Leaps

What's the smallest Leap in the world? 2 points if you said "quantum leap" (aka quantum jump). Although the phrase is sometime used in business circles to mean a big, perhaps orthogonal change, in physics it's the smallest leap possible, when an electron "leaps" from one energy "shell" to another in an atom (emitting or absorbing a photon in the process, a photon being the light quantum proposed by Einstein). Strictly speaking though, it doesn't seem to "leap" at all - rather, it disappears from one place and instantaneously appears in another. The ball of quantum physics was started rolling by Planck in 1900, as a solution to what was then an annoying little problem called black body radiation. Planck had no idea that he solution would unleash the most mysterious yet productive theory ever; in fact he had a hard time accepting some of its implications, as did Einstein.

So what's the largest leap in the world? No points for leapfrog, one for leap of faith, and congratulations if you said "leap to faith". This leaping concept is due to Kierkegaard, and again his leaps are "instantaneous" - for example, he describes Adam's leap from being sinless to sinful as moving directly from one state to the other, never possessing both qualities. The leap to faith is where one similarly leaps from being without faith to being with faith (and becoming a Christian). That's why it's not a leap "of " faith - that can only happen when you already have faith! So why is this giant leap necessary, according to K? Because Christianity is full of paradoxes - one of the chief being that Jesus was both totally Man and totally God. Wait a sec, that sounds familiar - ah yes, quantum physics, which asserts that light (or electro-magnetic radiation in general) is both totally a wave and totally a particle. Perhaps it's no wonder Einstein denied he was an atheist!