When We Can't See the Trees for the Forest

"They can't see the forest for the trees."It's an idiom used to mean that someone is so focused on the details that they neglect the big picture, but the opposite can also be true: We can't see the trees for the forest.Looking at this metaphor in concrete terms, when we fly over, say, the Tongass National Forest at 40,000 feet, all we can see is a mass of green. Of course, we know that forests are, almost by definition, made of thousands of individual trees, not to mention fungus, grasses, vines, shrubbery, and even animals, but from this perspective we can only "see" the forest.In his book Reality is Not What it Seems, physicist Carlo Rovelli discusses what he calls the granular structure of space. His argument, which draws on loop quantum gravity, is that space may not be infinitely divisible. At sufficiently small scales, quantities such as volume may have discrete possible values rather than varying continuously. In other words, the theory is that space itself may have a kind of…

Commenting on Bubbles has been removed. Why? If you want to talk about this post, write to the author, use the comments on their blog if it has them, or reply with a "RE:" post on your own blog. Suggestions? feedback@bubbles.town