I can’t recommend
more highly this exuberantly written book on physics by Carlo Rovelli called “Reality
Is Not What It Seems http://bit.ly/2ADDcy0.”
In it, Rovelli,
the scientist-storyteller, follows on after Albert Einstein to explain the
great man’s contributions to human understanding.
While running
today (Dec. 7), I had a thought: US Republicans – ie, Trump, McConnell and Ryan
– are architects of their own social theories in a manner of which parallels
Einstein’s work.
As Rovelli
explains, Einstein’s genius was in how he shaped his thinking from those minds
who had come before: namely, Democritus, Newton, and Faraday-Maxwell.
Suffice to say,
Einstein, in 1905, took the discrete definitions of space, time and particles
of Newton to join spacetime, fields (Faraday-Maxwell) and particles. Then, ten
years later, he would boil that down to just fields and particles.
Elegant, eh?
Einstein’s
contributions are magnificence in simplicity. Answers to the very existence of
the world were right there before our noses, and Einstein had the vision to see
them.
Similarly, before
the first Republican theory of Trump/McConnell/Ryan, the social contract was
divided into three main spheres: government, business and workers (unions). In
those relatively ancient times, the theory held that outcomes were calculated
by interchanges between these three distinct powers.
Ah, but it is the
Republican Einsteinian elegance to boil that troika down to one seamless force:
business.
Oh, and as Einstein
instructs us, the universe is always in motion. Behold the freshly minted Republican
social theory courtesy of Alabama GOP senatorial hopeful, Roy Moore: that
business ally with Christian orthodoxy in all matters of the social contract.
* With apologies
to Einstein’s family and the wonder of his genius
