Class 2 - Quantum Mechanics

First things first - the universe is DEFINITELY weird - that's what makes it so great.

I really appreciated the inclusion of the preface for the dissertation on Santeria as part of this week's reading. I find it really enriching to have field-of-study crossover or cross-pollination. It gets the metaphors rolling, which is one of the approaches I find helpful for thinking about abstract topics such as 'uncertainty'.

It is also interesting to try to tie the readings together. Kristina Wirtz used Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as a tool for talking about her method of conducting this ethnographic study on Santeria. I see the quantum camera as another really good metaphor for her approach: "Instead of trying to 'see' an object, the quantum camera simply 'feels' the rise and fall of photonic waves in quantum fields around the camera." It seems that Kristina was acting kind of like a quantum camera - instead of trying to tie down or define Santeria in space, herself, she sought to use series and patterns of measurements (religious practitioners' own "discursive activity") to approximate the trajectories of some of the elements of this cultural phenomenon known as Santeria. She was working to produce an image through the cloud of culture and subjective experience...

Homework Week 1

(Note - This is copied over from my blog post at a different address. I just created a new account for school-related blogging. Please disregard the old one.)

Homework Week 1

Ah,  my very first blog post...

Part 1 - 'the quiz':

What attracts me to Chinese medicine? 
I have been drawn to the study of Chinese medicine through many routes and for many reasons. I've long been interested in health, and my first career has been in public health. But probably the strongest influence on my decision to go to school in this has been my history with martial arts and internal arts.

What do I honestly think of Physics, really? 
My high school experience with physics was neither particularly good nor particularly bad. I never really took the opportunity to explore the more esoteric aspects that have piqued my interest since then, so I am actually looking forward to this class and its syllabus.

Now that I think about it, have I ever experienced time "slowing down" or "speeding up"? 
I have a sense of time passing far more slowly as a child than it does now. With regard to specific incidents of time changing speed, most that I can think of involve martial arts, fighting, and that sort of thing, particularly during moments of intense focus or deep relaxation.

Part 2 - Discussion - The Meaning of Time:
I find one of the most comforting and relaxing things is to stare at star-filled skies at night in dark places. I have always avoided learning much about astronomy so that I won't have patterns to 'know' and seek out. To get lost amongst stars is the closest I can get to grocking infinity. I can't really wrap my brain around it, but if I let go I can just float there for moments and it doesn't matter. Infinity of space and infinity of time are equally mind boggling. What is interesting to think about is time not just as an infinite continuum going into the future and into the past, but as a continuum of increments what are infinitely large and infinitely small. You can chunk it any way you want, but there is always farther to go, longer, shorter... Is there a smallest unit of time? Is there a point at which time becomes something else? If it becomes something else, is it a thing, is it of different dimension? Can we touch it? Can we manipulate it?