Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: have you ever created something that is perfect? Have you
Speaker 1: ever experienced a moment, a day, even an hour that
Speaker 1: you would consider perfect? Uh? Yeah, definitely. I mean I've
Speaker 1: had a sense of absolute I don't know perfection is
Speaker 1: that the name of it, but um, the sense of
Speaker 1: just being sort of that one with the world. I've
Speaker 1: certainly had that moment where I created something and I
Speaker 1: thought it was perfect, But that might have been an
Speaker 1: Ikea effect, a moment you know, We've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: When you make something and you put a little bit
Speaker 1: more into it the result than it actually is. You
Speaker 1: don't look at the imperfections of it. Um. And then
Speaker 1: there are people monks who actually, we've in imperfections into
Speaker 1: whatever they're rug they're working on, for instance, to Betan monks.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, they leave it in because the idea that
Speaker 1: they the imperfection is important part of the form. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you couldn't possibly create something that is perfection because it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. Yeah, this idea of perfection is in because
Speaker 1: I could see wherever you were assembling something, you know
Speaker 1: that that kind of feels perfect. You know, you could say, well,
Speaker 1: I assembled it perfectly as the instructions indicated. Now, of
Speaker 1: sometimes the instructions are flawed or are uncertain, and then
Speaker 1: at the end it's hard to feel perfect about it.
Speaker 1: Um Likewise, certainly there's something perfect about being in that
Speaker 1: flow state where you're creating something and you just feel,
Speaker 1: you know, almost at at one with your universe. But
Speaker 1: then at the end of the day, if you've created something,
Speaker 1: you've written something, you've painted something. I mean, time and
Speaker 1: time again, you see examples of people who have worked
Speaker 1: tirelessly on something and it never seems to be perfect.
Speaker 1: You know, there that that story you're writing, that painting
Speaker 1: that you're that sculpture that you're spending years on, Like
Speaker 1: you're just edging a little bit closer and closer to
Speaker 1: this idea of perfection, and it doesn't seem like you
Speaker 1: can ever quite get it, Like, like, how do you
Speaker 1: ever get it to match up with that, with the
Speaker 1: with the idea in your head? I mean, I run
Speaker 1: into this even when I'm just picking out an image
Speaker 1: to go along with our podcast episodes, like sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: have just sort of an abstract idea of what the
Speaker 1: perfect illustration for this episode would be, and then I
Speaker 1: end up just wasting all this time looking around in
Speaker 1: our image resources trying to find something that that is
Speaker 1: as powerful as what I want to use. A good
Speaker 1: stark example of this kind of frustration of our expectation
Speaker 1: versus reality is to take a pen to paper and
Speaker 1: to try to draw a perfect circle, which is of
Speaker 1: course the topic that we're talking about today. Have you
Speaker 1: ever in your lifetime created a perfect circle? Even though
Speaker 1: in your head it's there, you see it. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a fascinating question, one that I did a short
Speaker 1: blog post about a few weeks ago, and and I
Speaker 1: just continue to think about because just just in terms
Speaker 1: of drawing a circle, and and if you have the
Speaker 1: means to do so, and you're not driving a car something,
Speaker 1: you might even give this a shot. Um It's it's
Speaker 1: extremely difficult to to draw a circle that even appears
Speaker 1: to have some level of perfection to Uh. Certainly there
Speaker 1: are I've read about various uh um art schools past
Speaker 1: and present. Uh, they've they've you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of emphasis on being able to draw a very good circle.
Speaker 1: And certainly anybody can put a you know, a soda
Speaker 1: can on the table on a piece of paper and
Speaker 1: trace around it and say, ha, I've created a perfect
Speaker 1: circle because I just traced one. But but none of
Speaker 1: these instances, have you actually created something that is a
Speaker 1: mathematically perfect circle. No, because you can't really write, because
Speaker 1: you are not a machine. And as we'll discuss later on,
Speaker 1: this idea of a perfect circle may only exist in
Speaker 1: the mathematical realm. Yea, even even machines have not yet
Speaker 1: been able to create a perfect circle and may never
Speaker 1: be able to create a circle of perfect circle. And
Speaker 1: that is just one of the sort of maddening amazing
Speaker 1: things about this topic. Yeah, so let's talk about circles
Speaker 1: real quick. In terms of the etymology that is. A
Speaker 1: circle is from the Greek kircos meaning ring, from the
Speaker 1: ancient root care meaning to turn, and they are symbols
Speaker 1: of infinity. That's the other thing, a line that never ends.
