And The Universe Laughed Back

In this post I'm going to have a little fun with an item I saved a while back and came across again recently. You must understand that I don't take myself or my views about the universe all that seriously. I don't believe it is wise to. Nevertheless, I do have views, and I realize they aren't so conventional (which isn't to suggest a single one of my ideas are original).

 

If you've read my blogs for very long know you know I have this suspicion that back of all reality is mind. Maybe I should have typed that Mind. To the extent I believe in what most people call God, I think of it as Mind. This Cosmic Mind (in my way of thinking) is what makes this whole shebang tick.

 

Or maybe not. I certainly wouldn't fall out with those who just can't (or won't) accept that.

 

Anyway, here is a little anecdote about the eighteenth-century Astronomer Royal (the first such Astronomer Royal, in fact, and cataloguer of over 3000 stars) John Flamsteed. This comes from another astronomer, Prof. Richard A. Proctor, as found on page 195  of his old book Chance and Luck: A Discussion of the Laws of Luck, Coincidences, Wagers, Lotteries, And The Fallacies Of Gambling:

 

An old woman came to Flamsteed, the first Astronomer-Royal, to ask him whereabouts a certain bundle of linen might be, which she had lost. Flamsteed determined to show the folly of that belief in astrology which had led her to Greenwich Observatory (under some misapprehension as to the duties of an Astronomer-Royal). He drew a circle, put a square into it, and gravely pointed out a ditch, near her cottage, in which he said it would be found. He then waited until she should come back disappointed, and in a fit frame of mind to receive the rebuke he intended for her; but she came back in great delight, with the bundle in her hand, found in the very place.

 

Don't you hate when that happens? Here the highly rational and knowledgeable (for his time) Flamsteed wanted to teach this gullible old woman a lesson about superstition, only to end up seemingly confirming it. And the universe laughed back. Maybe the Cosmic Mind is a bit of a trickster.

 

(For the record, I would have been with Flamsteed on this; still I would have had to laugh, and do today.)