Paradox and Uncertainty

A big storm outside.  The wind was moving the clouds at a speed that changed the horizon over the ocean as I contemplated from my window.  But I knew it was temporary—the forecast was for sunshine in a few hours.

Why would I believe the forecast though? What I see now is a low and dark sky, and water everywhere.  I played with my pencil for a few minutes, and then wrote parapluie, French for umbrella. As I looked at that word, I realized that it really means “beyond the rain”—para and pluie. Ha! I had not thought about that before.  Did it mean that the person under the umbrella was beyond the rain? Or that the umbrella eventually leads to sunshine and takes upon it the role of shading the person? Can there be ombre (shadow) in umbrella?

Clearly my mind was not focused on that academic article I had decided to dedicate my morning to editing. And after a few jousting movements with my #2 pencil, I wrote paradox.  That was it, my mind was eager to play with words and concepts. So I let it do so.

Para and doxa, in Greek mean “beyond thought” or beyond what we can rationally understand. What was paradoxical this morning? Was it that the clouds defined a horizon that otherwise does not exist? Was it that it was my observing the clouds made the horizon real? After all, the horizon is just an illusion.

Illusion. After thinking about it I wrote Maya, the Buddhist term for illusion. Now I was in a different sphere of thought, and took my glasses off to see the horizon better.

… Since my college days I had an attraction to physics, especially quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s contribution to the imprecision of knowing where an atom is and where it will be seems more than physics to me. It is philosophy, and it is Zen. Indeed, that we cannot measure the position and the momentum of an electron at the same time has been verified by calculation and experiment, but that “the path of a particle comes into existence only when we observe it” is beyond formulae and mathematics. To me, it is synonymous to the Zen teaching that it is all about grasping – the world around us exists because we decided to grasp it, to reach for it. Otherwise the path of things be that of particles, desires or fear does not have a meaning. Nor will the particles, desires or fear have a meaning. And if they do not have a meaning, they do not exist. Or do they?

The big picture versus the sub-atomic. The big picture versus the sub-conscient. Is there a parallel? Newtonian principles are valid for the big picture, most of the time. His assumptions have been that the real world exists despite us. Then Heisenberg challenged the applicability of the big picture assumptions to the sub-atomic world. He proposed that the particles exist at a position because we are observing them. If we do not, not only they do not exist, but they have no meaning. Specifically, he said that orbits do not exist in nature. They acquire a meaning, or “exist” only when we observe the electron.

What gives a meaning to the clouds framing the horizon? With my glasses off, I cannot see the horizon but I know it is there. Or is it? As a parallel thought I wondered what gives a meaning to my desires. Is it the existence of another person? Another goal in life? Another path to my curiosity?

I looked at the page on my desk:  paradox, parapluie, Maya. Then I added uncertainty.

Put my glasses back on, and before I returned to my computer and the paper I was supposed to write, thought about all the electrons I cannot see and the quantum mechanics principles that I partly understand which made it possible to build a computer. Which gave a meaning to my moment. Which therefore exists.

Then remembered a line from Albert Camus “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."  I am glad I did.

November 1, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

I took this picture many years ago and I have only a tortured, damaged print of it. As I wrote this piece I wondered if the picture represented a single woman reflecting in another. I recall taking it at a circus show, hence the pony. Still, is it paradox or illusion?