Speaker 1: And so that's a deeply ingrained concept in us. And
Speaker 1: we think about this fellow time of the circle of life,
Speaker 1: the circle of the season's serpent eating its own tail,
Speaker 1: which we did a whole episode on the bus. Now,
Speaker 1: Greek philosopher Embidoccules devised a highly eccentric personal cosmology, and
Speaker 1: his God was a circle of which the center is
Speaker 1: everywhere are in the circumference is nowhere, which is a
Speaker 1: really interesting thought experiment, and it plays into a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're going to talk about. Yeah. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: idea of circle is the infinity. This idea is of
Speaker 1: the circle is God. I mean, certainly you look to
Speaker 1: uh Dante's Divine Comedy and various other uh cosmological models,
Speaker 1: and you see the heavens and one and even the
Speaker 1: Hell's composed of circles. The circles are key to the
Speaker 1: the organization of the universe, and in a sense they are,
Speaker 1: I mean when you look and we'll get more into
Speaker 1: the cosmic aspects later, but you look at at orbits,
Speaker 1: you look at the the basic structure of of heavenly bodies,
Speaker 1: and you see spheres, you see circles, So you can
Speaker 1: you can, you know, understand it. Since the earliest days,
Speaker 1: we've been staring up into the sky and uh and
Speaker 1: and we've seen this brilliant circle just beating beaning down
Speaker 1: is giving all the energy and a light that we
Speaker 1: have in this world. Yes, And to that point, the
Speaker 1: word zodiac comes from the Greek sticklo circle zoom animal
Speaker 1: and means circle of animals. So again here we see
Speaker 1: this pattern playing out. Uh, not in just what we perceive,
Speaker 1: but in language. So even we've mentioned already the idea
Speaker 1: of circles and uh and and and the heavenly and
Speaker 1: the supernatural and God and uh and in this we
Speaker 1: get into the platonic ideal. This idea of the humans
Speaker 1: are but mere copies of God's perfection. Right, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about Greek philosopher Plato, who first observed that no
Speaker 1: one has ever seen a perfect circle, only imperfect approximations,
Speaker 1: and he concluded that since there are no perfect mathematical
Speaker 1: objects to be found in the world, the objects of
Speaker 1: mathematics were turning out perfect circles, triangles, and even numbers
Speaker 1: themselves that must somehow exist. These things must how, somehow
Speaker 1: exist as eternal abstract entities beyond space and time and
Speaker 1: some other worldly platonic heaven called the world of forms
Speaker 1: or ideas. And you may recognize this from our recent
Speaker 1: episode on Supernormal Stimuli, where we end up bo waxing
Speaker 1: a bit about this. You know again, the idea that
Speaker 1: there's quote unquote perfect ideal versions of things, of objects,
Speaker 1: of of realities that are just beyond us, perhaps in
Speaker 1: a in at least in a philosophical sense, in some
Speaker 1: realm or dimension beyond our own. But then it gets
Speaker 1: it gets so squirrely because we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: mathematical aspect of this, which really starts to get into
Speaker 1: the philosophical realm, and they are sort of intertwined. Um.
Speaker 1: But the idea basically here is that there really is
Speaker 1: no perfect circle. And um, you talk to someone like
Speaker 1: John Adam, who is a mathematics professor of Old Dominion
Speaker 1: University and the author of Mathematics and Nature Modeling Patterns
Speaker 1: in the Natural World, and he says that no perfect
Speaker 1: circle can occur in nature since a perfect circle is
Speaker 1: a geometric idealization. So again we're underscoring this. It's an idealization,
Speaker 1: it is an illusion of perfection. Now at this point
Speaker 1: in the podcast, I know a number of you are
Speaker 1: probably thinking, well, what about this? What about that? What? In?
