Word: conceptive
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Quantum physics demolishes the conventional concept of time in its own peculiar ways. Measured at short enough durations, space-time loses its apparently smooth, continuous structure, devolving into what Princeton physicist John Wheeler calls "quantum foam." The orderly flow of events may really be as much an illusion as the flickering frames of a movie. And according to independent physicist Barbour's new book, even the apparent sequence of the flickers is illusory...
...observatory director Kristen Lippencott, who put together the British exhibition: "Time is not the thing on our wrists. Time is a cultural object." For many outside the Western European tradition, for instance, time is a circle that turns on a daily, yearly and even a cosmic scale. The Hindu concept of reincarnation is perhaps the most familiar example, but the Hopi in the American Southwest and the Inuit in the Arctic also look at the world as a series of repeating cycles with no beginning or end; so, traditionally, did the Chinese and Japanese cultures...
...physicists, then, time is an exceedingly complex and slippery concept. No wonder St. Augustine couldn't explain it. But when the month, the year, the century and the millennium end next week, it's a fair bet that theoretical physicists, like the rest of us, will be partying to welcome in the year 2000--whether it really exists...
Richard Eyre, father of nine and author of Teaching Our Children Values, says he introduced the concept of "real/imaginary" to his children when they were little. "The birth of Jesus is real/real," he says. "It's an actual historical event that we celebrate. Invisible friends are imaginary/imaginary. Santa Claus is real/imaginary. He's in-between." Eyre says his kids were relieved to be offered an option of believing in the spirit of Christmas without having to be too literal about Santa Claus, and that the tradition of real/imaginary has been passed on to his grandchildren...
Thank you for your article about the self-sterilizing "terminator" seed and the bioengineering of the foods we eat [TRADE WARS, Nov. 29]. The concept science has created is both fascinating and scary. Fascinating because new varieties of plants could help decrease the need for pesticides and herbicides. They could also boost food production. Scary because the scientists can't truthfully tell us what the consequences of eating this food might be. They don't know what will happen when wild crops are cross-pollinated by bioengineered crops. People have the right to know what is in the food they...