Lake Forest: meaningless; suburbanite

 

You have probably seen the above image, one of the first from the James Webb telescope.  I am very much in favor of the telescope and expanding our knowledge, but that image proves that the universe is meaningless, or at least that it is beyond comprehension, certainly beyond mine.

Except for a few stars in the foreground, each dot of light is a galaxy.  Each galaxy composed of more than 100 billion stars. Some of the light in that image has taken 13 billion years to reach the mirrors of the James Webb telescope. And that image is an infinitesimal part of the universe.  It has been compared to looking at a grain of sand held at arms length.  Our species has been in existence for about 200,000 years and the age of science two or three hundred.

One of the lessons I learned as a long ago philosophy major is that our species is not good at answering, ‘Why?”, though a few of our species are very good at figuring out how.  Thus a few were able to design and build and launch and control the James Webb telescope.  What it is showing us is not so much beyond meaning as outside of meaning.

For over a thousand years the Ptolemaic version of the universe was accepted.  It placed the Earth in the center with the sun, moon, other planets and stars all revolving around us.  That was flattering and coherent and despite a few glitches it seemed to make sense.  However it was not true.  And everything we have learned since shows a universe of inconceivable size and void of meaning and purpose.

I know you regularly reread the poems on the main site

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/poems.html

but permit me to repeat the last one on that page:

To Nicholaus Copernicus

    nick

you did us no kindness

when you proved we are not the center of the universe                

easier to believe our lives had meaning then

harder now

still

it is better 

to know

the truth

2016

Lovely here last evening.  72F/22C.  Pure blue sky.  Slight breeze.  So like good suburbanites, Carol and I had our drinks in the back yard.  She a glass of wine.  I a Webb.

I got my bike out of the basement this morning.  Pumped up the tires.  And rode down to the lake.  The inland sea is still there.  Blue and white-capped today.