Speaker 1: Various examples in the natural world are coming to mind,
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna roll through some of them and
Speaker 1: discuss almost playing the game show perfect circle and not
Speaker 1: a perfect circle. Um. And spoiler, UM, you don't don't
Speaker 1: vote for perfect circle on any of these because you'll lose.
Speaker 1: We probably there's one. There's one case where it's a
Speaker 1: little iffy but still gets a little close. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little close. And that's the thing we we some of
Speaker 1: these examples are very close. Um, I guess let's start
Speaker 1: with with the planets. Okay, we live on a planet.
Speaker 1: We know from looking at our charts there are all
Speaker 1: these other planets, these a spherical planets that make up
Speaker 1: our solar system. We know that the Sun is a
Speaker 1: is a spear, so let's look around our own solar neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Are these perfect circles? Well, all right, take a planet
Speaker 1: for instance. Um, a planet is basically a sphere. It's
Speaker 1: it's round, and this is because the even distribution of
Speaker 1: gravitational forces rawls matter into the spherical shape. But you
Speaker 1: also have this centrifugal force of rotation that causes the
Speaker 1: spheres to bulge out at the at the equator. According
Speaker 1: to Clark Planetarium director Seth Jarvis, we're talking a barely
Speaker 1: noticeable zero point three bulge at Earth's equator. But you
Speaker 1: go to somewhere like Saturn, and there you'll see a
Speaker 1: hafty ten percent bulge. So again to the to the
Speaker 1: naked eye, and certainly on various illustrations that we have
Speaker 1: of these these worlds, you might not get you know,
Speaker 1: you might not even pick up on it. But since this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sphere is spinning around, there is this bulge around
Speaker 1: the equator that you have the interplay, for example, the
Speaker 1: Earth and its moon, and that is going to inform
Speaker 1: the way that the Earth is actually shaped, right because
Speaker 1: of that gravitational poll and Saturn's rings those look perfectly circular.
Speaker 1: We look him, right, I mean, it looks like, seriously,
Speaker 1: it looks like, wow, it could not be a perfect rivel.
Speaker 1: It looks to the naked eye as though it is.
Speaker 1: But parts of the ng are bent by the pull
Speaker 1: of gravity from its other moons. So you see this
Speaker 1: at play. And then there's that that burning orb in
Speaker 1: the sky which appears to be a perfect circle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again we've looked at that, for we've worshiped the
Speaker 1: Sun as this perfect disc right, but even our sun,
Speaker 1: which does boast incredible mathematical roundness. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: when when you take into everything into account, it's it
Speaker 1: comes kind of close, but you're still going to see
Speaker 1: a bulge of about ten kilometers at its equator, which
Speaker 1: is very minuscule given the enormous size of our Solar
Speaker 1: system central star. But still there's a bulge there, So
Speaker 1: it falls short of perfection. Now, the next one should
Speaker 1: instill some pride and lebri cons with pots of gold.
Speaker 1: We're talking about rainbows, the arc of a rainbow, which
Speaker 1: according to Adam, is the second closest thing to a
Speaker 1: perfect circle in nature. And of course the rainbow is
Speaker 1: actually a circle, so you're able to see that if
Speaker 1: you're up above in the clouds and you're looking down.
Speaker 1: But because we're on the horizon, we see that arc. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're probably wondering, well, what is what does he think
Speaker 1: is the closest thing we have in nature to do
Speaker 1: a perfect circle? John Adam says, the closest thing ripples
Speaker 1: in the water. Okay, you know, you drop a pebble
Speaker 1: into a pond, a still a pond, and then you
Speaker 1: watch those ripples, uh reverberate out from the center. He says,
Speaker 1: that's that's close. Still not perfect though, Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: said that it doesn't even matter what if the object
Speaker 1: itself is round, it could be square, you could be
Speaker 1: skipping stones, and it could be all sorts of um
Speaker 1: herky jerky in terms of its formations. Eventually, he says
Speaker 1: that those outward spirals will become a kind of perfect circle.
