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 motion even in an ambitious state.
The third law makes me think of two people with opposite opinions finally butting heads. However strong their opinions are will determine the intensity of the collision.
Our culture isn't energy efficient at all. We waste so much heat, material, money, electricity everyday. I love looking at youtube videos of efficient tiny houses to see what energy and space efficiency can really look like.
I really dislike Descartes reductionist view of the world. As TCM students, we are taught to look at the whole of a person, rather than reduce them down to their smallest scientific part. There is something very important that you miss when your view is so narrow. Honestly, a lot of the problems in our culture come from these narrow, materialistic views. When we think that "most of the universe is dead" or that "we are separate from nature," it creates a culture in which we can hurt the environment around us without taking it into consideration.
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 motion even in an ambitious state.
The third law makes me think of two people with opposite opinions finally butting heads. However strong their opinions are will determine the intensity of the collision.
Our culture isn't energy efficient at all. We waste so much heat, material, money, electricity everyday. I love looking at youtube videos of efficient tiny houses to see what energy and space efficiency can really look like.
I really dislike Descartes reductionist view of the world. As TCM students, we are taught to look at the whole of a person, rather than reduce them down to their smallest scientific part. There is something very important that you miss when your view is so narrow. Honestly, a lot of the problems in our culture come from these narrow, materialistic views. When we think that "most of the universe is dead" or that "we are separate from nature," it creates a culture in which we can hurt the environment around us without taking it into consideration.
I like your thoughts on movement- your own movement, what internally motivates you to move from rest or to slow down. I wonder if that internal motivation can be thought of as qi? Or the "mass" of extra things slowing you down as "stagnant qi?"
ReplyDeleteGreat post!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate reading your honest review of Descartes and extending that in how we relate to the world around us, to nature. You're right, if we fancy we are separate from nature then it's much easier to disregard nature, treat our environment poorly, or pretend that we aren't part of the problem...
Tiny houses! I too find those very inspiring and saw a documentary about it. I used to research space saving solutions for my apartment because my partner owns so many books, how could we fit them all?, and it led me to tiny houses �� I then kept reading up on it and was amazed at the solutions people came up with. It simply brought me joy to learn that so many people were living. this way - that's just so cool. Thank you for your connections, always a pleasure to read!