Capacity of the Mind

"Modern science tells us that the information storage capacity of the human brain is many orders of magnitude greater than the amount of information in the physical universe, so the idea is in principle quite sound."


This quote from The School of Night floored me.  Well not quite but it definitely got an eyebrow raise.  As an English major I love and respect many works of art (literature, music, or otherwise).  But something that I consider to be a side interest is theoretical physics and astrophysics  and the implications that this subject has on philosophy, literature, and how we view the human condition.  I have a very basic understanding of science from high school and some college courses,  and consider myself to to be an amateur spectator of what happens in the science world (especially since I did NOT want to become a participant and colleague in the world of physics).  

What I would like to do in this post is to put into perspective the implications of the statement by Frederick Turner listed above. But before I get to the amount of information in the physical universe I will start with the speed of light.  The speed of light is approximately 300 million meters per second squared (671 million miles per hour) and it takes approximately 8 seconds for light to travel from our sun to earth (93 million miles).  Now the speed of light is extremely fast and is even difficult to comprehend.  But the understanding of that speed is a stepping stone to understanding the size of the universe.  The nearest star to us currently is called Proxima Centauri and it takes the very same light of our sun that takes 8 minutes to travel to earth 4.2 years to travel to this star.  4.2 YEARS!!!  If you were to walk around the world and not stop once it would take you approximately 1 year to walk completely around the world.  I can't imagine going on any trip that would take 1 year let alone 4.2 years, and light travels millions of times faster than we walk.  Furthermore it takes light 100,000 years to travel across just our galaxy and  2.5 million years to travel to the Milky Way's sister galaxy Andromeda.  2.5 million years ago our race did not exist and the first of our believed ancestors in the genus Homo who were known as Homo Habilis were just starting their journey as a new species.
Here is a picture of what Homo Habilis is believed to have looked like:

So this means that light that our scientists can pick up coming from Andromeda today first left the galaxy when this species above was just getting it's start on our now shrinking earth (they were the first species ever to use stone tools).  Homo Sapiens as a species has only been around for 200,000 years.  

Are you lost yet as to how vast the universe is? Do you want me to continue to expand on the vast nature of Turner's statement? Well too bad 'cause I'm going to.

After the distance between our galaxy and Andromeda the numbers become more and more unbelievable and   difficult to comprehend as we venture out into the rest of the universe.  I could sit here and list ways to attempt to understand them but it isn't necessary and I've probably already lost over 3/4 of anybody reading this.  So what I will do for the 1/4 of those still reading is list the distance to the edge of the universe and compare the amount of stars in our galaxy with the amount of galaxies in the universe.

Distance across the Observable Universe: 

46 billion light years (light year = the distance of one year of traveling light)

This stat is somewhat unsure by me and also by anybody considering the Universe.

Amount of Stars in Milky Way:                                      

200 - 400 billion  STARS

Amount of Galaxies in the Universe:

100 - 500 billion GALAXIES

There are possibly the same amount of galaxies in the universe as there are stars in the Milky Way?!?!  I don't even know how to begin to comprehend that, while astrophysicists are trying to come up with a theory that can relate the Big Bang and everything that we know in the PHYSICAL UNIVERSE all together in a comprehensive manner (more on this later).  So here we are with a conceptual framework of the 'amount of information in the physical universe' as stated by Turner.  What do we do with that now?  Is he right? And if so how do we rethink 'the world against a feather'? Personally I question whether or not it is possible to hold that amount of information in the brain, but I'm no scientist, and I don't know where Turner received his information.  But what I do know is that throughout the Universe there is a great amount of open space and even a great amount of open space throughout galaxies.  And so suddenly the amount of the 'physical universe' becomes much smaller than my previously stated conceptual framework (not counting dark matter and dark energy).  And if you consider what humans can remember as far as historical contexts of stories 2000 years prior to their existence simply by the imperfect nature of communication, Turner's statement becomes more and more conceivable.

Anyways at this point I've probably completely lost every person in my class, but what I would like to consider this semester and what was inspired by The School of Night article, is the implications of the relation of science (especially theoretical physics and astrophysics) to that of 'Mything Shakespeare'.  I'm not saying that this is the topic I would like to pursue for my paper (who knows maybe I am), but what I am saying is that I think this subject to be interesting and even important to the consideration of literature and the human condition, and that you can expect at least some further explication of science creeping its way into my blog.  And furthermore I challenge each of you to possibly begin bringing this relation of science and literature to attention in your own considerations of everything you believe and do in our humanities driven area of study.