Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe, brought to you by The
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The following presentation is an adaptation of the Mel Acheson
picture of the day article, “Really?” The link to the article may be found in the
description box of this video. What's reality? For science, for the past century
or more it's “what's out there”, “the given”. And we
get to know it by looking at it. I say ”looking” to mean all sensation. To get to
know it better, we need only to look closer. To that end, we invent microscopes
and telescopes to magnify it. We substitute electronic devices for our
eyes in order to “see” reality in radio and X-ray wavelengths. Our
technologically enhanced senses have put us more in touch with reality than at
any other time in the history of our species. But we've known all along
that's not how knowing works. And if that's not how we know, what we know
probably isn't what we think it is. Reality may not be real. Looking only
produces a tingling in the nerves. Sensation, as such, is meaningless. People
learn to make sense of their sensations soon after birth, and by the time they
can talk, they've forgotten how they learned and even that they did learn. But
when cataract surgery was first perfected, it enabled many people who had
been blind from birth to see for the first time. Marius von Senden wrote about
their experiences in Space and Sight. The newly sighted people experienced patches
of color or brightness without meaning. They had to learn to associate the
patches with concepts previously associated with other sensations. This
may be the only episode in the history of our species in which individuals
capable of communicating their response experienced “pure observation”.
Nor do nerves transmit anything. One nerve is stimulated to discharge its
tiny electrical spark, and this may stimulate nearby nerves to discharge
theirs. There's no variation in amplitude, no “gray tones”. It's either on or off.
When the chain of discharges reaches the brain, the only way to distinguish one
spark from another is the relationship with all other sparks. These
relationships can form into groups, and the groups can become associated.
Associations of associations can stimulate each other.
Hierarchies of associations can develop, which can become “tangled” by associations
among higher- and lower-level associations. In this way, a dynamic
classification system arises. It creates the sensory order which is not so much a
one-to-one mapping of the real world as a metaphor of it. For example, in the real
world, colors are part of a linear arrangement
of increasing wavelengths. Beyond red is infrared, and beyond violet is ultraviolet.
But in the sensory order, red and violet join at purple to make a circle. There is
no purple wavelength in the real world. So, looking can in no way be equated with
knowing. We need an idea to make sense of sensation. That's what theories do. It's
also what fantasies do, and they're not what we usually consider to be
knowledge. We're missing something. What turns percepts and concepts, those
associations of nervous sparks, into knowledge is judgment: answering the
question, “Is it true?” Either answer - yes or no - does the trick. Douglas Allchin points
out in The Epistemology of Error, “The key epistemological distinction ... is between
empirically unresolved questions, or uncertainty, and resolved questions...”
between determinate and ambiguous. But judgment, unlike diamonds, is seldom
forever. There can be new sensations, new data, and new ideas, new theories. Old
sensations and ideas can be rearranged. The question for judgment can be
recalled. The determinate can become ambiguous again. The tangled hierarchies
of associations of associations of nerve sparks are continually re-energizing
themselves and shifting their patterns. Sometimes they reorganize themselves en
masse: There can be paradigm shifts which shift reality.
How can reality shift if it's “what's out there,” to be known by looking at it? Maybe
we started our march down Epistemology Lane on the wrong foot. Notice that from
the beginning, we've unconsciously assumed a dichotomy between a “real” “out
there” and what must therefore be an ”unreal” “in here”. One of Piet Hein’s Grooks
is pertinent: “lines we neatly drew and later neatly stumbled over.” A clue to
catching our balance is to notice that, to me, your nerve sparks encompass each
other and can't be dichotomies. Notice too that equating knowing with looking,
also equates reality with the descriptions of that looking. This error
underlies much of modern physics: Mathematical equations are symbolic
representations of the descriptions of looking, so equating reality with the
descriptions, reduces reality to a set of equations.
A vicious circle results: The equations allow you to deduce reality and you no
longer need even to look. What began as empiricism ends up as idealism. The
objective and the subjective become confused. Cause and effect become
meaningless. The arrow of time becomes an illusion, as in relativity, and existence
depends on measurement, as in quantum mechanics. Our unconscious assumptions in
the beginning, have come back around to bite us on the ankle. And in light of the
nerve sparks and sensory metaphors and mutable judgments, an even more basic
unconscious and untenable assumption comes to light: that reality is something
we start with. For science, for the cognitive understanding of our
experiences, reality is really what we end up with.
[Music]