Speaker 1: And one important thing to keep in mind here too,
Speaker 1: that ties in directly to the the idea of drawing
Speaker 1: a perfect circle or you're tracing a perfect circle, is
Speaker 1: that the closer you look at something, it may look
Speaker 1: like it has some level of perfection from an outside
Speaker 1: of you. But if you zoom in, then does that
Speaker 1: line maintain its perfection? Is there is there a maintain
Speaker 1: perfect boundary? And just imagine, you know, a pencil that's
Speaker 1: drawn a circle and you zoom in, what are you
Speaker 1: gonna see when you get closer and closer You're gonna
Speaker 1: see uh, tiny little bits of the pencil core. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a changeability factor here. But I think that's what's
Speaker 1: so interesting again about this kind of ripple effect, because
Speaker 1: it's sort of a zen meditation that you see that
Speaker 1: you see the morphing, you see the circle, you know,
Speaker 1: coming out of this situation, coming out of nothingness. And
Speaker 1: there maybe again there's something really deeply rooted within humans
Speaker 1: to recognize this. Now, speaking of of things within us,
Speaker 1: how about eyes. I mean, we're always looking in the mirror,
Speaker 1: we're looking to the eyes of other people. We're seeing
Speaker 1: those around pupils perfect circle and not a perfect circle.
Speaker 1: All right. Yeah, I'm staring at your eyeball right now,
Speaker 1: and you couldn't look more like a perfect circle the
Speaker 1: the iris itself and the pupil. Of course it's not,
Speaker 1: but it's so pervasive in mammals, right. You see this
Speaker 1: in mammals that are diurnal in other words, active during
Speaker 1: the daytime, and they are shaped that way, those pupils
Speaker 1: to let in the optimal amount of light. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: you start to diverge from this idea of these perfectly
Speaker 1: round pupils when you look at other animals. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's some they're really cool with pupils that look like
Speaker 1: key holes or even hearts. Um. I mean they're not
Speaker 1: actual hearts, but they kind of look like hearts to us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're I really enjoyed looking at these various images of
Speaker 1: animal eyes. I mean, particularly like the goat eye and
Speaker 1: the squid eye are two of my favorites. I love,
Speaker 1: I love a goat. I like the lobster eye too,
Speaker 1: because it's just out there. Now, if you go even smaller,
Speaker 1: you go down to the micro level, we do see
Speaker 1: near perfect roundness of the electron particle. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing here is that the imperfection of that of that
Speaker 1: electron particle actually factors into some of our best theories
Speaker 1: regarding the physical nature of the universe. So simply put,
Speaker 1: without getting you know, into general relativity, getting into general
Speaker 1: relative activity, it improved measuring techniques prove electrons to be
Speaker 1: too perfectly round, then we're forced to cast out some
Speaker 1: of our theories proposing particles beyond those accounted for in
Speaker 1: the standard model. So it's almost almost brings us back
Speaker 1: to that idea of monks putting imperfection into the tapestry.
Speaker 1: There's a certain amount of imperfection that's that's present in
Speaker 1: our understanding of the universe, and if we were to
Speaker 1: determine that that that electrons are more perfect than we
Speaker 1: currently think, it's going to start unraveling some of that
Speaker 1: tapestry we've constructed. Yeah, it kind of opens up a
Speaker 1: whole can of worms when it comes to some of
Speaker 1: the theories. But the reason why they are using that
Speaker 1: electron is because that that imperfection is so very tiny.
Speaker 1: We're talking point zeros one centimeters off from being perfectly round.
