Lets talk about Size

[brothaice]

The thing I believe most people have a difficult time grasping is the concept of size. I think this is because we can only describe things comparatively, (ie. a watermelon is smaller than a car, a apple is smaller than a watermelon). So what happens when we try to describe the size of the earth? How would you do it? Would you say, "well, it's large because its multiple times over larger than the moon, which is itself large." Or might you say, it is small "because other planets and stars are much bigger." -That’s true, other stars are much bigger, including the Sun. Many known stars are much larger than the Sun even. We know that yellow stars emit a vast amount of light, obviously ours does a pretty good job of lighting up our little section of the galaxy here, which is huge by Earth standards. When we look up at the sky on a clear light, what we see is billions and billions of these stars. Why then isn’t the entirety of the universe illuminated at all times from every direction? We are well aware of the energy that these giants emit. One theory is that the stars are so far away, their light actually hasn't reached us yet. Lets consider this for a moment, if this is true, the distance of these stars must be seemingly immeasurable. With this in mind, this is a picture taken by Voyager I sometime in the 90's:


There we are. Floating along seemingly aimlessly.

Humans boast of being the superior beings in the Universe, without realizing their utter insignificance in the vast stage of the cosmos.

I was just wondering what thoughts this invokes into some of you guys? I would say it's disheartening for sure. But I would argue that's all the more reason to examine something carefully

I wanted to add this quote from a book by Carl Sagan, titled The Pale Blue Dot

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.”

Stephen King also alludes to this theme in the series I am reading of his right now, which may have something to do with why I decided to make this thread.
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[korny]

It's like that one comedian said, America has it all ****ed up with the standard measuring system. Doctors use the metric system, and for most everyone else in the world, they'll know pretty much know how large their 14cm wound is without having the need to have a grapefruit as a comparison. Even still, saying, oh, the earth is about 40,000 kilometers in circumference, is almost like saying oh, at least a million atoms comprise the ball of this pin.

I think about, and have thought about things like this basically since I've had the ability to start thinking for myself. How to put into perspective something so incredibly immense as the universe, our galaxy, even the earth. You really can't do it. I mean, to try to create that sort of model in your head, to have some sort of grasp of the universal perspective, it's impossible. We obviously have math and computers that aim to simulate the size of things, but we will likely never be able to truly grasp the size of larger scale objects while using our normal thinking patterns and modern science alone. Our consciousness itself would have to elevate, to match the perspective you would be trying to share when explaining objects that large. I personally hold an "esoterically scientific" view toward this type of stuff when trying to figure out what the universe means in terms of it's sheer size compared to myself and the world I live in. The universe is indeed vast beyond measure, but the significance of the role you play in the cosmic play is completely up to where you decide to end your search for wholeness.

[Cavernio]

The only way I'd feel challenged by the universe is if it had a mind. Much the same way that if I were to rule over a bunch of rocks it doesn't matter. Make the rocks bigger, much much much bigger, and there's still no difference. People want to own and rule because there are other people who have minds and we interact with those minds.
Of course we only think that things like humans have minds, that we are the epitomy of life. I suspect that that isn't the case, and that perhaps the universe itself is a being with a mind, but don't have anything besides rhetoric to explain the possibility.

[Emanresu13]

Thread title is misleading. Anyway.

My thoughts are based more on insignificance than size. I find it rather comforting, instead of disheartening, that we humans are next to nothing. Instead of looking at it as "no matter what I do, my actions are meaningless", I say "no matter what I do, at least I can't break things". Though, I admit it would be pretty nifty if I did have the power to break things. Nifty, but more responsibility than I'd care to have.

[ScylaX]

Humans boast of being the superior beings in the Universe, without realizing their utter insignificance in the vast stage of the cosmos.

Where the hell do you draw that from ? 16th century is a very remote time from today. The contemporary popular culture rather influenced people to conceptualize the hypothesis of the existence of other civilizated beings (I don't think the average peasant of the 8th century thought about that), not talking about their perpetual hypothetical technological advance on us. Even though it's reduced to a paradigm of "fiction" and that the doxa kind of rather thinks we're alone in the universe because how most of the speculations over extraterrestrial beings come from work of fictions, making a critic of that very specific "feeling of superiority" feels just like making a critic of the doxa and it would be critically healthier to quarter this to the doxa. I think a good part of astronomers, philosophers, writers, physicians and other intellectuals in the History of humanity talked about that special feeling of "littleness" when compared to the whole mess of the universe.

Freud said that the Copernician Revolution all along some other discoveries (such as the objective proofs that supported the darwinism) in the history consisted in a narcissitic injury for the history of mankind and that it could make the reasons of why people had a hard time to accept these positions a bit more understandable.
The way you have to talk about it seems rather inconsistent to me.

