{"id":4309,"date":"2017-09-08T05:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4309"},"modified":"2017-09-03T12:17:29","modified_gmt":"2017-09-03T19:17:29","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-chapter-2-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2017\/09\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-chapter-2-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Science of Discworld’: Chapter 2-3"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second and third chapters of The Science of Discworld<\/i>, we learn that change is neither good nor bad, but a simple reality. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Up until my mid-teens, I wanted to be one thing: a scientist. Specifically, I had determined that I wanted to transform myself into Dana Scully, to use science and rationalism to solve mysteries and crimes. I held onto this goal until biology in high school, where I discovered that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually kind of squeamish, so no, maybe being a forensic pathologist was not actually my thing. I still kept up those science classes, though, and my love for Scully never wavered.<\/p>\n

The X-Files<\/i>, despite being a science fiction show, was my first great introduction to science. It was my chance to begin to see the world as a whole lot stranger than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been taught. Because even if the show was ridiculous and exaggerated scientific facts or principles, there was so much of it based in reality, and through my obsession with the show, I came to read a lot<\/i> of cool shit. I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t unpacked all my stuff, but I must<\/i> find some of those old X-Files<\/i> series guide books, because it turned me on to so much cool shit. Genetic mutation. Government experiments. Successes in cloning. How diseases spread. So I learned REAL THINGS while watching Mulder and Scully not make out for years.<\/p>\n

One of those things: that the world changes all the time<\/i>. I was raised in a house of certainty. There were bedrock rules and guidelines for existence, handed down by God or\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, my mother. She often made proclamations without any sort of justification or reasoning, so I just had to believe my mom was an authority figure in the most literal sense. In this world, men and women acted specific ways, and any deviation was Wrong. God created everything except for those things which were sinful, so\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 someone else created those? But God created everything<\/i>. BUT NOT THAT.<\/p>\n

As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure you can tell, the world of certainty I lived in wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all that certain. But I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know!!! As a kid, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much easier to believe what you are told. So you can imagine how formative The X-Files<\/i> was for me. Couple that with my discovery of punk rock bands like Bad Religion and Propagandhi and Rage Against the Machine, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably a lot more obvious how I came to be the angry little queer I am today. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a reason I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m bringing this up, though! The second chapter of this book deals with the idea of constants:<\/p>\n

Our scientific theories are underpinned by a variety of numbers, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfundamental constants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Examples include the speed of light, Planck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s constant (basic to quantum mechanics), the gravitational constant (basic to gravitational theory), the charge on an electron, and so on. All of these accepted theories assume that these numbers have always been the same, right from the very first moment when the universe burst into being.<\/p>\n

Look, our world is easier to navigate through constants and through faith, in having things neatly organized and categorized. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually been a rather frequent theme we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen in the Discworld<\/i> series, especially from Death or from the Witches or from Susan. We want things to be easy and simple, and hell, I even include myself in this. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not exempt from this desire. However, the world is complex, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always going to be so. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s especially the case with scientific endeavors, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always healthy to remind ourself that the things we hold as constants today could very easily become obsolete in the immediate future. Or the distant future! The scope of what the authors refer to in chapter two seems almost meaningless, since\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well who cares if atoms vibrate differently over such an absurd span of time? But the point here is that things change<\/i>. Our understanding of the world can change in an instant, and as uncomfortable as it may be, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing inherently wrong<\/i> with that.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, I think about how much humanity has changed in the thirty-odd years that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been alive. Computers. Smartphones. Social media. App culture. The things that are now part of my daily life that would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been straight-up science fiction to me if you told me about it when I was a child. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not suggesting that we shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t question developments or that we should just accept changes without investigating the ramifications. But we, as humans, have done some pretty spectacular things, and having a knee-jerk negative reaction doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make a whole lot of sense to me.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/FMvgbMMrptE<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

-\u00c2\u00a0Please visit my new site for all announcements<\/a>. If you’d rather not have to rely on checking a website regularly, sign up for my newsletter instead<\/a>! This will cover all news for Mark Reads, Mark Watches, and my fiction releases.\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"