Monday, July 30, 2012

Fathoming Good and Evil

Photo negative of a pool taken underwater by my father ca. 1975
We humans look bilaterally symmetric, but inside we are not. Our hearts and stomachs are not symmetrically balanced, nor is our digestive tract. Bilateral (and higher) symmetry is common in nature and also appears unseen in right and left-handed versions of the same molecules.* We even speak of left and right in politics.

Then there is the symmetry of matter and anti-matter. And the symmetry of good and bad. This is something different altogether. Though the symmetry of matter and anti-matter is as symmetric as a number line, with plus and minus arrayed symmetrically about zero, only one side prevails in the world we know.  I asked a while back:


Who can fathom why matter prevails while the equal and opposite realm of anti-matter remains all but unrealized? 
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*Right and left handed versions of the same molecules are chiral, a word which stems from a Greek word meaning handedness.

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