Humans – Page 6 – david hogan

Weighing in on Theoretical Physics (That’s right, theoretical physics!)

Just the beginning... — Just the beginning…

I just finished reading this article, The Accidental Universe, in Harper’s, and I’m no rocket scientist or theoretical physicist (or rocket physicist or even theoretical scientist), so let me try to get this straight.

For our universe with its particular features to come about is so highly improbable and incalculable that it had to come about by accident.
Okay… check.

Now, physicists don’t like that because their job is to explain events, and to explain an event like our universe as ‘an accident’ is like theoretical malpractice for a physicist-ian.
All right… check.

So in order to explain this accident (our universe), some theoretical physicists have postulated that there are an infinite number of universes out there (called the multiverse) and we live in only one of them.
Go on…

And the reason our universe has the basic features it does, is because in that multiverse, one of them has to have our features – and us – just because of the sheer number of universes in it.
Huh?

Again, I’m no rocket scientist, etc. but haven’t these physicists just proposed a grander improbable (the multiverse) in order to make the original improbable (our universe) probable?

I say why stop there? Why not propose a multiverse of multiverses?

In a multiverse of multiverses – imagine the infinities! – all things would come about and replicate endlessly. So those same physicists would be studying their multiplicity of universes in a multiplicity of universes. Accordingly, we would all exist in countless alternate universes as well. (That trip to Bali? Curl your toes in the sand. The woman who got away? Standing right next to you.)

This idea of a multiverse of multiverses also puts a nice spin on the anthropic principle (i.e. that the universe must have the features it does because we are here to observe it.) You see, it’s no longer that this universe is what it is because we are here to observe it. It’s that an infinite number of we’s exist in an infinite number of universes, observing all of them the way they are.

So, in this universe (and many others), I (and many others) am writing this post (and many others), but elsewhere in that infinity of infinities, I (and many others) am a theoretical physicist at M.I.T. myself (along with many others), proposing a multiverse of multiverses of multiverses theory which, of course, only leads to ever more blog posts such as this one (and many others) and ever more multiverses.

To misquote the playwright Tom Stoppard: “Infinity is a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it going to end?”

My debut novel, ‘THE LAST ISLAND,’ which has nothing to do with theoretical physics, is available here.

Prostitutes and Playwrights (Another Conversation with my LA Agent)

I called my agent to tell him I’d finished another play. He wasn’t pleased. He thought plays stole time from screenplays that he might be able to sell. It was an ongoing debate.

One time, I mentioned the value of art for art’s sake. I thought he’d have a stroke. He popped Tylenol like Tic Tacs though – and that might’ve saved him.

The Phone Call

David: I wrote a new play.

Agent: What’s this s— about?

David: It’s about the Irish novelist, Flann O’Brien.

Agent: You wrote a f—ing play about a f—ing novelist? Where’s it premiering? In a black hole?

David: If it gets up in LA, I’ll comp you tickets.

Agent: No thanks. I mean, I’d love to see your f—ing play, David… but I don’t like sitting alone.

David: That’s a good one. You use that with other clients?

Agent: They don’t write f—ing plays. I don’t understand why you do.

David: Because screenplays rarely get made even when sold… but plays do. Believe it or not, I like seeing my work produced.

Agent: And I like to sleep with beautiful women, but you don’t see me going to all that trouble.

David: The trouble of actually sleeping with them?

Agent: You’re f—ing hilarious, David, you know that?

David: I’m your client, aren’t I?

Agent: Look, I can meet a semi-attractive woman and take her on dinners and dates and all that bulls—. Or I can sell a screenplay, not one of yours apparently, and buy a beautiful hooker.

David: Are you saying that writing a play is like dating a semi-attractive woman and writing a screenplay is like buying a beautiful hooker?

Agent: Which is less trouble?

David: You’re suggesting that I prostitute myself both professionally and personally?

Agent: Of course not. I’m advising you to prostitute yourself professionally… so you can buy a prostitute personally. Sometimes I think you don’t know which end is up.

You can buy my debut novel, ‘THE LAST ISLAND’ here.

The Sacred and the Desecrated

One evening, while cruising the wine-dark sea off Psathura, a deserted island in Northern Greece, I thought that an epiphany was at hand. This may have had something to do with the heat and the ouzo, however, because that epiphany proved as evanescent as the breeze and remained unknown.

What happened in Psathura isn’t unique though, this sort of encounter with the world’s majesty that transcends the everyday and seems sublime. It’s happened to me at other times as well: in the Rocky Mountains, and on the Sea of Cortez, and upon the wavering greens of Western Ireland. It’s occurred on bicycles and horses and surf boards.

It’s likely to have happened to everyone who chances upon this post.

I thought of these encounters when I heard this quote from the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry: “There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places.”

Those few words have changed my way of thinking. Like our innocence, every place we encounter is indeed sacred unless proven otherwise, and we trespass upon the sanctified daily. It’s a humbling, lifting and affirming way of passing through the world.

And I’m beginning to think that was the epiphany that hung in the breeze off Psathura.

You can buy ‘THE LAST ISLAND’ here.

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