not need sunlight to live, unlike almost every other lifeform on Earth ( at least at some point in its life ), have no obvious way of getting to new living areas ( vast barren distances across the ocean floor to another vent ), live much longer than most other life forms on earth, and actively live in temparatures that would kill any other life form on earth.

thanks

Uncle Bulgaria
 
Polonium Halos

very interesting i was only vaugley aware of them b4 ...

thers a rocky beech on the North coast of Cornwall. Where a slipways was blasted out of the rock and as the sun goes down u can see every 4" or so a sparkling garnet... how do the costituent garnet atoms know to migrate to one lump?.... beautiful tho...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top