Kaleidoscope

For a few of my pre-tween years, my father had a habit of bringing home a small gift at the end of the work week – “A Friday Night Surprise”. One of my favorite recurring items was a kaleidoscope. 

As far back as the 1950s, I was a budding Hippie in love with bright colors and intriguing designs, but also a budding philosopher. I loved the ability to create new order out of chaotic elements. While other kids played with Erector Sets, I played with Kaleidoscopes. I think even then, I had an idea that something important was afoot here.

Fast forward 15 years. Now I’m living the Hippie lifestyle, agitating for political change in the morning, reading philosophy at night. A handful of friends and I formed a sort of informal commune. Within strict limits, we shared what little wealth there was. For example, I had more ‘political responsibilities’ than others; therefore, I was not expected to contribute as much $$$ as my comrades. 

That said, we were always on the lookout for new revenue opportunities. We espoused socialism but practiced capitalism. Buy a working farm in New Brunswick ($10,000); buy a crowded neighborhood tavern (also $10,000), but who had $10,000 in those days? So no bar, no barn! 

And still no income. So, how about $1,000? Could we manage that? Maybe. But for what?

$1,000 was the estimated cost going into the Kaleidoscope trade. The model was simple: buy a boat load of wholesale scopes, private label them and peddle them on street corners and parks throughout the City (Boston). I don’t remember the 1970 price points, but I do remember that ‘the numbers worked’.

Then we learned that we would need a costly and hard to obtain peddler’s license. So much for that idea!

Now, 50 years on, I’m back to promoting scopes! For under $20 you can buy a scope through Amazon that includes a metal cylinder with one moving (rotating) part. In this ‘nose cone’ are a collection of brightly colored, translucent bits of glass. The cylinder is lined with  mirrors (usually 3). That’s it! For under $20, I have placed CERN (1954) at your fingertips. 

(They say the price of technology comes down with time…but this is ridiculous.) 

Take the scope in one hand and look through the eyepiece located at the far end of the cylinder. What do you see? A gorgeous pattern of shapes and colors. If your scope consists of 3 mirrors installed at a 60 degree angle relative to one another, your pattern will display hexagonal symmetry. Am I peering into Dr. Who’s TARDIS? Or am I perhaps looking at an image of the Universe at the moment immediately following Big Bang? 

Now slowly rotate the ‘nose cone’. The initial pattern morphs gradually, and then, a sudden ‘phase’ change! An entirely new pattern emerges which does not appear to relate in any way to the previous pattern, or to any earlier pattern for that matter, other than sharing the same material substructure of beads and mirrors. 

While I have not subjected this idea to rigorous mathematical scrutiny or empirical testing, I have the impression that every pattern is novel, that no pattern recurs. In addition, I see no way to predict Pattern N+1 from Pattern N.

Now reverse the nose cone’s direction of rotation: clockwise vs. counterclockwise. I had expected the patterns to reappear in reverse order. I thought I could recreate the past. But apparently, I’m no Proust.

Stephen Hawking believed that entropy was bound up with the expansion of the cosmos. However, he also believed that entropy would continue to increase even if the direction of cosmic inflation were reversed. Playing with a kaleidoscope suggests that Hawking was right. The same sort of novel patterns occur, regardless of the direction of rotation. 

The patterns I passively generate are not created ex nihilo; I am neither Proust nor God! But a bunch of translucent pieces of glass and a mirror are about as close to nihil as we can hope to get in our spatiotemporal world. 

Only children (or children at heart) could imagine that it might be possible to create a universe with just a bunch of glass beads and a couple of mirrors. That’s why those of us at Aletheia Today say, “Your children are better than you. They’re smarter…MUCH smarter.” Deal with it!

You might not be God. You might not even want the awesome responsibility that being God would entail. And you wouldn’t relish being blamed for every earthquake or tornado. But who would not appreciate the opportunity to play God for an hour or two. For less than $20, that experience can be yours!

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