Mountain Minutes

Quantum mechanics is a challenging and mind-boggling field. It can be hard to visualize interactions at the subatomic level. Most of us are first educated in Newtonian Mechanics; we most easily understand cause and effect at this scale. This makes the world of quantum, with its “spooky action at a distance” and massless particles, hard to visualize and understand. Philosophical Engineering Richard Feynman was a mastermind when it came to visualizing a problem, regardless of Read more…

Heisenberg established what is known as the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. It states, at the atomic level, the limitations of realizing a given particle’s position and momentum simultaneously. Philosophical Engineering Design Point: This principle is unique in that it defines the degree of uncertainty in determining position or momentum for a particle. Neither can be determined without sacrificing one for the other. But at the same time, despite the uncertainty in one, there is Read more…

As I come up on a year on my journey of learning the short form of Tai Chi, I’m always trying to learn how to deepen my practice. Tai Chi is a form of meditative martial arts focused on grounding oneself. When I first started doing it, I fell into the same trap most beginners do, wanting to look “pretty” and cool to show off the sequence I had learned so far. However, in practicing Read more…

Dorothy et al discover upon her arrival at Emerald City that the great OZ that appeared so life like and human, was really a man behind the curtain controlling a fancy computer. Philosophical Engineering Getting past the smoke and mirrors for this trick, artificial intelligence is a field that is generating talking robots and computer chess players. However, artificial intelligence is called “artificial” for a reason, as it is constructed by human thoughts. To say Read more…

Do we believe that our fate is in the shuffling of the cards that we are dealt? Are we sitting at the poker table waiting for the right cards to fall into our hands, or is there some skill involved with playing the hands we are dealt? Philosophical Engineering Imagine yourself back in school, a teacher presenting topic A and topic B to you. For the exam, the teacher expects you to know both of Read more…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5fGSBsfq8  

There seem to be two ways to approach what the word “consciousness” (or, alternatively, “conscious”) could possibly mean.  The physicalist is inclined to start from the most fundamental level of reality and work their way upwards, looking at basic elements such as atoms and deriving properties from these atoms upwards on the length scale.  A psychologist, on the other hand, may start with behaviors and emotions, looking at the phenomenon of consciousness from the “top” Read more…

Since Einstein released his theory of relativity, we’ve assumed that what is observed must be relative to us, the observer. We’ve placed great importance on recognizing the reference frame of any observed event. For instance, consider a bouncy ball bouncing in an airplane aisle.  From the person bouncing the ball from her seat, the ball seems to be moving up and down.  However, to a stationary observer who has xray vision and can see through the plane, the ball is not Read more…

Brian Greene, a pioneer of string theory, claims scientists must tell two tales for a given theory: one mathematical and one physical. Philosophical Engineering Design Point: The “tale of two tales,” as Greene puts it, between the mathematical story of “how the universe evolves” and the physical story, “which translates the abstract mathematics into experiential language”, is the crux of physics.  Unifying these two stories of language and physicality gives a unique perspective into the Read more…

“Newtonian mechanics unified our understanding of stellar and terrestial motions, and Maxwell’s theory unified our understanding of electromagnetic phenomena and light. Einstein’s special theory of relativity unified our concepts of space and time, and his general theory unified our conceptions of spacetime and gravity”(1). Philosophical Engineering Design Point What is the point of all that? It seems we can find something in common when we consider Maxwell, Einstein, and other great scientific thinkers–two concepts are Read more…