A Brief History of Change

By Patricia Yunghanns

Each day nature persists in its existence, it survives as flexible to present change and eventual changes.

A Brief History of Change richly informs the reader regarding the historical evolution of concepts emanating from physics-based around matter and energy while framing the narrative in a thought-provoking professor to student email for

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781641117029

Patricia Yunghanns

Patricia Yunghanns is an author who writes about science and philosophy in the form of fiction with the unique perspective of evolutionary history. She has lived on the island of Palm Beach for the past two decades.

Book preview

ON A BEGINNING

Nothing happens until something moves.

—Einstein

After one semester in college, at the age of eighteen, I decided to take a journey as far around the world as possible, in search of wisdom. For me, the idea of traveling for forty days and forty nights would resemble more a journey taken by a religious figure such as Jesus or Buddhism's founder, Siddhartha, during his path to enlightenment. I knew that I wanted to be a philosopher. I had taken Philosophy 101 that first semester, where I had read about Plato's story of the cave, and I was introduced to Greek and Roman history. Actually, I had read all of the most well-known philosophers before I had even entered college, and I felt as though I knew them all.

My philosophy teacher, Professor Rousseau, had traveled for one year between his undergraduate and graduate studies. Rousseau encouraged me to follow my heartfelt desire and travel. With Rousseau's help, I was able to arrange a hiatus from my studies under rather favorable conditions. I would send Rousseau all my thoughts, and if he believed that my thoughts were profound enough or simply interesting enough, he would give me a place on his research team at the end of my adventure. This meant that I would skip my remaining three years of undergraduate studies and return to an automatic place at the Ivy League university's graduate school in philosophy. I was to write him once a week in a manner that related to the field of philosophy. Rousseau required that I write in a way that would allow him to share my writings with his first-semester undergraduate students if he so wished. I understood this to mean that these freshman students would more than likely take his class for credits to fulfill the humanities requirements for their bachelor's degrees rather than take the class as a subject toward degrees in philosophy. I understood this to mean that I should stay away from philosophy jargon.

I had missed many of the experiences that first-year college students were having. For example, rather than work during the summer before entering college, I spent the summer visiting friends up north. Now, at the end of the fall term, I would spend the holidays with my family in Florida rather than serve tables to earn spending money for my trip or to pay for my airline ticket. In fact, my great-grandfather had built a vast fortune from land ownership. By the time I was ready for my trip, I was able to rely on the income that my family was still receiving from the rents and leases, which the remainder of my family's estate continued to generate.

In January, just after our New Year's celebration, I left Miami International Airport to catch my flight for New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. I had bought my ticket from a student-discount travel agency. From New York, it took me six hours to arrive at London's Heathrow Airport. From the airport, I took a bus into London, where I stayed at a student hostel near Oxford Street. I stayed in a shared room because it was three times cheaper than a single room. I navigated around the youth hostel as if it were familiar to me. The digital key for my room and other areas of the building made it seem more like New York than Europe.

I had ordered a budget guide for London and had selected the must-see items prior to my arrival. First, I knew I needed to visit the Tate Modern, the Tate Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, and, the National Gallery. I had also selected Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park.

I intended to visit Madame Tussauds and observe replicas of what are considered some of the most famous and influential individuals in society. The list includes musicians, singers of popular music, and a wide range of other entertainers including show-business individuals and athletes. However, I used my first day for a trip to Stonehenge, in Wiltshire.

At the end of my trip to Stonehenge and return to London, I stayed up all night. Using the light from my computer. I wrote my first electronic message to Professor Rousseau and sent if off just before jumping out of bed.

Subject: My Visit to Stonehenge

Dear Professor Rousseau,

This is Derrida Erasmus who is taking the year off to travel. Thank you so much for the opportunity you have extended to me. I left a note for you on Mrs. Maxwell's desk in the front office of the Philosophy Department, at the end of term. I realized later that I did not write your name on the envelope, and I am not sure if you received it. I am now sending you my first message from England.

From my trip to England thus far, there is item which most conspicuously stood out for me: Stonehenge.

In all sincerity, I feel privileged to have witnessed the prehistoric monument and one of UNESCO's world heritage sites. It is believed that Stonehenge was built by pre-historic humans between five thousand and four thousand years ago and surpasses the age of our recorded history. Stonehenge is a structure comprised of a circular ring and erected with stones; each stone reaches toward the sky and is about thirteen feet high. In fact, each stone is about seven feet wide and weighs about twenty-five tons. How could it have been possible for humans to build such a structure so long ago? I saw and felt, in Stonehenge, the beauty of the human being. I thought of my Christian God, and I thought of thinkers ranging from Rabelais to Montesquieu. I began reasoning with the assumption that as man created all of society, he also created Stonehenge as part of his environment. For even the trees that I saw in England existed where they did because man decided they would remain. I found myself thinking that just as man had decided that he would create Stonehenge, he chose to remove trees, even when out of necessity, for the wood they provided; it was his decision as to which trees would go and which would stay. By the time he began constructing cities, his choice in the matter had become evident, with the presence of design specialists who officially dictated even where trees should be added. Across the planet, he had decided that he wanted trees for the aesthetics of their presence.

