Philosophy

Lucie went on a philosophical tear in the kitchen last night. I can’t recreate it, but it was an intelligent and passionate attempt to express the inexpressible, and it filled me with love and pride.

It started with my talking about something, and Lucie having that weird experience of the opacity of language (a common experience for her). “Words are just sounds. That’s all they are – just sounds.” I said something like, “Yes, isn’t language amazing, how through making sounds we can communicate our thoughts to each other.” Then she just went off on every unanswerable question. “Why is there anything? I mean, WHY is the universe here? How did it get here? And what about time? Time isn’t ANYTHING, but we’re IN IT…” We talked about how time is a measure of something relative to something else, a measure of change or passage, and Lucie insisted that time has to have been here forever. I mentioned that the author of the book I am reading argues that time precedes existence, and that led to her trying to describe the impossibility of nothingness, with tears in her eyes. It was all very cosmic, and I wish I had a transcript.

Tony sent Lucie an intelligent book about philosophy for children, which I haven’t read to her yet. It is time to pull that out, I think.

I am currently reading Ilya Prigogine’s The End of Certainty, in which he explains his work to introduce the arrow of time into classical dynamics and quantum mechanics. He uses Poincare’s discovery that resonances in physical systems lead to nonintegrable equations in classical dynamics as a starting point for arguing that a statistical description of these systems, rather than a trajectory-based description, is fundamental. He argues that a probabilistic description of nature is not the result of a lack of knowledge or precision of measurement on our part, but the only possible description of our evolving universe, and that determinism is therefore untenable. I still don’t get this, but maybe Lucie will be able to explain it to me one day.

Music and yacaputas

We had a fun time on July 5th with some of our friends. There was a guitar-uke jam session followed by an amazing yacaputas performance.

Beach trip

We recently spent a week at the beach with Nini, Nana, Papa, and Uncle Brian. Here are some highlights; more pictures are in the Boo Blog Annex.


Lucie worked on word puzzles Nana brought her.


Milo's favorite pastime was throwing things off of the deck -- shells, toys, sand, shoes... He also released Papa's favorite Star Wars kite.


Of course we took a trip to Southport and ate at the Provision Company.








Lucie got a hermit crab. I wasn't really in favor of this purchase, and tried to talk her out of it, but she's been wanting one for a long time. I never got around to researching where these crabs are harvested from, and whether or not this trade is damaging ecosystems somewhere.


Milo got a crab, too. Lucie's is named Mr. Crabs. Milo's is named Buster Crab.


The kids entertained us with lively renditions of "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "The Big Red Car."


We took a trip to the arcade. Nana won the jackpot playing Wheel of Fortune.




Uncle Brian treated us to Buster Keaton movies and Mad Monster Party? What a wacky movie. Milo had to watch it about four times.




The beach was not conducive to playing wiffle ball.




See you next year?