View Comments

  • Dennis: I agree with your assessment of the Holy Father. He was truly a gifted scholar. Here is a selection from one of his pieces on the Internet. I posted the link above, "the Internet radically redefines a person's psychological relationship to time and space. Attention is rivetted on what is tangible, useful, instantly available; the stimulus for deeper thought and reflection may be lacking. Yet human beings have a vital need for time and inner quiet to ponder and examine life and its mysteries, and to grow gradually into a mature dominion of themselves and of the world around them." In a fast-paced, media-driven world, students may tune out too quickly because of information overload.
    However, like Wikipedia says about particle physics: "Quantum Mechanics does not pinpoint the exact values for the position or momentum of a certain particle in a given space in a finite time, but, rather, it only provides a range of probabilities of where that particle might be. Therefore, it became necessary to use different words for a) the state of something having an uncertainty relation and b) a state that has a definite value." The serendipitous quality of learning is the social process, not just the degree. Life remains an "unsteady state" of affairs where the mysterious remains the most revealing (the touch of poetic grace in human communications). Just a thought reflecting on the Pope's comments.

Share
Published by
Dennis G. Jerz