Thoughts on An Affective Universe

"We can only infer and imagine the nature of our own consciousness by reflecting off others, much like light bouncing off a mirror."

I currently receive a magazine in the mail in a bi-monthly fashion, by the nomenclature of Seed. It is a periodical mostly on the social-interest scale for those who have found a taking to scientific stuffs. Cosmology, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, even Linguistic theory and the like are interacted with, presented in a most easily digestible format. There are many other magazines that provide this, to be sure, but I suppose there just happened to be something about this particular one that grabbed my interest; perhaps having to do with the chief editor having a background in biological study.

In any event, a story I read in one of these other magazines while I was deciding which one to bring home was somewhat reiterated in this current issue: the notion of an affective universe. When I use this term, I mean a simple "rule" that I believe is well known to at least most chemists and physicists, but I could be incorrect: namely, that the mere interaction between observer and observed somehow leaves both changed, such that the original state is never fully observable in the first place. The typical knowledge of the nature of an electron's path around atomic mass is the simplest example of this. When one seeks to find an electron, one must resign to the fact that it could be anywhere at all, and that when one does find it, the original path can never be regained.

What I find most interesting about this, and about all things scientific in general, is how well the basic principles discovered therein can be adequately represented and found in macrocosm, either in the universe itself or simply in how us fragile and intricately beautiful humans interact. When you meet someone, your impression of them is fixed on your mind, and vice versa. Once you somehow engage with that other consciousness, it is clear at least at this point in history and scientific evolution or what-have-you, whatever either of you has experienced before your meeting each other will never be fully experienced across conscious lines. What you can be assured of, however, is also that neither of you will be the same.

In the words of Langston Hughes: "I am a part of you just as you are a part of me."