For me, under the marvel of Stonehenge, it was not so much the physical nature of society that bewildered me. For it is simple enough for me to realize that roads exist and that roads exist where they do because man chose those spots and constructed every road. I could imagine that man did so first by simply clearing the space to eventually use substances such as tar to build the space up for the convenience, comfort, and efficiency for man's means of travel. I also imagined very simply that man created houses, and he turned caves into dwellings. He turned snow into dwellings of igloos; he used mud and he used branches from trees. Depending on the material he had available in his space, he built his societies' communities.

However, after all the reading I have done and all my contemplation vis-à-vis Stonehenge, I now feel somewhat confounded by it all. I cannot seem to merge the ideas of past great men and what I have come to understand of Stonehenge.

Please help me to train my thirst and inform me, if I might ask.

Your humble student, Derrida Erasmus

The opportunity Professor Rousseau offered me to complete both my undergraduate and graduate studies at an Ivy League institution is immeasurable in my mind. I had always dreamed of studying only within the ancient walls of one our eight Ivy League universities. This dream of mine must have increased the sensations I felt being in England. For these institutions are virtual replicas of the great European institutions we recognize in travel brochures. Just experiencing Stonehenge seemed somewhat overwhelming. For one thing, I imagine humans being so much shorter than we are today, and we actually were significantly shorter. There was such wonder in the experience itself. It was almost as if I could feel the power and might of those who had toiled to build such a monumental structure. I suppose the feeling I had was similar to feeling as if I were a part of the energy of those who had constructed Stonehenge those thousands of years ago.

Now, I was preparing to leave the student hostel, for the day, when Professor Rousseau responded. He announced that he would gladly help me with my enlightenment, as he had promised. However, I would have to pledge that I would never divulge he messages while he was alive. I promptly acquiesced to Rousseau's request and replied instantly. Yet, Professor Rousseau responded forthwith that he would consider and write back to me. At that moment, I felt a sense of urgency consuming me. For me, there was nothing left for consideration unless he had decided to change his mind. Without delay, I sent Rousseau a message telling him that I would not only agree to honoring his request, but I swore to absolute secrecy on my life. At the end of our messaging session, we had agreed to what became our enlightenment pact. I committed to respecting Rousseau's wishes while he was alive. His last words were that he would use his writings to me as a means of personal reflection rather than a literary work to be shared with others. I am not sure that I understood what he meant by just a means of personal reflection. Well, I was not prepared to enquire. After all, Professor Rousseau had granted my wish.

Our pact sealed, I received my inaugural enlightenment message from Rousseau. His response follows:

Subject: On the Job of the Philosopher

Dear Derrida,

In responding to your quest for wisdom, I am delighted to have the opportunity to engage in such reflection. For reflection does not equate to the action of man; reflection is merely an intellectual exercise analogous to the stretching of a muscle. If the muscles become more toned, it does not signify that one would use them for action and certainly not as a means of evil.

Now at eighty eight years old, I see that so much progress and development remain for philosophy. Although I teach that which I am obliged to teach, my research has now expanded to incorporate new materials that have not been integrated into philosophy because philosophy has not been made current—or has, rather, not kept up with the changing times since the days of Kant or the eighteenth century. When I did my studies, my work bordered more or less on theoretical analysis of theoretical discussions uncoupled from the realities of mankind. My studies were, at times, restricted to the analysis of critiques of those who might have read the works of ancient thinkers. At other times, my studies were restricted to the study of critiques of the structure of various human languages. Overall, there was neither the study of fundamental elements of nature, man, nor that of man's condition. It was as if great thinkers had relinquished work related to the fundamentals of general or overarching importance and cloistered themselves from all human reality. I found all my learning and all my knowledge to be simply limited. I felt the constant fundamental pressure of knowledge based claustrophobia; I felt walls all around me that would meander nowhere. In some ways, I suppose one day I even felt that Nietzsche's most famous phrase could have been more aptly rendered as, human dialogue is dead. For philosophers are necessary to establish and maintain non superficial research, dialogue and discussion in the most vigorous and civilized manner.

In the years that I have been teaching in this very intellectual dark hole where I had, myself, spent my former student years, I have come to realize what my angst represents. It is not about making up lesson plans or setting aside office hours. It is not even about presenting lectures and fearing that my lectures might not be clear enough to be understood. I found myself in a world where the thoughts of philosophers were no longer enough to quench my own thirst. So my research now includes the thoughts of past philosophers, the elementary elements preexistent to my time, and prospects of the future. Books that I would never have imagined reading as a student, I have now found indispensable. For example, Euclid's Elements is an essential, for it is only by knowing it that you will fully grasp the representations of the universe. The problem I had to solve was rooted in the fact that the blocks of inventions of our time are represented to us mostly in scientific information and mathematical symbols. This has required me to master these areas using their symbols so that