in more and more sophisticated ways.
| "The
loud cracking sound you hear when the hero punches the villain in the jaw
is the sound of finger bones breaking. Jaw bones are stronger
than finger bones."
said
by a movie critic
|
| Human cultures convey their
culture through storytelling: our folktales and myths communicate culture
by setting examples in which the listener can find heros to be and villains
to conquer.
Modern cultures do this through the magic of movies and television, nowadays enhanced by realistic animated computer images that invent anything the movie maker can imagine. |
A decade or two
ago, a rash of broken fingers broke out among professional athletes who
decided to actually live out the life of their movie heros. Angry
fights broke out, punches got thrown. Those who ignored the history
of both ancient and modern boxers—who wrap their fists before entering
the arena—repeated some of the mistakes of history.
Fingers got broken. |
| I swung my fist at his jaw! He
didn't swing his jaw at my fist!
My fist was moving. Fast! His jaw wasn't moving at all...a little away, perhaps. It was my idea to hit him! He didn't see it coming. Then how come I got the broken bones?
Are you saying Mother Nature isn't fair? Mother Nature doesn't care who thought to
hit whom.
Mother
Nature is fair!
|
Click
on the pics
How do I win?
How do we win?
Do unto others  as they would
do...
|
 |
It's
hard to see the world beyond ourselves.
It's even harder to see the world beyond our clan, our country, our religion . . . It's
hard to see justice.
|
| The athletes with the splinted fingers didn't see something.
Most physics students get through their first physics course without really
seeing it either. Everybody needs to go beyond first impressions,
and go beyond any egocentrism. It takes a little hard brain work
to see what Isaac Newton saw in the 17th century and started the scientific
revolution.
It's Newton's "Law of action and reaction"
Think about what you remember about that law. Think of some examples of it in the everyday world. Did you think of a rocket blasting off its pad or a toy baloon released with the air in it blasting out and propelling the baloon in crazy loops through the room? Then odds are you thought of "action and reaction" as saying something about cause and effect. The rocket gasses blast to the rear and the rocket (or ballon) "reacts" by moving forward. That's the most common interpretation of Newton's law. It misses the point. The force on the fist by the jaw (might break the fingers) and the force on the jaw by the fist (might break the jaw) are equal and opposite. They are, in fact, the same force—just looked at from two different perspectives, "mine" and "yours." The two forces are inseverable sides of the same thing, the interaction betwen the fist and the jaw. They are as inseverable as are the two sides of a sheet of paper. "Pancakes so
thin they have only one side."
Carl Sandberg in The People, Yes |
"To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts."Isaac Newtonoften stated:
For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
You can't fool Mother Nature! Rationality works.
|
|
|
"Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes!" What do these two statements
have in common?
|
Color vision and colorblindness offers a metaphor for "seeing" and "not seeing" the laws of physics.
Every cause has an effect and every effect has some cause(s).
UNTIL WE
DEVELOP THE NEEDED
PERCEPTION, WE DO
NOT "SEE."
 |
