What is reality?
Oct 31, 2013 5:50:18 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 5:50:18 GMT -5
When you woke up this morning, you found the world largely as you left it. You were still you; the room in which you awoke was the same one you went to sleep in. The outside world had not been rearranged. History was unchanged and the future remained unknowable. In other words, you woke up to reality.
BBC Two (television) - Horizon - What is Reality?
But what is reality, Sydney? I would naturally take a scientific approach, but there is more than one way to crack a nut! The more we probe reality, the harder it becomes to comprehend. In the eight articles in the link below, 'New Scientist' takes a tour of our fundamental understanding of the world around us, starting with an attempt to define reality and ending with the idea that whatever reality is, it isn’t what it seems. Hold on to your hats.
A straightforward answer is that it means everything that appears to our five senses - everything that we can see, smell, touch and so forth. Yet this answer ignores such problematic entities as electrons, the economy and the number 3, which we cannot sense but which are very real. It also ignores phantom limbs and illusory smells. Both can appear vividly real, but we would like to say that these are not part of reality.
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I suppose that even a scientist's genitals have to go somewhere, although in my experience, this too can be problematical!
New Scientist - What is reality?
BBC Two (television) - Horizon - What is Reality?
But what is reality, Sydney? I would naturally take a scientific approach, but there is more than one way to crack a nut! The more we probe reality, the harder it becomes to comprehend. In the eight articles in the link below, 'New Scientist' takes a tour of our fundamental understanding of the world around us, starting with an attempt to define reality and ending with the idea that whatever reality is, it isn’t what it seems. Hold on to your hats.
A straightforward answer is that it means everything that appears to our five senses - everything that we can see, smell, touch and so forth. Yet this answer ignores such problematic entities as electrons, the economy and the number 3, which we cannot sense but which are very real. It also ignores phantom limbs and illusory smells. Both can appear vividly real, but we would like to say that these are not part of reality.
"We could tweak the definition by equating reality with what appears to a sufficiently large group of people, thereby ruling out subjective hallucinations. Unfortunately there are also hallucinations experienced by large groups, such as a mass delusion known as koro, mainly observed in South-East Asia, which involves the belief that one's genitals are shrinking back into one's body ... "
I suppose that even a scientist's genitals have to go somewhere, although in my experience, this too can be problematical!
New Scientist - What is reality?