Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Getting down ...

.. to the bottom of things: The Reality Test. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Well, maybe.

... none of us perceives the world as it exists fundamentally. We do not observe the tiniest bits of matter, nor the forces that move them, individually through our senses. We evolved to experience the world in bulk, our faculties registering the net effect of trillions upon trillions of particles or atoms moving in concert. We are crude measurers. So divorced are we from the activity beneath our experience that physicists became relatively assured of the existence of atoms only about a century ago.

Something about that phrase "we evolved to experience the world in bulk" strikes me as glib. To say that we evolved the way we are doesn't tell me anything more than that we are the way we are. One might just as well say that God made us in such as way that we experience the world in bulk. It also brought to mind this question: Which is more real, the ingredients or the bread? That quibble aside, bring it on!

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:09 AM

    The attempt to view what is called fundamental reality is interesting, but I believe flawed because it does not take into account the limits of the cognitive process. Man is not just limited in perception (the point of the experiments) but also in cognition.

    The experiments stress and attempt to test physical limits of perception (we can't see atoms, etc.) But the experimenters don't give due accord to cognitive limits. Man is limited in what he can think.

    Math after all is what underlies quantum mechanics. But math itself is limited -- to the point where we can't understand nor prove why 1+1=2 -- or as Kurt Godel said at some point you have to proceed from faith.

    So that lack of proof of the tool (math) that a physicist then uses to construct a quantum reality is limited because the tool itself can't be fundamentally proven.

    The application of that tool to a unperceived reality also of course may be flawed. Math is fascinating because it is the ultimate tool of science to describe the world. But the application is as if by magic. Why should a theoretical tool (or “construct”) such as math accurately describe the world? And when used here to describe a world we can’t directly perceive the uncertainties multiply: one is using a tool with limits (math) to describe an unseen world (quanta.)

    eis ta ametra

    ReplyDelete
  2. I read somewhere once that the word maya, the Hindu term for the illusory perceptual world, actually has to do with measurement. So, what is illusory is not the world itself, but our measurement of it. Gödel was right.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:02 AM

    This is neat…

    “In Sanskrit, to measure, ma, is to give existence to a thing, to give it reality in our world, and to demonstrate relationship. The close connection in Hindu thought between measurement and creation is evidenced by the words mother, matir and mater which come from the same Sanskrit root, as does maya. Measurement separates and differentiates the elements of the world and thereby creates them. The first act of measurement in our universe, which occurred at the boundary between time and the timeless, wrested the elements of our world from the continuum of chaos….

    There is an almost uncanny similarity between the role of Vedic measurement in evoking elements from primordial chaos and that of quantum mechanical measurement in ‘actualizing’ the objects of the world.” (from http://ignca.nic.in/ps_05005.htm)

    Interestingly, the Pope (in Truth and Tolerance) has criticized Eastern religions for ultimately assuming that consciousness should be submerged in the Divine. Christianity makes clear that the Human Soul should not be submerged because that destroys (my words) the Dignity of Man.

    Of course, Genesis also has something to say, since the first divisions are between light and dark, which seems to implicate Time (one of the fundamental features of Einstein’s universe) and Light (of which nothing can go faster, again according to Einstein.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for sending that along, whoever you are. It's hard not to conclude, after reading that, the quantum physics could be seen as having confirmed a Vendantic insight. As for the Pope's position, I fear he, like many Western theologians, not only don;t get Vedanta, they don't get mysticism. The Pope is a fine theologian, but I suspect his specialty is dogmatics, not mystical theology. It's somewhat akin to those who call Buddhism atheistic. The term simply doesn't apply. The Buddhist position is neaer to the Taoist formula that the Tao that can be named is not the Tao. The God that can be named is not God. If you see the Buddha, kill him. I think the Pope would do well to consider how much the notions of the Beatific Vision and Nirvana have in common, rather than focus on where they may differ.

    ReplyDelete