WEBVTT 00:00:02.120 --> 00:00:05.459 Hi, yesterday I talked about learning to notice 00:00:05.459 --> 00:00:08.960 more. So today, let's notice something that's 00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:14.259 almost impossible to escape. Patterns. The sun 00:00:14.259 --> 00:00:18.339 rises and moves across the sky. And it sets. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:23.059 And then it happens again. Days become weeks. 00:00:23.660 --> 00:00:27.899 Seasons come and go. The moon moves through its 00:00:27.899 --> 00:00:33.929 phases. Our hearts beat. We breathe in and we 00:00:33.929 --> 00:00:39.369 breathe out. We sleep and we wake. Patterns are 00:00:39.369 --> 00:00:42.149 everywhere. And some of the patterns that we've 00:00:42.149 --> 00:00:46.070 discovered actually are remarkable. For most 00:00:46.070 --> 00:00:48.469 of human history, people looked into the night 00:00:48.469 --> 00:00:52.149 sky and watched the planets move. Their paths 00:00:52.149 --> 00:00:57.009 seemed strange. In fact, the word planet comes 00:00:57.009 --> 00:01:03.070 from a Greek word meaning wanderer. But eventually 00:01:03.070 --> 00:01:06.189 we discovered that they were not wandering randomly 00:01:06.189 --> 00:01:11.030 at all. Johannes Kepler discovered that planets 00:01:11.030 --> 00:01:15.250 travel around the sun in ellipses. And even more 00:01:15.250 --> 00:01:18.329 remarkable, he found mathematical relationships 00:01:18.329 --> 00:01:23.450 describing how they move. And then Newton came 00:01:23.450 --> 00:01:25.969 along and showed that the same mathematics that 00:01:25.969 --> 00:01:28.530 describes an apple falling towards the earth 00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:32.359 can help describe the motion of the moon and 00:01:32.359 --> 00:01:36.340 planets. Think about that. The universe is not 00:01:36.340 --> 00:01:41.500 just filled with things. It has structure. There 00:01:41.500 --> 00:01:44.980 are relationships between those things, and many 00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:48.319 of those relationships can be described with 00:01:48.319 --> 00:01:52.780 mathematics. Gravity follows patterns. Light 00:01:52.780 --> 00:01:57.640 follows patterns. Sound follows patterns. Even 00:01:57.640 --> 00:02:01.159 the tiny particles that make up our body behave 00:02:01.159 --> 00:02:04.859 according to mathematical relationships. And 00:02:04.859 --> 00:02:07.540 of course, not everything is predictable. We've 00:02:07.540 --> 00:02:10.379 learned that reality contains randomness and 00:02:10.379 --> 00:02:15.219 uncertainty. But even that uncertainty has patterns 00:02:15.219 --> 00:02:19.939 we can study mathematically. Isn't that fascinating? 00:02:20.099 --> 00:02:23.379 Because none of us decided that the universe 00:02:23.379 --> 00:02:26.840 should work this way. We did not create gravity. 00:02:26.879 --> 00:02:29.979 We did not tell the planets to follow mathematical 00:02:29.979 --> 00:02:34.879 paths. We arrived here and discovered a universe 00:02:34.879 --> 00:02:38.759 that was already behaving in ways that could 00:02:38.759 --> 00:02:41.979 be investigated and measured and understood. 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:47.319 And that affects my worldview. Now, it does not 00:02:47.319 --> 00:02:50.259 tell me everything about why we're here or what 00:02:50.259 --> 00:02:54.129 life means. But it does tell me something about 00:02:54.129 --> 00:02:58.569 the kind of place that we inhabit. We live in 00:02:58.569 --> 00:03:03.110 a universe where order can be discovered, where 00:03:03.110 --> 00:03:06.949 patterns are waiting to be noticed, where mathematics 00:03:06.949 --> 00:03:11.289 written on a piece of paper can somehow describe 00:03:11.289 --> 00:03:17.189 what happens millions of miles away. Why is that? 00:03:17.669 --> 00:03:21.090 I don't know that math can answer that question. 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:25.099 mathematics certainly gives us a reason to ask 00:03:25.099 --> 00:03:30.039 it. So today, let's just simply notice and wonder, 00:03:30.159 --> 00:03:34.099 why does our universe have patterns at all?