Yesterday I came across Ron Garret (and his excellent writing on tables vs. css) and this morning I sat down to read his paper Quantum Mysteries Disentangled. I was hoping it would shed some light for me on Quantum Mechanics, but I didn’t get most of it. I did get the end – a Zen Koan from one Douglas Hofstadter:
“Two monks were arguing about a flag. One Said, “The flag is moving.” The other said, “The wind is moving”. The sixth patriarch, Zeno, happened to be passing by. He told them “Not the wind, not the flas. Mind is moving”.
As I read the paper a feeling crept into my bones from one year (a long time ago) I spent in the physics department of a university. It felt ominous, pushy and irrelevant. I observed this sensation, and then brought my attention back to the paper in my hand and two thoughts came to me. (1) It is funny how the mind takes a long and convoluted path in it’s insistence to comprehend, and how nature dances with it providing it with a balanced diet of comprehension and mystery. (2) It seems that some people are naturally inclined to things like logic, mathematics & science as they manifest in the mind, I am not one of those people.