"I found myself bogged down in so many doubts and errors, that it seemed to me that having set out to become learned, I had derived no benefit from my studies, other than that of progressively revealing to myself how ignorant I was."
➥ Excerpt from René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
I've been thinking a lot about the fact that my very existence is an improbability given the natural disorder of the system we are able to discern. By that I mean there is an alternate course of events that, by virtue of seemingly imperceptible change, would alter the sequence of events in such a manner that life on the planet we call earth never even existed. Say for instance, the modelled Proto-Earth and Theia collision resulted in the Earth’s orbit to be outside the Goldilocks Zone resulting in a medium uninhabitable by carbon-based life. Otherwise known as the Butterfly Effect. I will not even speak on the peculiarities around particle physics and how they might feed into this argument. It is reported by Discovery that if the Earth were restarted, the likelihood of life occurring is one in three. A bit like rolling a three-sided die. Nevertheless, I find the entropy does keep me grounded in front of this tantalizing mystery I call reality.
➥ jun 13, 2024