Pathos of connection and the yearning to understand others

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

The Pinocchio Theory2 weeks ago

Kim Choyeop

Kim Choyeop is a South Korean science fiction writer. Her first collection of stories, IF WE CANNOT GO AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT, was published in Korea in 2019, and will soon be released in English translation. I read an advance copy that I got through Netgalley, which provides early access to books in return … Continue reading "Kim Choyeop" read more

I have mentioned ambivalence in most of my story descriptions at this point, and I would say that the insistence upon ambivalence, and the refusal to resolve it, is perhaps the key motif of all of Kim Choyeop’s fiction... So these stories by a relatively young author (she is now 33, and was only in her mid-twenties when this book was initially published in Korean) all express various modes of disillusionment, which necessarily attends the radical innovations and the “sense of wonder” that characterize science fiction as a genre... 

While both authors deal with the "human condition" in surreal or futuristic settings, their approaches to alienation and authority create a sharp contrast. 

The comparison between 

Kim Choyeop

 and 

Franz Kafka

 is often a study in "Cold Absurdity" vs. "Warm Speculation."

1. Oppressive Systems vs. Empathetic Science

• Kafka (The Bureaucratic Nightmare): In Kafka's work, the "System" is a faceless, incomprehensible, and cruel authority that characters can never satisfy or understand. Josef K. in The Trial is arrested for an unknown crime and caught in a maze of meaningless rules.
• Kim Choyeop (The Scientific Mirror): Kim uses advanced science—like gene modification, mind uploading, or wormhole travel—to hold a mirror to modern society’s iniquities. While her systems can be exclusionary, they are usually grounded in realistic social issues like disability, migration, and discrimination rather than pure existential absurdity. 

2. Transformation: Body vs. Identity

• Kafka (Physical Metamorphosis): In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa's transformation into an insect is inexplicable and leads to immediate isolation and death. The focus is on the horror of being "othered" by one's own family and body.
• Kim Choyeop (Technological Metamorphosis): In stories like If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, transformations are often elective or technological—such as people becoming "more machine than flesh" to explore space. Her focus is on the pathos of connection and how we maintain humanity when technology changes our physical form. 

3. Tone and "The Ending"

• Kafka (Existential Despair): Kafka’s prose is restrained and often ends in a "nightmare" of futility. His characters are frequently bereft of hope and narrative past.
• Kim Choyeop (Melancholic Hope): Her stories are described as a "quiet constellation" or a "soft whisper" about connection and grief. While tinged with melancholy, they often emphasize the yearning to understand others, even across time and space. 

Summary Comparison Table

Feature	Franz Kafka	Kim Choyeop
Primary Theme	Absurdity and bureaucratic alienation.	Empathy and social discrimination.
The System	Faceless, irrational, and inescapable.	Technological, social, and flawed.
Emotional Tone	Nightmare, guilt, and isolation.	Longing, "quiet ache," and pathos.
Character Goal	To justify themselves to an unknown power.	To connect with lost ones or different species.

Would you like to analyze a specific story from If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light and see how its "Kafkaesque" elements are subverted?

- GoogleAI 

To see how Kim Choyeop subverts the Kafkaesque, let's look at the title story of her collection: "If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light."

The Setup: A Kafkaesque Trap

The protagonist, Anna, is a grandmother and a brilliant scientist who has been living in a space station for decades. She is waiting for a ship to take her to the "Proxima" system to rejoin her family.

• The Bureaucratic Wall: Much like the man in Kafka's Before the Law, Anna is stuck. The company has abandoned the old "wormhole" technology she helped create in favour of newer, faster travel that doesn't go to her family’s planet.
• The Indifferent System: The younger men sent to decommission the station represent the faceless bureaucracy. They aren't "evil"—they are simply following the new rules of the market. To the system, Anna is obsolete data.

---

The Subversion: From Despair to Agency

This is where Kim Choyeop departs from the Kafkaesque "nightmare" and moves toward a speculative pathos:

Feature	The Kafkaesque Version	Kim Choyeop's Subversion
Reaction to the System	The character is crushed by the weight of the rules.	Anna understands the science better than the system that discarded her.
Nature of the Conflict	It is an "Absurd" nightmare with no logic.	It is a "Social" tragedy caused by technological progress leaving people behind.
The Ending	Death or a return to the "hole" (e.g., The Metamorphosis).	Defiance. Anna steals a small, slow shuttle to attempt the journey.