Speaker 1: And put in another way, if the electron was magnified
Speaker 1: to the size of the Solar system, it would deviate
Speaker 1: from immaculate rotundity. I love that by a magnitude equivalent
Speaker 1: to a human hair. Alright, well, let's let's head back
Speaker 1: out to the to the macro view of the universe
Speaker 1: for one final example here, and that is the black hole. Yes,
Speaker 1: and there are many scientists that predicted the event horizon
Speaker 1: of a black hole. Again, the event horizon, if you
Speaker 1: don't remember, is that that point at which light cannot
Speaker 1: escape theoretically from the black hole, right, because the gravitational
Speaker 1: force for the sucking is so powerful. Exactly, that is
Speaker 1: just sucking all of that in the same thing has
Speaker 1: been said about the film Event Horizon, but which I
Speaker 1: enjoyed when it came out. I have nothing against fun flip,
Speaker 1: but this makes it difficult to measure any sort of
Speaker 1: data around an event horizon or around a black hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: scientists argue that this event horizon could constitute a perfect
Speaker 1: circle or sphere. But we've have to. We've yet to
Speaker 1: prove that out, and uh, and not everyone is convinced
Speaker 1: we'd find perfection there either. In fact, according to Stephen Hawking,
Speaker 1: as summarized by Daily Galaxy, quantum effects around the black
Speaker 1: hole may cause space time to fluctuate too widely for
Speaker 1: a sharp boundary surface to exist. So, I mean, especially
Speaker 1: with something like a black hole, you're getting into this
Speaker 1: weird idea you're trying to You're trying to find this
Speaker 1: this ideal circle in a thing that is existing in
Speaker 1: a curious state of space and time. Um, can, well,
Speaker 1: can we find it there? Maybe not? Well, it also
Speaker 1: puts an asterisk to this idea that a perfect circle
Speaker 1: doesn't exist in nature because in this mathematical model, it
Speaker 1: has to write could again. But but then it gets
Speaker 1: that you get into the discussion of does a circle
Speaker 1: is a circle something from a mathematical understanding, does it
Speaker 1: exist for an extended period of time? Does exist in
Speaker 1: time and space? Uh? You really get into the deep
Speaker 1: end of trying to to apply this this mathematical model
Speaker 1: of perfection to a universe that seems to have a
Speaker 1: lot of mathematical imperfection in it. All right, let's put
Speaker 1: that back on the shelf for a second and just
Speaker 1: let it sort of reconstitute itself. Um, and go back
Speaker 1: to John Adam, who was writing in a National Geographic
Speaker 1: article about this idea of circles and saying that one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why they're so prevalent in nature is
Speaker 1: because things form circularly, because it's really the most efficient
Speaker 1: way to maximize or even minimize specific processes under certain constraints.
Speaker 1: And in mathematics, he said, a circle allows for the
Speaker 1: greatest area for any given perimeter and the least perimeter
Speaker 1: for any given area, compared to other polygons. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it comes back to the gravity example. As nassas
Speaker 1: is drawn into a point of gravitational attraction like that,
Speaker 1: it's going to form a sphere. It's going to form
Speaker 1: a circle, because that's the most democratic form of of
Speaker 1: of particle assimilation and the most efficient form. Right. So,
Speaker 1: even if you're looking at say a sunflower, and you're
Speaker 1: looking at the middle of it, which appears to be
Speaker 1: a perfect circle, and then you peer in a little
Speaker 1: bit more, you see thousands of more little perfect circles
Speaker 1: comprising that surface area, because this is the most efficient
Speaker 1: way for it to store its energy and to try
Speaker 1: to um live as an organism. Yeah, it's also the easiest.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking it's probably the easiest form to get
Speaker 1: people to form into. You know, you think of children
Speaker 1: in an elementary school environment and the teacher says, all right, everyone,
Speaker 1: form a circle or even a semicircle. That's going to
Speaker 1: be far more an efficient exercise than Okay, let's form
Speaker 1: a square, let's form a triangle, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: it's just easier to to to picture that form in
Speaker 1: our mind and then adhere to it. Well, and there's
Speaker 1: this idea that maybe there's a sort of again deeply
Speaker 1: rooted since at least in humans, that you would congregate
Speaker 1: in that way. And I'm thinking about the study from
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine and Max Plank Institute in which
Speaker 1: they took volunteers and they asked them to walk from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. But this was in the dark,
Speaker 1: there were no navigational cues, and what they found is
Speaker 1: that people over and over again walked in circles. So,
Speaker 1: you know, without these sort of cues around us, that's
Speaker 1: what we do, that that trope. We're walking in circles, right,
Speaker 1: you don't have enough data and what metaphorically point it
Speaker 1: because you end up returning to the place from which
Speaker 1: you left. So right, and then even to go back
Speaker 1: to that sun flour example, if you were to cut
Speaker 1: the stem of that and look at it on a
Speaker 1: cellular level, you would see again that these materials are
Speaker 1: congregating in circular fashions, or what looked to be circular fashions.
