Saturday, September 08, 2012

What's Real?

What can we not doubt? What can we be certain of? It seems all that we can be entirely certain of is that we are in fact experiencing something, even though we do not quite know what it is. In the words of Decartes, “cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am.” Our experience is our reality, and our thoughts are our souls. So how does this consciousness, capable of experiences, stem from matter. “Well whatever matter is made of it clearly isn’t matter” (misquoted and source unknown). At least not as defined by common understanding. We see matter as inanimate, lifeless and solid. The stuff that stuff is made of. But in reality, matter is mostly empty space. An atom is like a basketball being circled by marbles miles away. Physically, not a whole lot there. Except for the fact, that that isn’t even true. Are we confused yet? A physicist’s best description of an atom, to meet what it is in reality, is a value in a wave function. A value, meaning that there is no “thing” really there. Quantum physics describes atoms as possibilities of existence or a likelihood of interacting with other values…Starting to make absolutely no sense? Well the truth is that this is the real world. And we did not evolve to see the world as it is but instead to see the world in a way that allows us to function and survive.

-by: Brett Vollert