Earth or 'the earth': What's in a Name?

The observation that "language structures reality" has been made by linguists and psychologists as well as anthropologists and cultural historians for several decades. Our experience of the world—what we see or don't see, what is understood as ultimately real—is shaped by the language we use. Those of us who have only one word for "white precipitation in winter" (i.e., "snow") experience this phenomenon differently from those who have many names for it, depending upon its nature and context, such as the Inuit (Eskimos) of Alaska. Our language both reveals our worldview and reinforces certain attitudes toward life, as feminist writers have repeatedly shown. Centuries of common use notwithstanding, for many the word "man," used to refer to our species as a whole, is not experienced as inclusive of fully half of humanity.

Because language structures reality, how we refer to "the third planet out from the Sun" can make a world of difference, literally, regarding our perception and experience of it. Each of the other planets of our solar system has a proper name: Mercury, Venus, Mars, and so on. So does Earth. We do not hear people talking about "the jupiter," "the mars," or "the saturn." Why, then, do we speak of "the earth"? Here is the historical answer, in a nutshell...

Integrity Watch: Tiger Woods, Person of the Year

Those concerned with, interested in, or even just curious about the Big Integrity movement, Global Integrity, national integrity, political integrity, corporate integrity, family integrity, individual integrity, or any other form of "coming into, and remaining, in right relationship with reality," should read The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Frank Rich's excellent December 19th column, titled, "Tiger Woods, Person of the Year". The evolution-oriented, integrity-minded, and anyone hoping for a healthy future should consider it essential reading.

You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral

The following, written by NPR commentator Aaron Freeman, is a gem!

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.

Amen.