The Interacting Universe and You

The Carina Nebula,  Hubbel Telescope (http://tinyurl.com/q3yzwhf)

In an idle conversation this evening an idea struck me; it struck me so hard, in fact, that I now find myself writing in this quasi-abandoned blog. What could have been so powerful make me dust-off the cobwebs from this spot in cyberspace, you might wonder. I suppose it could be summed in five words.

It is all about relationships.

Or rather, it’s all about interaction. It is the interaction between the electron and the proton, the electro-magnetic and nuclear forces that bind them together, that define the atom. And it is the attraction or repulsion of atoms that defines the molecule. By the same token, at the biological level, it is the forces of attraction and repulsion of molecules that define what it is to be a cell, and at an increasing level of complexity, a tissue. It is the meaningful interaction of different cells and tissues that defines and organ and an organ-system, and so it is the interaction of these organs and organ-systems that define an organism. In other words, from its most basic, everything that exists comes to do so in by the relationship that defines it. We, and everything that holds us, are the relationships that make it so.

But this loosely articulated truth is hardly limited to the organism.  Relationships, naturally, are defined by the interactions of different organisms, the interaction of which then defines communities, cultures, societies, species, ecosystems, and planets. Solar systems are then defined by the interaction of their planets and other heavenly bodies, which then provide the definition of solar clusters, galaxies and galactic clusters. The interaction of these, inevitably, defines the universe, a universe that is infinitely defined by an infinite (not really infinite) number of relationships at an unfathomable number of levels of complexity.

The meaning of it all? I am not quite sure. As I am unsure about the evidential and logical consistency of what I have described here. Perhaps the meaning comes from the short bliss that I have experienced upon reaching it, that at some fundamentally meaningful level our connections and interactions, as those of our electrons and protons, are not only a significant part of the universe, but truly make it what it is.

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