The perception of reality is perhaps the most "scandalous" topic. The idea that our neighbor or boss is nothing more than a cloud of electrons does not seem so seditious. But to ourselves? - This is too much!
Our mind is still somehow ready to come to terms with the assumption that invisible worlds from other dimensions are in a coffee cup. But the very idea that our familiar world does not at all correspond to what it really is, seems absolutely unacceptable.
However, this is precisely what we are told by numerous studies in various fields, from psychology to physics.
After all, our senses "exactly the opposite" tell the brain that the Sun revolves around the Earth. This was the opinion, for example, of Descartes, the founder of modern scientific methodology. He was confident that our feelings accurately reflect reality.
THERE IS NO TRUTH ON EARTH?
Reality is what we interpret as reality.
Our perception of the world is formed as a result of mental processes, based on the information received by the brain. The brain is located inside the cranium, which protects it from external influences, and by itself does not perceive anything.
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He does not feel when he is being cut with a knife or when electrodes are inserted into him. On the other hand, when a weak current is sent through the electrodes, sensations corresponding to the specifics of the “involved” place, such as various images or a feeling of pain, will appear in the brain.
The brain receives all information about the world around it in the form of electrical impulses coming from the senses. So, sound waves cause vibrations of the eardrum, which are transmitted to the auditory ossicles. In a complex multistep process, their movements are converted into electrical impulses that enter the brain. There they are analyzed and deciphered as specific sounds.
In a similar "roundabout" way, information comes from other senses. The information received undergoes changes: this is how a newborn sees the world “upside down” during the first days of life, and then this picture is corrected in the brain to “familiar”.
WHAT WE SEEN AT THE COURT
Where were you today, pussy?
At the Queen's at the English.
What did you see at court?
I saw a mouse on the carpet.
English folklore, p er. S. Marshak
Since our school days, we have become accustomed to the idea that our vision of the world around us resembles what a camera captures. However, our visual system is not at all like a camera. This system is more like a computer, which, deleting millions of units of information, stores only those that it needs. Since everyone has their own “computer program”, individual, then everyone sees the same object in his own way.
Police officers around the world know that witnesses to an incident give different testimony. But none of them lie: each of them has their own emotions, and on their basis “personal” associations arise. “Ways of seeing” can take on a wide variety of forms, sometimes completely unexpected.
So, the poet, the character of the story of the Czech writer Karl Czapek, became the only witness of the transport accident. The driver who hit the old lady disappeared.
The impressionable poet was so shocked by what he saw that, when he came home, he wrote poems: "Oh, neck of a swan, oh chest, oh drum, and these sticks, harbingers of misfortune!" However, during interrogation, he could not recall any details of the incident. After listening to the poet, the quick-witted inspector ordered to detain the owner of the car with the license plate. 23O11.
There is nothing supernatural in the poet's vision. It is known that for some people, each number has a different color; they could "remember" the car number with a palette.
Is it possible to overcome the "inconsistency" in our perception and create an "objective picture of reality?"
The answer is far from simple. To begin with, what our eyes see is completely out of sync with what they are looking at. Here, it seems to me, you need to stop and take a deep breath. And then a long, slow exhale.
Let's go further. It turned out that, perceiving the environment, we only create hypotheses, at first relying on extremely scant information, practically not relying on facts. Then, based on only a few observations, we build for ourselves a model of the Universe or objects around us.
The influence of "outside" factors on this "model" is enormous. Thus, the education received by a person affects not only what he thinks, but also what he sees. For example, those who grew up in Russia, Italy or Israel see blue among the seven colors of the rainbow, along with blue. But the Anglo-Saxons, the French and the Germans do not see him. But along with blue, they see dark blue in the rainbow - indigo. In the language of the latter there is no word “blue”, just as in Russian there is no “indigo” and instead of it “light blue” is used. That is, for some, the color of the sky is blue, and for others, blue!
As a result of "modeling" a world is born that each of us sees. Once we have built it in our imagination, we cannot imagine it differently. For example, the image of an apple “modeled” in our brain is so “ours” that we cannot imagine that other living beings can see an apple completely differently.
However, our household “neighbors” - dogs - see people as moving spots, emitting waves of odors. A stationary and odorless object simply does not exist for them.
ELEPHANT I DIDN'T ATTEND
The whole history of science is a gradual realization that events do not happen arbitrarily, that they all reflect the pattern behind them.
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
For hundreds of years, our sense of the world around us seemed as reliable as Newton's laws. They quite suited us, as long as the cosmos was considered unchanged, consisting of indivisible atoms. The discoveries of the twentieth century showed that the possibilities of perception are dictated by our position on the “scale” of Nature.
We turned out to be too small in comparison with the Cosmos and too large for the world of elementary particles. Both of these "poles" of the infinitely large and the infinitely small are not perceived by us, as is the very concept of infinity: we can pronounce it, but to understand and feel is another matter.
What seems to us to be a smooth surface turns into mountains and valleys under the microscope. Magnification allows you to observe molecules, and even individual atoms. But further, the deeper we plunge into the microcosm, the more difficult it becomes to separate parts of the universe from each other.
At the subatomic level, the exchange of information occurs instantly, even between opposite corners of the Galaxy - and instead of a world consisting of separate particles, a single network of relationships appears before us.
This network exists in a four-dimensional space, described only in the language of mathematical formulas, but inaccessible neither to our sensation, nor even to our imagination.
According to the American physicist Lisa Randall: "We live in a three-dimensional segment of a multidimensional world, since physiology itself limits our perception to only three dimensions."
Therefore, a single whole in our perception of the world breaks up into separate objects. Not seeing the connection between them, we take the events that take place as an accident, and the single force of Nature - as the results of the actions of individual forces.
As a result, our perception of reality resembles the parable of the blind monks "examining" an elephant. Everyone describes the animal as the part that ended up in his hands. “It is like a snake,” says the probing trunk. “It is like a tree,” says the one feeling the leg. “No, it’s like a wall,” argues the blind man who stumbled on the side of the animal.
Nature shows us only the tail of a lion. But I have no doubt that the lion itself is there, although it cannot immediately appear before us, because of its colossal size. (From The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, 1982.
According to the calculations of scientists, the lion's share of the Universe is inaccessible to our perception. But in the accessible part, we have a hard time. It's no secret that, despite all the achievements of science, the world is facing a multifaceted crisis. We were helpless not only in front of the forces of Nature, but even in the face of the financial system created in our own image and likeness.
Not knowing the laws of Nature, our civilization has been moving at random, by trial and error.
At the current stage of development, this becomes impossible. Humanity has become a global, interdependent community, where every single mistake leads to a general crisis.
To survive, we need to learn to understand the laws of Nature. To do this, we need to go beyond the narrow framework of our usual reality. The rise to a higher level of perception becomes an urgent task vital for the future of humanity.
Author: Sergey Belitsky