Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Higgs Boson, Higgs Field?
Originally posted on August 1, 2012
So, really, now they give a high probability to having seen if not the Higgs Boson, then the odd pattern of decay particles it was calculated to generate.. and then what that refers to—this is VERY WEIRD— a "Higgs Field" that pervades the cosmos and without which nothing would be thing-ish, no mass. So I’m not a bit dissuaded from entertaining somewhat neo-Platonic ideas, or David Bohm’s notion of an implicate order: We are only trying to figure out the outer layer of the phenomena, analyzing the metaphoric shadows on the wall in Plato’s allegory of the cave. If we use the history of electricity as an analogy as described in David Bodanis’ book, it suggests that a primary dynamic may have scores of permutations.
Yes, but it was only after decades (centuries!) of analyzing those shadows — the flicker of the firelight, the texture of the rock — that the cave-dwellers were able to notice a few clues that there might be something More.
I appreciate the comment in the recent New Scientist magazine in which the editors noted that what scientists are hoping for with the Higgs is that it will raise lots of new questions — questions that could not properly be asked before. (I’m paraphrasing heavily here.)
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