Volume 1

No. One

 

Abstract:

For this first issue of the Journal, we bring you a homegrown research project. However, our findings relate to any creatures capable of speech and bound to the rock, sea, and sky that bore them. Anyone in that situation is bound to look over the world’s edge someday if they haven’t already. Drops from leaning towers, falling apples, and precessing planets lead to the edge of the same precipice at the end of our capabilities. All of us conscious creatures share an ability to shrug off concepts too massive for us to take in. The price of resilience is delayed resolution. We don’t deal with some of the concepts that led us to the end of the world or the things that possessed us as we got a glimpse of what lay beyond. For the human race, one of those ideas is gravity.

People have opinions about natural forces. Most of us find electromagnetism convenient. A handful of physicists object to the strong force, claiming it is stronger than necessary and therefore coercive. This journal occasionally receives letters defending the weak force because physicists disparage its effects, and it lacks the strength to resist its bullies.

Gravity is even weaker than the weak force. Unless a person has trouble with their toaster and is too damn cheap to buy a new one, necessitating regular forays into its crumb-choked depths with a fork, gravity is the only natural force we consciously reckon with regularly.

Yet unlike the weak force, gravity gets no love. On the contrary, it is the most reviled of all the forces. It is the only one to suffer the attentions of Eliminativists. It is the force whose power intelligent and semi-intelligent creatures most often deny. It takes the blame for the infuriating parts of general relativity, not to mention that bit of elevator flatulence, the singularity.

 

Belief: Our current conception of gravity does not fit our postmodern lifestyle and should be revised. A proper revision necessitates changes in branding and changes  in representational norms applied to vanishingly rare instances of gravitational beliefs whose psychological value far outweighs any practical consequences following from instantiations.

Methods:

Our study utilized multiple sources and methods. We employed longitudinal canvassing to collect stereotypical anecdotes regarding current social attitudes towards gravitation. We conducted selective interviews with confirmed energy drink consumers, who responded to correspondence from the drink manufacturers. Our volunteer pollsters carried out informal surveys regarding folk understanding of gravitational effects and that understanding’s utility vis-à-vis a standard (also labelled “proper” in older sources) understanding as expressed by staff and visitors in our offices who claimed at least one undergraduate-level physics course in their educational background.

Data:  

 

Our survey results revealed a preponderance of revisionary attitudes towards gravitational effects. Only 25% of the surveyed population denied gravitational effects altogether or expressed outright hostility regarding the nature of gravitational effects. Membership in this group correlated strongly with membership in the cohort of chronic energy drink consumers. Membership in both groups also correlated with current inhalant use. The remaining 75% of participants provided anecdotes or otherwise expressed contrarian attitudes toward scientific interpretations of gravitational effects. 50% of participants believed that cats could survive falls from any height, due to the cat’s ability to relax as it fell. This group uniformly believed that properly relaxed humans, either due to inherent personality traits or pharmaceuticals, would survive such falls just as well. 60% of respondents also espoused a belief in the “Bugs Bunny principles” i.e., scientific legalism and anti-Galilean gravitational selection. By confusing inertia, gravity and the concept of physical law, these principles allow for Bugs Bunny’s ability to walk away from a plummeting elevator car by stepping off the car the last second, and immunity to gravity due to ignorance of the law. 89% of respondents expected to take a maximum 30 foot fall before sustaining an injury. This same group uniformly agreed with the statement, “it is better to be thrown clear of the vehicle in an automobile accident.”

 

Discussion:

 

Our results identify gravity as a cultural institution whose time has long passed. It was once an important part of our worldview. One who deviated from the gravitational norms paid a price, levied on the spot, violently. However, for centuries, no one has needed to run a herd of buffalo over a cliff or drop rocks from a parapet onto barbarian attackers. Except for the critics of certain politicians, we occupy multi-storey buildings at the statistical equivalent of zero risk. We fly. We hang heavy equipment miles above us in brazen defiance of the law.

Professional athletes are the only interesting people with any interest in gravity and they spend their careers training to discredit gravity in their performances. It is no wonder that we have a hard time keeping the difference between weight and mass straight.

We are constantly coping with weight. We confront mass in disasters and in physics formulas. In those circumstances, we still have little use for the distinction between the two. For everyday usage, our intuitions about weight suffice. We can leave calculations about mass to the airbags in our cars and the technicians who launch our telecommunications satellites. Our contact with mass and gravity appears likely to remain brief and sporadic for the foreseeable future. The things they describe are not human-sized. Insisting on proper usage only leads to grief. We can safely drop the concepts from our lexicon,, and we should. Weight is trouble enough for us.