Geometry and the Quest for Reality by John Michell
The essay on page xiii of Michael S. Schneider's A Beginning Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science; A Voyage from 1 to 10
Sooner or later there comes a time in life when you start thinking about Reality and where to find it. Some people tell you there is no such thing, that the world has nothing permanent in it, and, as far as you are concerned, consists merely of your fleeting experiences. Its framework, they say, is the random product of a natural process, meaningless and undirected.
Boy I hate when people do that. No one lives like that, but they sure do tell other people to think that way. Nobody ever orders a Dr. Pepper, receives a Coke and then thinks "maybe this is just a Coke here in my mind." They either drink it, knowing full well it's not what they ordered, or they return it and get what they ordered in the first place. They don't think, "maybe I said the words 'Dr. Pepper' in my mind but the other person heard it differently, and in their perception they were correct, but in mine.... blah, blah blah." Nobody does that. But when we talk about philosophy or religion or science, suddenly people get all squishy in their thinking.
Come on. Nobody falls off a broken chair and blames their own butt or looks inside their mind. They sit on a different chair. People don't actually make the ridiculous circumventing of knowledge that they recommend other people make; ever. Nobody is that stupid, but they sure do recommend that the other guy should try things just as dumb.
"Perception is reality," an idiot once said to me. Now to be truthful, I would not have liked any phrase that ever came out of his mouth. So I guess it's not fair for me to blame him for repeating that silly idea. It's not like he invented it; or anything else. But of course perception isn't reality. They are two different words. And just because we don't teach definitions in English anymore, and we just rattle off synonyms, is no reason to think that these two things are the same.
I guess I know what the idiot meant. He probably meant that if you think you're drinking a Dr. Pepper, you might as well be- but is that true? What if you're drinking poison and you don't think you're drinking poison. Does your imminently in danger nervous system care what you think it is that you're drinking? And if you are that particular idiot, would anyone care?
Whenever people don't agree with somebody else, they try to act like they have a good reason.
"Oh, well, what you're saying can't be proven, so I can pretend like it doesn't exist in my reality but of course it exists in yours if you think it does." Really, let's be real here. There either was a man named George Washington or there wasn't. I don't think many people disagree about that. Either he was, or he wasn't. And I don't know for sure, but everybody seems to think there was, and I have no reason to disagree. Well, if we change that name to some other name; suddenly people get all stupid. Either there was a Jesus or there wasn't. Either there is a Jesus or there isn't. Either there is a Moses or their isn't. It's not like my belief or lack of it can go back in time and change anything.
The essay I quoted at the beginning goes on to say that people who are comfortable in a faith tradition don't have a need or desire to go further into looking for patterns in the universe. This is incredibly insulting to me, but I like the first paragraph that I quoted above and I can't wait to get back into this book. I think almost all the first geneticists, astronomers, healers, botanists, zoologists and physics guys were very invested in their fields because they wanted to figure out how the universe was made. They thought it was made, by Somebody or some bodies and they wanted to figure that out.
We all want to figure it out. We're just looking at different 'its' and we have different opinions about the parts of the 'it' we see that we're interested in. That doesn't mean there isn't objective Truth. But even as I prepare to peer behind the curtain, I know I won't see all of it.
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