{"id":11467,"date":"2022-11-07T01:19:11","date_gmt":"2022-11-07T06:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=11467"},"modified":"2022-11-07T01:19:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T06:19:11","slug":"priests-and-philosophers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=11467","title":{"rendered":"Priests and philosophers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often, I am presented with questions about physics that go beyond physics: philosophical questions of an existential nature, such as the reasons why the universe has certain properties, or the meaning of existence in light of the far future.<\/p>\n<p>I usually evade such questions by pointing out that they represent the domain of priests or philosophers, not physicists. I do not mean this disparagingly; rather, it is a recognition of the fact that physics is about <em>how<\/em> the universe works, not why, nor what it all means for us humans.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, I came across a wonderful 1915 painting by Russian avant-garde painter <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lyubov_Popova\">Lyubov Popova<\/a>, entitled <em>Portrait of a Philosopher<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11469\" src=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Lyubov-Popova-Portret-Philosopha-1915.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"599\" height=\"821\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Lyubov-Popova-Portret-Philosopha-1915.jpg 599w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Lyubov-Popova-Portret-Philosopha-1915-219x300.jpg 219w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>What can I say? This painting sums up how I feel perfectly.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=11467' send='false' layout='button_count' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often, I am presented with questions about physics that go beyond physics: philosophical questions of an existential nature, such as the reasons why the universe has certain properties, or the meaning of existence in light of the far future. I usually evade such questions by pointing out that they represent the domain of <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=11467' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-physics","category-35-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11472,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11467\/revisions\/11472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}