A few long walks and a pondering (La Corunha, Spain)

In an effort to exhaust myself thoroughly during the daytime so that I fall asleep early and it’s easier to wake up at the godforsaken hour of five-thirty tomorrow, I’ve spent most of the past two days walking. Yesterday I walked along the coast to the hills with the stones (my favorite spot in the city) and on to the Casa del Hombre, a museum about the human body, where I learned that the average person can distinguish between 2000 and 4000 smells and that the insides of our bones look like the scene of a silly string crime. I watched a movie about dinosaurs in Patagonia (which was clearly aimed at children -- but in 3-D!!! so I couldn’t resist) (I was almost eaten by a Giganotosaurus!), then went back to Alfonso’s apartment. He showed me his short film and we talked for a while before I came to the hostel. I had pleasant dreams.

My goal for today was to reach the Portinho, a tiny port beyond the Monte de San Pedro. I took a bus to San Pedro de Visma, a small collection of buildings that used to be a village but is now an extension of the city, and walked along a narrow road through grassy fields towards the coast. Before reaching the Portinho, though, I was distracted by a large hill. Every time I see something that goes up, I feel a strong compulsion to climb it – and so I discovered (the same way that Columbus discovered the Americas) the Parque de Bens, where I wandered for a few hours. Green hills! Some trees! Rocks! Old men with little dogs! Old dogs with little men! An industrial complex yonder in the distance! I eventually made it to the port, where there were zero boats and exactly six people, all of whom were sitting in the restaurant where I had a lunch of twice-fried eggs (a breaded and fried patty made of fried eggs – I think). Mmm. Along the Paseo Maritimo on my way back to the city, I met a scuba diver, who told me about the harm that the construction of the new port was causing the environment. Apparently there are large ships that, in the process of looking for solid rock under the water, displace tons of sand and wreak havoc on the sea floor. “If I had the means,” Jose said, “I’d blow them all up! And shoot all the politicians!” It is sad.

I’ve been reading a book called “In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension” by Dan Falk, and I find it pretty good. I’ve learned many things – e.g. it was in the 13th century that a number of things that didn’t used to be measured precisely, like weight and currency, were subjected to intense quantification (in Europe); time was one of these. I’ll give a good summary of the book when I’m done reading it, but for now I want to ramble about something that has been bugging me for years. I wrote this a few years ago:

“I'm having trouble thinking of something, or figuring out how to think of it. In the book ‘Flatland’ (which I haven't actually read), a sphere drops into a two-dimensional world, startling a . . . square or a triangle or an octagon or something. The poor little 2-D guy sees a point appear out of nowhere, and the point becomes a very small circle that grows until it reaches its maximum diameter and then begins to shrink again until it's a point and disappears. The square/triangle/octagon probably thinks, ‘Good God!’ My trouble is -- how big is the point at which the sphere starts to pass through the two-dimensional universe? It's ‘infinitesimally small,’ but that quickly turns into ‘small but measurable,’ and I just don't understand that. When does the transition happen? How can something come out of nothing? It's not an uncommon scenario -- imagine, oh, someone turning a corner. At first you don't see the person and in the next instant you can. Maybe the problem is the idea of ‘instant,’ breaking up time into moments, when it's maybe a continuum. I guess that that extends into breaking up space, when maybe space, too, is a continuum. I am not making any sense at all but oh man it's totally mind-befuddling.”

Now I’ve read “Flatland,” but I still don’t understand it!! It has everything to do with motion, it seems (that’s what I’ve been reading in the book – Newton and Leibniz’s disagreements about the essence of time and motion) – it is motion, change, that allows one to link time and space, and that’s my question. Now I think this: Space may be a continuum, but matter is not. Matter is made of tiny particles (someone in the 28th century will read this and say, “Ha! Those fools!”) – in fact, it’s mostly made of the space in between them. So if something – say, a ruler – is coming around a corner, some period of time must elapse between position (0,0) and position (1 quark, 0), no matter how “fast” the ruler is moving. The same way there is a minimum fundamental size, there should be a corresponding minimum fundamental time unit. Or shouldn’t there be? The concept of “instant” or “moment” makes my head explode (not really) (eew). Same with “present.” But I'll write about that another day.