képek, betűk

Mathematics is a human invention.
It will disappear along with us, becoming
like symbols carved into ancient stone tablets.
Even now, mathematics does not work for everything;
they just refuse to admit it: wave functions,
uncertainty, singularities, infinity,
approximate values. All of these
are signs of the limits of human mathematics. Why?
Probably for a very mundane reason. Our senses
are adapted to the macroscopic world, where
we see, hear, and touch quantities,
where we see two objects, or a thousand insects.
These things have numbers: formulas can follow.
But beyond our senses,
beyond what our instruments can detect,
in the deepest layers of the universe,
this notion of quantity no longer works. Of course,
we gloss over it, obscure it, patch it up.
Yet we already struggle with the motion
of three quarks. What would happen if we had to
understand the movement of trillions upon trillions
of particles? At present: nothing. At present, we say
it is incomprehensible, entropy. With two particles,
we can reverse the process; with a single glass of water
we already cannot. And not because it is impossible,
but because we are incapable of it.
Yet this does not trouble the majority,
just as the flat-Earth theory did not trouble
the majority either. For now, it still works.
But eventually—perhaps—we will accept it.
A different approach is needed;
we ourselves will have to change.

Imagine if, as humans,
you were not what you are today. Imagine
if you did not exist on the level of macroscopic objects,
but the microworld we now call “quantum”
were our natural environment;
if your perception operated at that level;
if you did not need to drink, eat, or die;
if, when observing the motion of two objects,
you did not merely see the two objects,
but sensed how the trillions of particles
that make them move and collide.
What would you do?
What if you perceived the functioning
of your own consciousness, perceived the states
and rearrangements of the particles
of your mind and memory, their countless variations?
The universe does not think through you.
It does not care about you or me.
What I am writing now, what I am thinking,
is the end result of different configurations
of particles deep inside my brain.
My consciousness, the images you see even now,
what you dream—just like what your eyes perceive—
are the same wavelengths of light.
There is no miracle.
So is the movement of my fingers.
Everything is made of the same particles.
What I am is merely a variation:
different arrangements of particles on a planet
where the process is called evolution
keeps rearranging particle-based processes
into genes, organising them into different forms,
as responses to the conditions of this planet,
producing the present states of the most probable
series of arrangements. Nothing more than this—
yet this “nothing more” is, in fact,
a momentary optimum on this planet,
a principle of organisation that arose
and continues to arise in accordance with the laws of nature.
No miracle, no magic, no god—
but not mathematics either.
Mathematics is a human language, not a universal one.
To believe it is universal is just as foolish
as the flat-Earth theory was
a few centuries ago. If you say today
what I am saying now, you will be laughed at,
you will be excluded. Never mind—
better to appear mad than to be
a conceited idiot who imagines
that humanity is the miracle of the universe.
We are not a miracle. We are momentary patterns.
Variations. Consequences of particles in motion.
We can think only because the universe,
in its current state, it allows particles
to exist in such a way that there is time
for them to take on the forms
we perceive as energy and elements.
We are like a whirlpool formed
at a particular point in a process.
A process that is the life,
expansion, motion, and state of our own universe.
We can exist now, at this moment in time,
because now it is possible for those particle configurations
to arise that can move in such a way that
They ultimately form images capable of perceiving
themselves. That is what we are:
a combination capable of sensing itself.

Slowly, everything will change.
We will leave our biological bodies behind.
This has probably already happened
to other species before us; if they were here now,
around us, we might not even notice them,
because they exist in a form of being
that I cannot even imagine at present.
And after that, this too will pass.
Because the conditions for meaning itself
will cease to exist.
We are not special—only infinitely foolish,
because we always believe
that we have any significance at all,
When in fact, we do not.