How many everyday wonders do we miss because we’ve blinded ourselves to the inevitability of chance?
How many molecules of Julius Caesar’s dying breath do we inhale each time we breathe? From the first-year physics subjects I studied 40 years ago at the start of my medical degree, that’s the one problem that has stayed with me. The answer hasn’t. I recalled it as being 13, but more recent googling tells me some ways of working it out put it at five, others one or two. But that’s not the point. Not for me.
The point is that, in any breath we take, there’s a good chance we’re inhaling a molecule or more exhaled by Caesar in that particular breath – that breath that became air and circulated. That keeps circulating throughout the atmosphere more than 2,000 years later. A breath forever linked to a pivot of history, and we’re all breathing it, unknowingly. It connects us with Caesar and that moment, and also with each other. And we all inhale that moment in equal measure.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/37KMLwj
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