21: Element

Speculation is divisible into speculation, which is further divisible, like reality. If light were a wave, what would it wave through? Through what would it propagate between nucleus and electron, between star and planet? What ensures its uniform velocity from any source, however fast? How is space-time distorted in a gravitational field? How do particles interact at a distance? Why do oppositely-charged particles attract instead of repel? Why don’t electrons wear down as they vibrate in their frenetic patterns? Is a particle a point of matter or a volume of potential? Or is it linear, a string that connects point to point, or circular, like the rubber band on a balsa glider? Maybe there was no big bang from which the universe began, only continual generation, protons accidentally separating from anti-protons and dancing in the disturbing distance. Maybe there is no matter and no void, but only anything dancing in infinite loops, the universe a tangle of accidents. What if we were to say that it’s a hoax, that science is the practice of popular quackery, getting more sophisticated only as we learn to dispute its previous deceptions? What if there were no one reality, only theories that could be disproven? What if an element were only a way to answer a question?