Salt and Light

I'm not much of a mathematician but one concept I love is chaos theory. Chaotic systems are a reason to learn calculus!!! There had to be one! So what is chaos theory? Chaos theory is a theory of complexity - Today, “complex systems pervade every nook and cranny of daily life, from the patterns of traffic in urban transport networks to the movement of prices in financial markets.  In these systems the processes are fundamentally different from the simple systems that have constituted the focus of the scientific enterprise since Newton.” (Casti, 1997, p. ix)    Some characteristics of a chaotic system Paradoxes opposite of what is expected Self reference repeating iteration or pattern Instability easily changed or destabilized Uncomputability not calculable Connectivity everything effects everything else Butterfly effect Emergence o rganization from randomness Ex: the mental ah ha moment  So why chaos theory? Well first there is the first law of thermodynamics that s...

This blog is called salt and light and so far we have talked about light but not salt. Salt is key if you are a want to be a chef and historically it was one of the first ways we learned to preserve food. Let's start with salt by talking about water. We already know that our planet is amazing. Earth is far enough away from the sun that we are not crispy critters and close enough that we are not keeping fudgesicles company in the freezer, Seventy percent of the earth is made of water and 79% of our body weight is water.  Ninety-seven percent of the earth's water is saline and found in the oceans Up to 60% of the adult human body is actual water. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%. Life on Earth is possible because of water’s unique properties. 1.) Water is the only natur...

    Last time I talked about the book Seeing is Believing. The author talks about SQ the spiritual equivalent of IQ, but I'm not sure that I think they are the same. I'll explain why in a little bit. First let's talk about logic and reason vs faith. Science is the primary realm for logic and reason and many scientists and atheists see science as our salvation based on logic, but Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says that even measuring down to the smallest level we cannot be precise because our human interaction changes the measurement ever so slightly. There is something similar in math and chaotic systems there are equations that are not calculable because there are too many factors. So there is some stuff we can't measure or understand with logic. Reason alone cannot answer all our questions. Second there is an underlying assumption that the science is always right. That is not the case science takes many things on faith based upon the preponderance of the evid...

  I have always wondered why some hard core scientists don't believe in God. Just read a great book called Seeing is Believing by Michael Guillen. (I highly recommend it) Like Hugh Ross from Reasons to Believe he writes mostly about evidence from physics and astronomy for reasons for the Christian faith.  I challenge anyone out there of any faith to really dig in and they will see that ALL religions are not the same and really Christianity is all about relationships anyways. Now I don't claim to be a hardcore science researcher but after 35 years as a science teacher in public education I consider myself to have a pretty broad science background. Anyways  lately I have been pondering light and matter.  Let's start with light, here are a few verses about light: Matthew 4:16 ...