Physics week 1

When we were talking about the big bang in class it made me think of my TCM foundations teacher talking about the moment of conception, about how the Wu Ji - the pregnant void- suddenly gets a spark of yang and separates into yin and yang, and keeps separating and dividing and growing until we become adults. The universe did the same thing on a macroscale that happens on a microscale in the human body. A spark of energy caused a growing and continual expansion. We have a finite amount of energy in our bodies. One day our Jing gets used up. It made me wonder - what is the Jing of earth? Of the universe? Will it get used up too? Our medicine connects small themes to larger ones - the body to nature that surrounds us, but how far does that go? Can we really related our bodies to the whole universe? But also, why not?

Comments

  1. ninaMay 15, 2017 at 1:24 PM

    I appreciate your changing of lenses-from macro to micro. It is a really helpful way to make sense of concepts that feel broader then our own scope of understanding. The Pregnant void fascinates me-thank you for bringing it up. This idea that the potential energy for life can exist within this space of "nothingness," awaiting an event to trigger a complete transformation. Similar to the Big Bang, there is no return from this point where life begins...but there is an ending of life for humans. I, like you, wonder if and how this end of life translates onto the universe. It seems realistic that there be a limit to how much the universe can tolerate its constant expansion.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bio - HIV and AIDS

I think in this case, the western medical understanding of HIV and AIDS seems much more sophisticated than the TCM view - mostly because it it a relatively new disease. I thought the article about the man who was cured of HIV was fascinating, and I'll be really interested to see what sort of research continues in that vein. I think the use of the PreP treatments is like most things with health care - it is up to the patient to look at their life and see if it makes sense for them. I absolutely think there shouldn't be a stigma against these treatments though. Just like with birth control, a persons body is their own and it is up to them to decide whats best for them. I hope that there can be research done to decrease the side effects and potential damage - I feel like that would make things a little bit more clear cut. TCM can absolutely strengthen the immune system. It works on putting the body back in balance or harmony. When the body is working better, all functions improve...
Read more

Physics week 8

I was trying to think about how Newton's laws applied to motion in my life - what forces keep me in motion and what forces keep me still. I realized that these laws apply to the self motivated motion of living creatures in a very different way. While often when I'm at rest I do want to remain at rest, there is an internal force that gets me up and moving. And there are certainly times when I'm out and about doing things, that it would take some about of internal motivation to get me to rest. You cannot measure this internal force though, or really even describe exactly what it is. The second law - "the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely proportional to it's mass," could also be applied in a way. How motivated, excited, or internally driven I am about something probably determines how fast I act on it. And if we think of mass as extra things I have weighing me down in my life, that would slow down the mo...
Read more

Physics week 6

It is interesting to think about if all vibrations are "good." What makes something good? Everything has a vibration, and in that sense, if we determine that something is good, its vibration is good. But we have all certainly felt what we perceive to be bad vibrations - walking into a room where there has just been an argument, hearing nails scratch on the chalkboard. These things are unpleasant, but are their vibrations bad? I think it's all subjective. When we were talking about resonance and objects being destroyed when their own natural resonance is externally amplified, it made me think of interpersonal clashes I've had. I'm a double Aries, which at times has certainly been a strong vibration to have. For most of my life, I've always clashed pretty hard with other fire types, especially other aries. During our conversation, I was thinking about how maybe this is because they are holding a certain vibration or resonance that is just too close to my own, c...
Read more