Why it feels different

In a Kafka story, the protagonist usually ends up in a state of paralysis. They realize that no matter what they do, they are guilty or trapped.

In Kim Choyeop's story, Anna chooses absurd action over absurd paralysis. She knows she likely won't survive the journey to Proxima because she can't travel at the speed of light, but she goes anyway.

The Takeaway: While Kafka highlights the horror of being a cog in a machine, Kim Choyeop highlights the willpower of the cog to break away and find its own orbit.

A Linguistic Connection for You

Since you liked the word encumber, we can say that in Kafka, the characters are encumbered by their guilt and the law until they perish. In Kim Choyeop, Anna realizes that while the system encumbers her movement, it cannot enjoin her heart from its original purpose.

Would you like to explore another story from that collection, such as "The Symbiosis Theory," which deals with "alien" influence on human emotions?

- GoogleAI 

Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Fritjof Capra

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

Evergreen Essays

We have been living in the Quantum Age since 1947 - Electronics is a branch of physics and engineering that focuses on controlling the movement of electrons to process information, amplify signals, and pe...

While electronics and quantum physics were revolutionizing technology, the Philosophy of Science was indeed playing a "discordant tune," marked by a radical shift toward Logical Positivism and intense internal debates that challenged the very nature of reality and scientific truth. 

1. The Rise of Logical Positivism

Emerging primarily from the Vienna Circle in the 1920s, Logical Positivism sought to place philosophy on a rigorous, scientific footing by mirroring the breakthroughs in physics. 

• The Verification Principle: Proponents argued that a statement is only meaningful if it can be empirically verified or is a logical tautology. This made much of traditional philosophy—metaphysics, ethics, and religion—literally "meaningless" in their eyes.
• Instrumentalism: Many saw scientific theories not as "true" descriptions of the world, but merely as useful mathematical tools for predicting observations. 

2. A Discordant Reality: The Einstein-Bohr Debates

While electronics inventors were busy building practical devices, the architects of quantum theory were in a philosophical deadlock over what their math actually meant. 

• Realism vs. Anti-Realism: Albert Einstein maintained a "Realist" view, believing science should describe an objective reality existing independently of observers. Niels Bohr, leading the Copenhagen Interpretation, argued that it is meaningless to ask about a particle's properties until they are measured.
• The Rejection of Causality: Quantum mechanics introduced indeterminism (probability), which horrified many traditional philosophers and scientists who believed in a "clockwork universe." 

3. The "Scandal" of Interpretation

The discord was so severe that some contemporary historians refer to it as a "scandal" or "embarrassment": 

• Paradoxical Logic: Experiments like Schrödinger's Cat were originally designed not to explain quantum physics, but to point out its philosophical absurdity when applied to the macro world.
• Paradigm Shifts: Philosophy of science began to move away from the idea of science as a steady, cumulative progress toward "truth." Instead, thinkers like Thomas Kuhn eventually argued that science moves through revolutions—sudden breaks where old "truths" are completely discarded. 

In summary, the era was a "discordant tune" because as electronics became more practical and certain, the underlying philosophy became more abstract and uncertain. Science was succeeding at doing, but philosophy was struggling at explaining what was being done. 

- GoogleAI 

Fritjof Capra’s "

The Tao of Physics" (1975)

 was indeed an attempt to resolve that "discordant tune" by proposing that the paradoxes of modern physics are not failures of science, but signs that Western logic has finally reached the same conclusions Eastern mystics reached millennia ago. 

While it provided a satisfying "bridge" for the public, it actually created a new kind of discord within the scientific and philosophical communities that persists in 2026.