Speaker 1: They're not perfect circles, but again, it's the most efficient
Speaker 1: way to transfer energy in this organism. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: more on circles, not only natural circles, but man made circles,
Speaker 1: man made spears. How close did those come to perfection?
Speaker 1: All right, we are back. I'm gonna throw this little
Speaker 1: stat out there. Three ten millions of an inch from perfection.
Speaker 1: What man made object has come so very close to
Speaker 1: a perfect circle? Oh um, the PEPSI logo, target logo. God,
Speaker 1: I'm drawn a blank. Then NASA's courts giroscopic rotor. Yes,
Speaker 1: these were built for NASA's Gravity Probe B spacecraft. And uh,
Speaker 1: these quarts gyros do, in fact standard the most perfect
Speaker 1: man made spheres ever created. Landing less than again, ten
Speaker 1: millions of an inch from perfection, which we created not
Speaker 1: just to show off how amazing we were, but because
Speaker 1: they were necessary too for the inner workings of this
Speaker 1: particular gravity probe. This gravity probe was actually testing the
Speaker 1: theory of general relativity shows up again. So they needed
Speaker 1: again something that was as precise as it possibly could be,
Speaker 1: because being off by anything larger than on one hundred
Speaker 1: billions of a degree every hour would ruin the experiment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's crazy, even when an organization like NASA throws
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's best scientific minds at the problem
Speaker 1: of of creating a perfect circle or a perfect sphere
Speaker 1: can't quite reach perfection on it. No, but the Stanford
Speaker 1: team that worked on the spheres says, only neutron stars
Speaker 1: are more spherical than what they created. There's a little
Speaker 1: boasting there, So there's they're they're saying, well that the
Speaker 1: universe can do a little better, but just barely. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're saying the neutron stars they're showoffie and all with
Speaker 1: their collapsing neus becoming a tighter and tighter ball of
Speaker 1: spherical energy. Alright, well, let's turn then back to the
Speaker 1: word world of mathematics, because that is the only place
Speaker 1: that we're actually finding this perfect circle. And let's discuss
Speaker 1: exactly what it is. Okay. A circle is, of course
Speaker 1: the set of points in a plane that are equal
Speaker 1: distant from a given point. So for a circle to
Speaker 1: be perfect, you need all of those points in the
Speaker 1: circle's circumference to match up exactly. And for all those
Speaker 1: points to match up exactly, you need this precision to
Speaker 1: remain constant no matter how closely you looked the particles,
Speaker 1: the cells, the atoms, and are these points stationary or
Speaker 1: are they in motion? As so you can see where
Speaker 1: the search really becomes maddening because you apply everything we
Speaker 1: just said to that that circle that you traced around
Speaker 1: a soda. Can you apply it to the sign, You
Speaker 1: apply it to the to the electron particle, you will
Speaker 1: apply it to to the human eye, any of these things. Then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look closely enough, are you going to see flux?
Speaker 1: Are you going to see that that disruption in that
Speaker 1: that that never ending line. Yeah, it's a problem because
Speaker 1: in the real world, there's no such thing as a
Speaker 1: mathematical point. There's no such thing as a perfect line
Speaker 1: or perfectly parallel line. Now like an infinitely thin line
Speaker 1: that's that only exists in mathematics, right, which is really
Speaker 1: helpful in mathematics, it's helpful in the realm in which
Speaker 1: you're trying to work out problems of the universe and
Speaker 1: work out theories, uh, or rather you know, in this
Speaker 1: case hypotheses. So that's again this kind of weird area
Speaker 1: where you're saying, well, what is math? Then? Is it real?