I like Sagan a lot but this quote's quite delusive to me, because that guy can be one hell of a sophist sometimes and his view of the History seems really biased to me.
Thinking eventually about how physically meaningless the Earth can be compared to the whole universe we're all living in can make you perceive how History flowed as a... whole continuity of physical phenomena. The gravity of any physical phenomenon can appear to be very much trivial when you have in mind the whole greatness of space. But that would be neglecting something fundamental. My phrases may be approximative but I want to insist on the concept of "physical point of view" Sagan is having.

Blood, in the History of mankind, wasn't spilled for mere physical reasons or solely motivated by egoistical intentions linked to the idea of a sort of hybris where men in the end just wanted to possess the world somehow. The idea is not about that wrong point of view Sagan seems to imply that considering the Earth as the "only" world in the paradigm of that time was used as a reason to justify horrors that happened in the History of mankind. The littleness of the Earth would be a good reason to refutate that illegitimate justification of History in that case but I really don't think postulating that kind of thing gives a good idea of the plethora of intrications that explain why War happened and why horrors happened too.

All in all I think it's all about people wanting to live the best they can in a world they could question. War isn't just a matter of power and domination, it's also about ideologies, cultural tensions (remember ! We live in a culture before all ! Culture is the human environment and I think this goes ahead of the nature in the "human reality" ; this actually is our home, it conditionates us, it determines us, and it leads us to conceptualize the world from cultural factors before all, that's why you just can't call on "natural" reasons to explain of how absurd the history was from a natural point of view), geopolitical advantages for the welfare of a state and so on. Saying it was just a matter of zealous people that considered themselves to be the chosen people would be a straw man. The conflicts in the civilizations weren't just the cause of ideologies linked to an absolute superiority of the man. I find that critic very, very limited.

The conscience of the greatness of the universe plays a minor influence in the way history will go on politically, because you can't use the "size" and anything relating to what Sagan says as arguments. And I don't think that consciousness of the size really has a critical/logical role in the formulation of arguments related to how the history is going on, you don't need to be conscious of that to get inspired by the feeling of absurdity of wars, and take distance from how cruel the civilization can get. Of course it has an artistic and poetic value, but this is out of what I'm trying to talk about : you can't just say "hey look ! matter of size and all !" and calm political tensions or whatever. Hence my use of the "culture" word.
I'm not saying his attack is false, I'm saying it's really inconsistent by neglecting a plethora of interesting points that make the history of civilization so complex and not so... whimsical.

[iironiic]

I believe that the subjectivity of our interpretation of size generally is dependent on our overall perspective. Surely, we all say that Earth is huge simply because most of our subjective interpretations stem from ourselves. Similarly we relate to ourselves based on our ability to perform certain patterns on the keyboard and determine whether a file is easy or not so easy on FFR. Of course subjectivity is highly biased for obvious reasons. Perhaps this is why you claim that humans are characterized for "being the superior beings in the Universe." With the perspective of the universe, Earth is just one relatively minuscule mass floating in essentially an open field of emptiness.

Basically, we cannot objectively measure size because regardless of the perspective, subjectivity plays as the fundamental source in determining the size of an object. With high probability, one would simply claim that the Earth is humongous relative to ourselves and minuscule relative to the entirety of the Universe. The variation occurs more frequently when we discuss about the size of something "equally as big" as us. How do we determine if one is "skinny" or not? This is when subjectivity plays a bigger role in our characterization of size.

[Emanresu13]

Originally Posted by ScylaX

you can't just say "hey look ! matter of size and all !" and calm political tensions

While this is certainly the case, I feel it shouldn't be. I think we'd all be better off if people really grasped the scope of things. Wasting time and resources on war is pretty silly.

Originally Posted by ScylaX

history of civilization so complex and not so... whimsical.

It seems pretty whimsical, to me. Humans already have more responsibility and freedom than any other entities we know of, but we squander it on trivial stuff.

[ScylaX]

"but we squander it on trivial stuff."
What ? Eh ? Seriously ?
That's a parodic interpretation of history, there. You have to actually think about why some countries get involved in endless conflicts. I don't think people chose to suffer because of trivial stuffs. There's generally severe factors linked to that. If you consider the reasons to be trivial I'd like you to justify your point of view and bring arguments.

[brothaice]

Originally Posted by ScylaX

"but we squander it on trivial stuff."
What ? Eh ? Seriously ?
That's a parodic interpretation of history, there. You have to actually think about why some countries get involved in endless conflicts. I don't think people chose to suffer because of trivial stuffs. There's generally severe factors linked to that. If you consider the reasons to be trivial I'd like you to justify your point of view and bring arguments.

Ok this is my fault. I guess I was a little misleading with the thread.

My point is, that no matter how you slice or justify anything anyone has ever done, no matter how you interpret history, you could say that it was and will always be (for however long there are humans) ultimately worthless.

Don't forget: In comparison of the lifetime of the earth to how long humans have been around we haven't been around for very long (a few million years versus a few billion). So human extinction would actually be the normalcy.

Nothing any person does will change that, in the end.

So I wanted to see, in light of this, where people derive the meaning of their existence.

Also: I wasn't familiar with Sagan's other work prior to posting, so I couldn't properly speculate on that.