I’m reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage and came across this today (page 125 of the edition I have).
There are many times when the idea that there is indeed a pattern seems absurd wishful thinking. Random events abound. There is much in life that seems meaningless. And then, when I can see no evidence of meaning, some glimpse is given which reveals the strange weaving of purposefulness and beauty.
The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.
Not that many of us think much about particles and waves but since I read that cloud book…
I love this quote. I’ve always liked Madeline L’Engle.
Lovely quote, and yet another reason why I so enjoy L’Engle! I have long embraced that sort of comfort with the unexplainable in our universe. I’ve never understood the need to claim absolute knowledge of things so vast and complex.
Randomness… within defined rules
Without randomness, the most complex creation is still an automaton (sp?).