Welcome to Serious Wonder
Exploring the mysteries of this extraordinary world at the intersection of science and philosophy.
Neither scientist nor philosopher, I’m a lover of nature in all its beauty and underlying complexity.
The lovely maple tree outside my window glows with spring green leaves, and that is enough to make me smile. But when I add the knowledge that this color comes from the chlorophyl the tree has stored in its roots during the winter, now traveling back up the branches to burst through in tiny buds, my amazement knows no bounds. How does the tree know to do that?
When I revel at the warmth of the sun on my skin, my body relaxes involuntarily. When I consider that this luxurious sensation is created by photons traveling 93 million miles from the sun just to land on me, I’m blown away.
Everyday we are bombarded by new scientific discoveries about our bodies, minds, and the universe around us. Our culture greedily absorbs this information to build new technologies, medicines, and consumer goods. But I want only to feed my selfish desire for the joy of better understanding this incredible planet and this unbelievable body I inhabit.
There are so many unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, questions: How can the mass of tissue between our ears create our consciousness? What happens when we die? These are hard questions for which science has no answers, but what fun it is to appreciate and speculate!
Finding joy and fun through science and philosophy! That’s what Serious Wonder is all about.
— JB
Life Always Wins
Death might just be a figment of our imagination. Or a failure of our imagination. In fact, Life never ends, it only takes different forms.
Somewhere nearby, a tall old oak toppled in the unusually strong winds. It laid across the street at a ninety degree angle from normal. Its’ upper branches were tangled in the hedge on the neighbor’s yard, while its’ enormous root ball was fully exposed on its home lawn. It was sawed, chopped and chipped in short order, and so-called owners and their neighbors mourned as they clear the debris.
I chatted with one of my neighbors yesterday. I’d seen the tree service at his house down the street over the weekend. The loud chippers groaned for several hours on a Saturday morning and I asked if he’d had one of the trees in his backyard removed. I hoped he’d say ‘no’, because I hate to see a tree go down. He and his wife don’t seem like the kind of people who would randomly chop down a tree, unless it was diseased or a danger, and I hoped my assumptions …
Why I Can't Sit Still
I sit in my chair, meditating. I remain still.
At least I believe I am still.
Within my body, all is in motion. My heart is pumping, my blood flowing thorough miles of my arteries and veins, my organs functioning. My bones and muscles work to hold me upright and remain on alert for any motion I might need. The trillions of cells of which I am made are all working continuously, finding their share of the oxygen in my blood and performing their jobs without pause.
Outside my body, there is no stillness.
If I stand still at the seashore during those last few minutes before sunset, it seems obvious the sun is sinking into the ocean. But actually, it is the earth on which I stand that is spinning me away from the sun.
As the spring unfolds before me, I enjoy the changing of the seasons, often without remembering that my planet’s constant motion carries …