Like angels on the head of a pin...

"I look across the vastness of space and the countless stars contained inside endless galaxies, and I have to stop and wonder if, maybe, the molecules in my body believe themselves to be universes, too."

Probably not one of my most Earth shattering, revelations, but note worthy, none the less, in consideration of time, space, and the vastness of existence yet delved by human endeavour.

In the grand scheme of things, we, as humans - presumably the greatest species in all existence (A conceit, I know.), tend to look upon the planets, stars, and galaxies and see the top of the scale. Sure, we have no problem mixing our way down through cells, molecules, and into particles, quarks, and such; accepting that we will always find something smaller still. Each new building block of existence is excepted, after a time, quite well. We may not, at the time, understand the play of forces happening at that level, but we continue to dig.

Perhaps that is because looking down, at the smaller, is so much easier than looking up, toward the larger...

I won't be the first, here, to propose the idea of the infinite scale. Nor will I be the last. However, I tend to marvel, a lot, actually, at how our planetary system looks like an atom. In fact, the whole of the Milky Way could be seen to be a cluster of interacting atoms, more commonly referred to as a molecule.

If this were to be true, what ways could this bend our understanding of existence? How would we redefine the forces of nature as we understood them? How would we view and value our own selves? Atom smashing? What scale of genocide would that be? How could we, in turn, reach out toward our host universe as we would, inevitably have to reach into the tiny guest universes harboring within all matter?

Bigger still would come the philosophical musings that could tear at the very fabric of the spiritual...

In The Gunslinger, by Stephen King, Roland is a lone gunman at the end of his world. Toward the conclusion of book one he meets an old sage that takes him on a vision quest. He leaves the vibrational world he exists on and, eventually, moves away from his universe to see its place in the grand scheme; a molecule in a purple blade of grass in a vacant lot that's about to be cleared for a building.

Location, location, location...

When Roland returns to himself the sage then asks him to consider "God". For, if he truly is the maker of all things, is he the maker of all things there, too? And to all the levels below us, as well? He is then left to consider the nature of a creator who creates to an infinite level.

And, in such the same way, I now must ask you to do the same. Perhaps not in as much as the mythical, but, at least, in the terms of the cosmical. After all, what part we, to be trapped in that blade of grass? Or, still, to lord over existences untold as he splice apart matter in a vain search for our own minute understanding of space.



Where are we, now, if the universe is no longer distances to stars, but distances through scale?