to be clear: modern physics has obvious engineering applications, and that's fine. but, i really don't care about that.

what i care about is an epistemology - a way to understand the universe. as mentioned, i realized quickly that i'm not a scientist: i don't think like one. the few friends i had were always musicians; i never got along well with the kids in these science classes i took through high school, but i guess i thought things would be different when i got to university (they weren't). it's not like i found a group of like-minded people in the math department, either, but there were at least a couple of hopeless social outcasts in the math program at carleton that i could smoke and make misanthropic wisecracks with.

the reality is that i would have probably found more like-minded people in the philosophy department if i had bothered to go over and look, because i was approaching science as a philosopher rather than as a scientist - i wanted all the knowledge to myself, with little interest in actually doing anything with it.

i mean, people asked me what i was going to do with a math degree, and it always struck me as a stupid question: as though the purpose of going to school is to prepare yourself for your place as a cog in the system, or to better the world or something. it didn't even cross my mind. i didn't have an answer, because i'd never really thought about it. i just wanted a search for knowledge.

at the end of the process, i resigned myself to existing in too primitive of a space in human evolution to get the kind of answers i want. so, just hand me my guitar, instead.

but, i'm not going to deny the engineering applications of modern physics. it works well enough from that perspective, even if i think it's up against a really hard block in the near future.

but, as a way to actually understand the universe, modern physics really fails terribly in producing satisfying conclusions - and that's all i ever cared about.