Aug 27, 2014

No one buys a jigsaw puzzle that’s pre-assembled.

The point of interest in buying the puzzle lies in the process of assembly more than the finally-assembled picture. And the motivation for buying is the promise of a challenging process.

So it is with science: You buy a box of facts. The picture on the box is the paradigm. The challenge is to assemble the facts in such a way that the paradigm makes sense of them. It’s a process of creating meaning.

Once the puzzle’s put together, once the questions are answered, it’s no longer interesting (as science: it becomes a matter of engineering, of application).

Thus paradigms are self-limiting and science is self-renewing. As a paradigm approaches the limits of its explanatory domain, as it begins to “know everything”, it grows less interesting. Stephen Hawking may have discovered the mind of God, but only to find no one cares. Interest shifts to the unexplained and to the unknown. The demand grows for a new paradigm to show the way to new things in new places. It’s time for science to shop for a new puzzle.

So here’s another pitch for my pet paradigm: The Electric Universe promises a lot of fun. It can explain not only a shopping-cart-full of anomalies, but it can re-organize the clutter of ad-hoc explanations in the Establishment Store onto shelves of predictable phenomena. It replaces an empty, lifeless universe with a historical, lightning-filled one.

There are things to do:

1. The physics and astronomy of isolated, static particles need to be exchanged for a science of interconnected bodies adapting to a changing, energy-driven environment. (Gravity needs to be replaced.)

2. A new mathematics will be needed to describe the new phenomena.

3. The facts of geology need to be reassembled as ruins instead of as a record.

4. New procedures, equipment, and experiments need to be invented.

5. New applications (new toys) need to be engineered.

6. The story of the past, not only mythology, but history, archeology, anthropology, psychology needs to be reconstructed and retold.

The Electric Universe model provides the big picture in which all these details can be put together. It promises to replace the determinism, fragmentation, alienation, and stasis of the traditional worldview with a connected, grounded, innovative, and dynamic worldview.

Plug yourself in!

Mel Acheson

Rough Notes:

For many people, this knowledge has been extremely exciting and fun to learn. It makes an otherwise boring study of science fun and exciting to learn. It makes an otherwise boring church or religion fun and exciting to get back into. It makes history a far more interesting and fun subject to study. It gives symbolism, and traditions of every kind much more, and a much deeper meaning.