In Truth, Is There No Beauty?

The wind blew from the west one morning. The grain of sand next to it had a rounded top, so it fell just there and stayed on top for about a week. Because of its sharp edges an animal with muddy hooves tracked it half a mile east. There it fell and mixed in with decaying leaves. It remained an unseen spec in the dirt for a thousand years. A strong rain washed the hillside away and it eventually regained its place in the sun on the old beach.

Every grain of sand has some history. Every star in the sky as well. Everything we observe has been placed there and will be moved by countless billions of causes and affects. There is very little random in the Universe.

Sit up late at night. Look out upon the magnificent, contemplate the infinite, imagine the amazing and see the beauty.

Steve
8)

Steve Hollenbach said:

The wind blew from the west one morning. The grain of sand next to it had a rounded top, so it fell just there and stayed on top for about a week. Because of its sharp edges an animal with muddy hooves tracked it half a mile east. There it fell and mixed in with decaying leaves. It remained an unseen spec in the dirt for a thousand years. A strong rain washed the hillside away and it eventually regained its place in the sun on the old beach.

Every grain of sand has some history. Every star in the sky as well. Everything we observe has been placed there and will be moved by countless billions of causes and affects. There is very little random in the Universe.

Sit up late at night. Look out upon the magnificent, contemplate the infinite, imagine the amazing and see the beauty.

Steve
8)

There's plenty of "random" in the Universe. And plenty of non-random, but that doesn't mean Big Daddy Juju done done it. LOL.

Rod, Doug,
and anyone who may be reading.

I felt poetic and wrote that little story of a thousand years "...in the life of a grain of sand." It's funny how the two people who responded did respond. Rod with the thought I was saying God directed these things, and Doug saying No, it's not random.

Funny, My point was it's not random, and that it's also not necessarily the God of Abraham saying; "I place you my fine little grain of sand, thusly..."

If we look at how our own brain and body work together to place a grain of sand, we can find some similarities. OK, you're sitting on a beach. Well, just walking out there and sitting down moved several million grains of sand.

Did they move because you wanted them in a specific spot? No, that was what we usually call "Random". From a strictly scientific view it wasn't random, each movement or reaction took energy to accomplish by way of a chain of events in the case of each and every grain of sand displaced.

From an emotional point of view, we didn't care what grains or where they moved, we didn't even think about it but we caused their movement. It was in a sense the biproduct of walking out there and sitting down. Our intent was to sit for a moment and watch a sunset. However lots of other things occured within our control, but outside the scope of our intent. From this perspective we have "Random".

The accomplishment of a larger action often has colateral results. These have cause and affect. We may call them random, but they are caused, and follow the usual laws of physics in arriving in the situation we observe. Given time and other events they will experience changes beyond what we observe at the moment.

If we had the equipment, time, an unlimited budget and desire to do so, the path of every molecule in a pot of boiling water could be plotted. We simplify such things with computer models based on statistics. We spot check by observing a small fraction of all the molecules.

Just an interesting twist on the use of the word Random.
Thanks Guys,
Steve
8)