Our Simple World (another wacky Wednesday post)

The world we live in is really quite simple. Isn't it? I mean it certainly is understandable for the most part. We can make predictions based upon our past experiences because the laws of physics don't change. Most of these laws, we can readily understand. We learn them in high school, and maybe in college. I'm not saying that the math is easy for most people, but the practical applications of the laws are readily apparent to most of us. It is a simple world that we live in for the most part.

You know the sun will come up tomorrow because it did yesterday. It is not that difficult to know the time that the sun will rise tomorrow. For most of us we can just look it up on the Internet or in the newspaper because somebody has already calculated it for us. But the math behind that calculation is not all that difficult for those experienced in such things.

Most of us understand why rainbows have different colors. Understanding the refraction of light is really not that difficult, although many of us have forgotten those lessons from high school or before. Without a lot of research I think a lot of people can understand why the sky is blue. Our world really is quite understandable.

That's why when I read mathematical constructs in science that are just so complicated, I can't help but think that they're wrong. The prime example is string theory. I'm not sure it's even valid anymore because I haven't followed it in years, but it may even be dead now. But to believe in a world of 11 dimensions just seems too complicated and convoluted to me. It's like trying to fit a square peg in round hole.

At least Einstein's theory of relativity was somewhat simple to understand in theory. It takes some study, but in its basic, it's certainly understandable by most people I think. If you are a reader here, and you say that it's too complicated, I understand that. But it's mostly because most people don't invest the time to try to understand it. Because it really doesn't matter to their lives. There's really no need to. Most people have no interest in things such as time and gravity. They understand how it works in their lives, and it is sufficient.

To most people chemistry is difficult. Being a chemical engineer, I can understand. But chemistry really just follows a few simple physical laws. In fact, if you boil it down, there's really only one science in our world and that is physics. Because chemistry is just simply physics in action. All chemical reactions follow physical laws. If you take the time to understand those laws, you can understand chemistry, at least in its basics.

When I was younger, I always did best in mathematics. But I have to say that mathematics is more difficult to understand to me than the sciences. I did well in math, because I knew how to work the formulas, and most cases it was quite intuitive. But as I got older, and I tried to understand better the theories behind the math, it got more difficult. Math is more difficult to me now because it doesn't always make sense as I've said on a previous post. Sometimes math comes out with nonsensical answers and you're just left Scratching your head.

But I think the science of the world should be understandable and make sense. Quantum physics is certainly difficult to get your mind around because it's outside of our normal realm of thinking. But that doesn't mean that the concepts of it are overly difficult. It just means that we haven't learned them.

I think, when physicists finally solve the theory of everything, reconciling the subatomic world with the macro world we live,it will be much simpler than they thought. I don't believe there will be 11 dimensions involved in it of space and time. But somebody, like an Einstein, will come along and look at it with a different set of eyes, and not through the eyes that they've been trained by other physicists to look at it. Then they, like Einstein, will ride their own beam of light to find a simple solution.

I fall into the camp of a lot of people, who look at things, such as dark matter and dark energy, and know that it's just the name for something of which we are ignorant. Something we don't understand yet. But one day, when it's finally understood, I think we will continue to realize we live in a simple universe. Based on understandable laws.