Running from the Paranoids

Benway hated when Igor patronized him. "You've got half an hour left."

"OK, I really wanted you to know of my thoughts on QED, or Quantum Electrodynamics by Feynman. It goes beyond Heisenberg."

"I've read his autobiography, but I'm sure you'll tell me why he's relevant." Benway stood by the window, looking at a rare sight. A hawk was attacking the pigeons on the rooftop next door. Suddenly he felt sorry for the pigeons, which he and everyone else hated. They were so patient. So stupid. He packed his pipe with a tobacco Igor claimed stank when they had first met.

"It's about Renormalization Groups; hey, I'm sure you like the sound of that." Igor laughed to himself. "It tries to explain how an electron effects the world around it. Picture a person in a crowd by their mere existence changing that very crowd. Yet that crowd changes the person, and so forth."

Igor waited, but Benway kept staring out the window with his back to him.

"OK, picture a beautiful young woman walking through a crowd of young men, and how she effects the crowd. Well, they'll gather around her, so from above we'll observe her surrounded by a denser crowd within the crowd. Now there are other forces at play here, of course. If the young men didn't have any ethics, or there wasn't a police force somewhere around, they might rip her clothes off and whatever. Feynman imagines a drunk leaving bar A. There is a given probability that he can go to bar B, or bar C, or back to A, but eventually he'll make it back home. So will the beautiful woman. The universe seeks stability of a sort. Now imagine an electron in a lattice-crystal structure. It bends the lattice. The electron plus the bent lattice is the renormalized electron. The woman or the drunk is a point in phase-space. Feynman tries to figure out the action of the woman by herself. That's what I've been thinking about."

The hawk was tearing apart its victim on the roof. Benway was thinking about the other pigeons watching uneasily from a distance. Igor got another cup of tea.

"You need renormalization in physics to explain unknowns, like the magnetic moment of an atom, or why water melts at 0 degrees. Or supercritical magnetism, super fluidity, and even the existence of solids. Did you know that an electron or any other particle loses its identity in a lattice or group?"

"Does it work with people? You?"

"QED doesn't even work with large particles like protons."

"Then what's the point?"

"Irony." Igor came over to the window to see what Benway was looking at. He noisily opened a new pack of cigarettes to irritate Benway. "I want to know exactly how far I can change the crowd, and exactly how much it should be allowed to change me before I reach back for the status quo."

They watched the satiated hawk fly off into the haze without a glance back. Benway imagined it screaming in triumph. "Why doesn't QED work with large particles, Igor?"

"Too many calculations even for a Cray supercomputer."

"It's always something like that. Do you think that hawk is trying to analyze its relationship to everything? No, he's just trying to get along. He was hungry. As I recall, Feynman had a vibrant, audacious life. Einstein loved sex and sailing for what that's worth." Benway turned to look directly up at Igor, only two feet away. His firm voice rattled Igor. "Do you realize that even if you learned The Theory of Everything, you'd still have to know how to get along? It's not just showing up!"

Igor sat down in the safety of his chair. Benway stood at his desk staring at him. "You are one of the worst things there are. You are a reductionist!"

"What?"

"Yes, Igor, a reductionist," he nearly yelled. "I'm sure the arrows of explanation always point downwards toward the bottom level of reality, that of particles and forces of the micro cosmos, but so what?"

"What do you mean, so what?"

"Half of the time, your actions are nothing more than promissory notes. If only we were clever enough, we could figure out how the migratory habits of birds are entirely explained by DNA, how DNA is entirely explained by the laws of chemistry, and how chemistry is entirely explained by quantum mechanics. I can see the wheels in your head spinning now, Igor. I know how you think. You probably want to say that physics is more fundamental than anything else. That's the idiot's choice! I'll grant only that physics is more comprehensive, not more fundamental. It has nothing to do with how you live your life!"

Benway smiled at Igor, who was almost at attention in his chair. He spoke gently, like a father. "Do you absolutely know why that hawk lives in Manhattan?"

"No."

"Neither do I."

"Maybe he's just a moron." Igor lit a cigarette. This wasn't at all how he expected things to go. In that instant, he admired Dr. Benway more than anyone.

"I suspect that could be so. Now get out of here while you still have my blessing. Go and have a good time with that girl you've never met this weekend. Be nice to her. By the way, your father expects you for dinner on Sunday, out on the Island. Don't disappoint him. One more thing: the drunk doesn't always find his way home."