Speaker 1: Can it really quantify the uniform universe? Or is it
Speaker 1: just this abstract notion? Well, I guess you could argue
Speaker 1: that that Okay, we've gone into the whole issue of mathematics,
Speaker 1: human creation, and human discovery. Right. Is it the blueprint
Speaker 1: of the universe or a blueprint print we've created to
Speaker 1: make sense of the universe? Is it underlying or something
Speaker 1: we've made to overlye So you could say that in
Speaker 1: uncovering the language of the universe in the form of mathematics,
Speaker 1: we determine we were able to see where you could
Speaker 1: create you could have a more perfect universe mathematically speaking,
Speaker 1: based on the language that's that's present. So the language
Speaker 1: gets this closer to something that is unknowable inherently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or you could say that the language hints at a
Speaker 1: perfect model beyond our own, this realm of forms, right Plato. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so your platon so is pie. Then this platonic ideal
Speaker 1: is Pie a kind of God, an unknowable god, only
Speaker 1: existing in this realm. Yeah, A lot of people would
Speaker 1: probably really be behind that idea, a lot of Pie
Speaker 1: fans out there. But you know what, what it all
Speaker 1: comes down to this circle of learning? Right And actually
Speaker 1: the word encyclopedia literally means the circle of learning. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Yes, it was meant to
Speaker 1: indicate a well rounded education. H but can you ever
Speaker 1: have a perfectly round education? Right? Never, There's always going
Speaker 1: to be a bulge in your education. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: just such a fascinating area of discussion and contemplation. Because
Speaker 1: you know, another example that I was coming back to,
Speaker 1: I posted something on our Facebook page and which which
Speaker 1: has quite a following these days. Yeah, it's such a
Speaker 1: fascinating area of studying and contemplation. Um. Every now and
Speaker 1: then I'll see someone talk about the idea of there
Speaker 1: being a creator in the universe, you know, is there
Speaker 1: is there a god? And uh? And I've seen people
Speaker 1: draw the example to say, well, I see perfection in
Speaker 1: the world around me, and so I know that there
Speaker 1: is a god um, which I don't. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to take anything away from from that rationale
Speaker 1: because it brings us back to that idea of the
Speaker 1: monk with the uh with the tapestry, right being perfections
Speaker 1: in it. Like I mean, just get into linguistic problems
Speaker 1: when we talk about a perfect model of anything, because
Speaker 1: think of like I think of a novel, like a
Speaker 1: perfect novel is not. I mean, there's a certain form
Speaker 1: you could say that is perfect in a novel, but
Speaker 1: even that subjective, but you don't, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want perfect characters within your novel. You want flawed characters
Speaker 1: that give the narrative life. So it's it's really hard
Speaker 1: to to nail down is this universe perfect well, and
Speaker 1: it's maybe not mathematically perfect, but you could argue that
Speaker 1: it is perfect in sort of a I'm an all
Speaker 1: powerful entity. I'm going to make a terrarium in which
Speaker 1: Salamanitors fight each other from my amusement kind of a way. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it all boils down to the individual level though,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about perfection and subjectivity. So I think
Speaker 1: That's why the realm of mathematics is so great when
Speaker 1: it comes to this idea of perfection, because it's an
Speaker 1: agreed upon set of numbers and processes that you can
Speaker 1: come to. And I guess you could still filter it
Speaker 1: at the individual level. However, there's a sort of um
Speaker 1: rhyme and reason to it that is seems more logical
Speaker 1: than just the individual experience anyway. So there you go,
Speaker 1: a crash course in perfection in the idea of a
Speaker 1: perfect circle. Uh, and in the the the very strong
Speaker 1: idea that that there is no such at least in
Speaker 1: this universe outside of the world of mathematics. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it is pie, the culprit of our of our
Speaker 1: angst that we all feel. Yeah, penned on pie. I
Speaker 1: don't think we should. It's a great concept, is great,
Speaker 1: and it's a good dessert. Also round, but not perfectly round. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's never going to right, but you can still enjoy it.
Speaker 1: It's true, all right. You want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, you want to share your thoughts on perfection
Speaker 1: in our universe, in our lives, in our circles. Do
Speaker 1: you have a candidate that you think nails it for
Speaker 1: perfect circles. There's something we've missed here, bring it up.
Speaker 1: We'll discuss it on a future listener mail segment. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, do check us out at stuff to Blow
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Speaker 1: including uh Julie's new information Elevator series, which is just
Speaker 1: wonderfully delightful. Do check that out. And is there another
Speaker 1: way that they can get in touch with us? Maybe
Speaker 1: a more perfect way to a more perfect way. There's
Speaker 1: a perhaps even a circular way of packets tackets of
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