Dear editor:
A book I highly recommend for all curious people (especially the prolific but single-minded writer Lloyd Hoffman: so as to enlighten and engage him with serious ideas which demand his pulling his head out of the Bible or wherever it is he currently has his head stuck) leads us to an overall perusal of the mystery of our existence. "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is a book written by Bill Bryson. Bryson is a best-selling American author whose inquisitiveness is infectious. In this ambitious study he discusses, in understandable language, the wonders of our being which science has so laboriously been able to decipher and make sense. This book touches on the microcosmic world of atoms and extends to the macrocosmic world of galaxies. From Darwin to Einstein, we get insight into what drove these and other exceptional thinkers that have so influenced our times and our understanding of what we are. This book digests the best of what we have learned through time. It may be that we are stardust born indeed.
When you read, there are always new ideas inundating your mind which demand additional investigation. Something in this book, which piqued my interest to further inquiry, was the subject of Sir Isaac Newton. You learn Newton was a prickly, somewhat solitary, paranoid character of brilliant intelligence. His mathematical genius was able to invent calculus and come to understand and prove that our solar system planets revolved around the sun in ellipses. His Christian ideas fell in line with the ideas of Arius. Arians do not believe in the Holy Trinity. They were subsequently labeled heretical by church councils and Orthodox Christians.
An edict by Emperor Constantine against the Arians asks for the writings and ideas and even people who followed the ideas of Arius to be obliterated, put to flames or imprisoned. Why the fear? Being an American brought up to believe in free speech, I wanted to see what the beliefs were that would make a gifted mind like that of Newton follow them.
In what Jesus did Newton believe? Was he a deist? Did you know that Newton prophesied that the world would end in 2060? Do some research and discover what this prophesy actually was meant to do. (And coincidentally, the way that humans are treating the earth, his prophesy does not seem so farfetched or out of the question.)
And there you have it. A crumb to hopefully engage your curiosity and pique your interest to read and/or do some research in this richly accessible information age. Freedom of expression enlightens and helps us all to appreciate the wonders and marvels of existence. It is ignorance from which we all suffer. And is it not valuable to remember, we all benefit by keeping an open mind, nimble and in balance, always open to new visions?
Bill Wiedmann
Hot Springs
Editorial on 04/26/2015