You know, I was thinking earlier today that I seem to enjoy finding situations of increasing complexity. But then I came to the thought that perhaps all human interactions are incredibly complex. Just that with experience comes the ability to discern the minutiae that creates the texture of those interactions.
For example, being able to identify a single broad brush stroke in a painting, but bit by bit seeing each one for what it is, until you begin to see more of a composite image out of these individual brush strokes. You start to make out the lines that together define a tree trunk. Eventually a horizon comes into view. Elements of the sky come into focus. In the end, you might get a glimpse of the whole painting.
So then it wouldn't be so much that the situations are more complex as it is that I have a better grip on what is actually going on. Not really a bad thing at all.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Another silly chemistry metaphor.
I don't remember what exactly got me to thinking about this. Yet somewhere I got an idea in my head for a metaphor to describe emotional states. Oh. Yeah. Now I remember what it was that I was thinking about. But I'll just gloss over that ...
So here we go. Let's start with some basic chemistry first. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Nuclei have a set composition at least to a certain degree. The number of protons determines what element you have, and neutrons the isotope. So maybe I could try to fit radioactivity in here but I won't. This is going to get stretched pretty thinly as it stands.
Electrons are generally more interesting, as they are heavily involved in chemical reactions. Like emotions and human interactions. In a neutral atom the number of electrons is equal to the number of protons. Pretty elementary. The electrons, however, are not clustered in one spot like like the other particles in the nucleus. Instead they wander about probability clouds, or orbitals.
If you do the math, the probability of finding a single electron around a single proton (a hydrogen atom) can be mapped out, and we end up with a sphere. So there's the first orbital. And two electrons with opposite spins can reside there happily, but when you add a third you end up with a new orbital. Also a sphere, but larger and there are locations where you won't find that third (and fourth) electron. The next orbital holds up to six and actually resembles lobes along an x-, y- and z-axis. Point being, the orbitals get more complex and more importantly, they fill in a specific order.
The reason they fill in a specific order is due to the energy state of the orbital. Lowest energy states fill first, because that's the natural order of things. All things being equal, things tend toward the lowest energy state. Furthermore these energy states are quantized. We can give discrete energy values to each orbital and there is no in between. So we can measure how much energy an electron absorbs or emits if it jumps from one orbital to another.
Now emotions can't be quantized. At least not in the sense that I can tell you that I feel x number of units of affection for this person but I feel y units of love toward this other person. We do qualify our emotions, however, with descriptors that attempt to identify the degree of an emotional state. You might go from "I like you" to "I like you very much" and eventually to "I love you". And so on. Sure, we could discuss context as well, but I'll assume that's mandatory for communication between two or more people. Here I'm thinking in terms of measuring just myself, so I can provide my own context for my qualifiers. An emotional particle in a box, if you will.
I suppose I always thought of emotions developing gradually over time. But it seems to me that the onset is so rapid, that often a new state is achieved through some combination of experience and rationalization. Okay, so your mileage may vary. But it would generally follow that to achieve a "higher energy" emotional state, say to fall in love with someone, then the previous "orbitals" need to be filled in order to have a stable emotional state. What causes these to be filled can vary. An environmental trigger. Something he or she said or did. The possible factors are numerous.
Let's return to the atom for a moment. It is possible for a photon to come along and hit our electron, causing it to absorb a specific amount of energy thus exciting it and causing it to jump to another orbital. We actually observe this on a daily basis. When the electron returns to its original state another photon is emitted, and depending on how the energy is conserved it can be of a different wavelength. This is used in fluorescent light bulbs. Phosphorescence is a slower decay. But back to our person.
So something out of the ordinary happens to this person. And there's a jump in emotional states. But because the excitation is temporary, because there isn't a stable shell, this emotional state is bound to return to its ground state. But we as humans don't fluoresce or phosphoresce or such. The energy still has to go somewhere though. An outburst. An abnormal change in emotional state. Something cathartic might alleviate that perhaps.
So here we go. Let's start with some basic chemistry first. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Nuclei have a set composition at least to a certain degree. The number of protons determines what element you have, and neutrons the isotope. So maybe I could try to fit radioactivity in here but I won't. This is going to get stretched pretty thinly as it stands.
Electrons are generally more interesting, as they are heavily involved in chemical reactions. Like emotions and human interactions. In a neutral atom the number of electrons is equal to the number of protons. Pretty elementary. The electrons, however, are not clustered in one spot like like the other particles in the nucleus. Instead they wander about probability clouds, or orbitals.
If you do the math, the probability of finding a single electron around a single proton (a hydrogen atom) can be mapped out, and we end up with a sphere. So there's the first orbital. And two electrons with opposite spins can reside there happily, but when you add a third you end up with a new orbital. Also a sphere, but larger and there are locations where you won't find that third (and fourth) electron. The next orbital holds up to six and actually resembles lobes along an x-, y- and z-axis. Point being, the orbitals get more complex and more importantly, they fill in a specific order.
The reason they fill in a specific order is due to the energy state of the orbital. Lowest energy states fill first, because that's the natural order of things. All things being equal, things tend toward the lowest energy state. Furthermore these energy states are quantized. We can give discrete energy values to each orbital and there is no in between. So we can measure how much energy an electron absorbs or emits if it jumps from one orbital to another.
Now emotions can't be quantized. At least not in the sense that I can tell you that I feel x number of units of affection for this person but I feel y units of love toward this other person. We do qualify our emotions, however, with descriptors that attempt to identify the degree of an emotional state. You might go from "I like you" to "I like you very much" and eventually to "I love you". And so on. Sure, we could discuss context as well, but I'll assume that's mandatory for communication between two or more people. Here I'm thinking in terms of measuring just myself, so I can provide my own context for my qualifiers. An emotional particle in a box, if you will.
I suppose I always thought of emotions developing gradually over time. But it seems to me that the onset is so rapid, that often a new state is achieved through some combination of experience and rationalization. Okay, so your mileage may vary. But it would generally follow that to achieve a "higher energy" emotional state, say to fall in love with someone, then the previous "orbitals" need to be filled in order to have a stable emotional state. What causes these to be filled can vary. An environmental trigger. Something he or she said or did. The possible factors are numerous.
Let's return to the atom for a moment. It is possible for a photon to come along and hit our electron, causing it to absorb a specific amount of energy thus exciting it and causing it to jump to another orbital. We actually observe this on a daily basis. When the electron returns to its original state another photon is emitted, and depending on how the energy is conserved it can be of a different wavelength. This is used in fluorescent light bulbs. Phosphorescence is a slower decay. But back to our person.
So something out of the ordinary happens to this person. And there's a jump in emotional states. But because the excitation is temporary, because there isn't a stable shell, this emotional state is bound to return to its ground state. But we as humans don't fluoresce or phosphoresce or such. The energy still has to go somewhere though. An outburst. An abnormal change in emotional state. Something cathartic might alleviate that perhaps.
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