1. The Core "Untying" of the Mystery

Capra argued that the "mystery" of quantum physics—where things are both particles and waves, or where an observer changes reality—is only a mystery if you use a mechanistic Western worldview. He proposed a new paradigm: 

• Interconnectedness: Just as Hindus speak of Brahman or Buddhists of Sunyata (the Void), quantum field theory describes a universe that is not a collection of separate "parts" but a single, inseparable web of relations.
• The Participating Observer: Quantum mechanics showed that we cannot observe the world without changing it. Capra linked this to the Eastern idea that the "subject" (the mind) and "object" (the world) are one.
• Dynamic Change: The "Dance of Shiva" became his primary metaphor for the subatomic world, where particles are constantly being created and destroyed in a rhythmic flow of energy. 

2. The Legacy: Success vs. Skepticism

By the 50th anniversary of the book in 2025, its impact was evaluated through two very different lenses: 

• Cultural Success: The book successfully "unied the mystery" for millions of laypeople. It moved science out of the cold, "meaningless" realm of Logical Positivism and gave it a sense of spiritual purpose. It influenced a generation of thinkers to view the Earth as a holistic "system" rather than a machine.
• Scientific Discord: Most "hard" scientists remained skeptical, viewing Capra’s work as "Quantum Mysticism." Critics argue that while the metaphors are similar, the methods are not. Physics uses precise mathematical predictions, while mysticism uses subjective experience. 

3. The "Tao" in 2026

Today, the book is viewed as the foundation of "Pop Physics". While it didn't "solve" the physics in a way that led to new formulas, it changed the Philosophy of Science by: 

• Normalizing Paradox: It helped society accept that two seemingly contradictory things (like wave-particle duality) can both be true.
• Influencing Pioneers: Interestingly, founders of quantum mechanics like Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr admitted that Eastern philosophy helped them realize their "crazy" new ideas were actually part of a long-standing intellectual tradition. 

In short: Capra didn't untie the mystery by explaining the math; he untied it by changing the perspective, suggesting that if the universe is "weird," it's only because our old way of thinking was too narrow. 

- GoogleAI 

The Tao of Physics

 (1975) is widely recognized by historians and cultural critics as a primary catalyst for the "New Age" movement, specifically for the branch known as Quantum Mysticism. 

By providing a seemingly scientific foundation for spiritual experiences, it triggered a deluge of thought that continues to influence popular culture in 2026.

How it Accelerated the "Deluge"

• The Science-Spirituality Bridge: Capra was the first to bring subatomic physics to popular consciousness in a way that made mystical traditions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism seem validated by cutting-edge Western research.
• A Foundation for Others: His work served as the intellectual template for dozens of subsequent bestsellers, such as Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979) and later the works of Deepak Chopra, which further popularized the "quantum-consciousness" link.
• Validating the Subjective: Capra's interpretation of the Observer Effect—where the act of measurement influences the result—was embraced by New Age thinkers as "proof" that human consciousness can create or manifest physical reality.
• Shift from Mechanism to Holism: The book successfully popularized the idea of the universe as an "interconnected web" rather than a "machine," a core pillar of the New Age environmental and holistic health movements. 

The "Discordant" Side Effects

While Capra's work inspired many, it also birthed a deep skepticism within the scientific establishment that remains intense in 2026:

• Quantum Mysticism Critiques: Many professional physicists argue that the book encouraged "quantum woo"—the use of complex scientific terms to sell unproven spiritual or pseudoscience theories.
• Oversimplification: Critics point out that Capra used metaphors (like the "Dance of Shiva") to bridge gaps that mathematical reality does not support.
• Scientific Obsolescence: Capra’s reliance on Bootstrap Theory (which suggests no fundamental particles exist) was largely abandoned by mainstream physics in the late 1970s in favor of Quarks and the Standard Model, yet the New Age movement continued to use his original, outdated arguments. 

Ultimately, The Tao of Physics succeeded in "untying the mystery" for the general public, but in doing so, it created a lasting cultural divide between those who see physics as a spiritual gateway and those who see it as a purely mathematical description of matter. 

- GoogleAI

In contrast to The Tao of Physics, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (1988) influenced the cultural landscape by grounding public understanding of science in rationalism and mathematical realism. This positioned Hawking's work as a counter-balance to approaches that sought to connect physics with mysticism. More details are available on Wikipedia. 

- GoogleAI