The Nature of Reality: Three Positions
INDEX
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Albert Einstein
Man follows only phantoms. Pierre-Simon de Laplace, (1749 - 1827) [His last words, according to De Morgan:] DeMorgan's Budget of Paradoxes.
An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted. -Arthur Miller
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. Edgar Allan Poe
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. Woody Allen
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe. W. Somerset Maugham
All that you see or seem, is but a dream within a dream. Edgar Allen Poe
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their entrances and exits; And one man in his time has many parts. William Shakespeare
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. Oscar Wilde
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
If hyperspace did not already exist, science fiction writers would have had to invent it -- Peter Oakley
To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them. George Spencer Brown (1923 - ) The Laws of Form. 1969.
Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it. Gottfried Whilhem Leibniz, (1646-1716) In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
There is no truth beyond magic' ... reality is strange. Many people think reality is prosaic. I don't. We don't explain things away in science. We get closer to the mystery. Brian Goodwin , quoted by Roger Lewin in _Complexity_ (1992)
But we know nothing really; for the truth lies deep down. Democritus
The concept of reality is one that we must learn to get along without, and that the strength of one's impulses to use it is a measure of one's operational weak-mindedness. P.W. Bridgeman The Nature of Thermodynamics
A third realist position is to assume that the physical world does exist in its own right, but that science has no means of ascertaining whether theories are correct or even probable. This is tantamount to the belief that the world is real but unknowable. Alan Wallace, Choosing Reality
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. --- Einstein
[Man] does not see the real world. The real world is hidden from him by the wall of imagination. George Gurdjieff (1874-1949), Russian mystic, author
"Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied." -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams.
A: You know, all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I've had this strange, unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, and noone would tell me what it was.
S: Oh, no, that's just perfectly normal paranoia, everyone in the universe has that!
A: Oh. Well, maybe that means that somewhere outside this ...
S: Maybe. Who cares? Perhaps I'm just old and tired, but I've always thought that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is say, hang the sense of it, and keep yourself. occupied ... Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right anyday!
A: And are you?
S: No. That's where it all falls down, of course.
(Arthur and Slartibartfast from the _Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy_ by Douglas Noel Adams)
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstacy at your feet. Kafka
Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. Phillip K. Dick
Reality is where we are from moment to moment. Robert Linssen
To those who are awake, there is one ordered universe common to all, whereas in sleep each man turns away from this world to one of his own. Heraclitus
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached., Simone Weil, Source: Little Zen Companion, Schiller.
Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced. Siren Kierkegaard
Humankind cannot bear very much reality. -T. S. Eliot
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. Warren G. Bennis
If anything is poisoning our lives and weakening our society, it is reality -- and not the fabrication of television writers and producers. --Martin Maloney
Things like that only happen in comic books, Robin. This is real life! -- Batman ('60s TV series)
No. 3: WE CAN'T AGREE ABOUT REALITY
Practicing scientists must often be content with a state of knowledge which does not reflect a unified version of reality. Douglas, McDaniel, and Alexander
My contention is that atoms, electrons, and other entities of microscopic physics are hypotheses, inferences, or realities according as chairs and tables and other commonplace objects of the physical world are hypotheses, inferences, or realities. Eddington, New Pathways in Science
Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them - never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through? -C. S. Lewis
Of what significance is one's own existence, one is basically unaware. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? The bitter and the sweet come from outside. The hard from within, from one's own efforts. For the most part I do what my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn such respect and love for it. Albert Einstein
When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see reality for what it really is, infinite. -William Blake
What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable. Louise Nevelson
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist. -William James
If there is no reason why something shouldn't exist, then it must exist. -Murray Gell-Martin
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing. -Sydney Harris
Appearances often are deceiving. Aesop
Things are not always what they seem. Phaedrus
Reality Depends upon the Observer
When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us. --Bertrand Russell
An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation. -- Niels Bohr
Whoever wants to see a brick must look at its pores, and must keep his eyes close to it. But whoever wants to see a cathedral cannot see it as he sees a brick. This demands a respect for distance. Jose Ortega y Gasset
What Einstein calls a physical quantity is simply a number, and if it does correspond to a physical reality, that quantity alone yields no suggestion of what that reality might be... it is a measure not of nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of detection. Alan Wallace, Choosing Reality
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anais Nin
Throughout the history of human thought there have been dominant paradigms of the Universe. These mental images often tell us little about the Universe, but much about the society that was engaged in its study. -Dr.. John Barrow
We may begin to see reality differently simply because the computer ... provides a different angle on reality. Pagels, Heinz
Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer
Reality is not optional. Thomas Sowell
All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us. Immanuel Kant
If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke? Steven Wright
The World of Reality Is in Our Minds
We can know only our own thoughts
All that is not thought is pure nothingness; since we can think only thoughts, and all the words we use to speak of things can express only thoughts, to say there is something other than thought is therefore an affirmation which can have no meaning. Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. But it is this gleam that is everything. Henri Poincare Science and Reality
Let us not forget that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference. Eddington, Science and the Unseen World
Reality is only as the mind perceives it, where yesterday will never arrive and tomorrow has long since gone.
The Brain is wider than the Sky-
For- put them side by side-
The one the other will contain
With ease- and You- beside. Emily Dickinson
The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. Joseph Conrad
I used to think the mind was the most important part of a person. Then I realized what part of me is telling me that.
What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch. Lily Tomlin
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate. Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Cogito Ergo Sum. "I think, therefore I am." - René Descartes, (1596-1650) Discours de la Méthode. 1637.
No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other--but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it. - Robert A. Heinlein, _Methusalah's_Children_
Nature is a symbolic, man-made, metaphysical creation
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. -- Emerson
The map is not the territory. Alfred Korzbyski, Source: Little Zen Companion, Schiller.
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality. J.G. Ballard Introduction to the French edition (1974) of Crash (1973) reprinted in Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)
Man is by nature metaphysical and proud. He has gone so far as to think that the idealistic creations of his mind, which correspond to his feelings, also represent reality. -Claude Bernard
I have always been vaguely embarrassed by a kind of illusory quality in science ... it was not a conspiracy but something more like the hoax in The Emperor's New Clothes. I had come to suspect, and now felt compelled to acknowledge, that science and the physical world were products of human imagining - that we were not the cool observers of that world, but its passionate creators. We were poets and the world was our metaphor. Roger S Jones, Physics As Metaphor
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. Herman Melville: Moby Dick
We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. Sir Arthur Eddington
Nature is visible thought. Heinrich Heine
To know the world one must construct it. -Cesare Pavese
Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience. Einstein- _Ideas and Opinions_, (Dell, Pinebrook, N.J., 1954).
Experiment does not inform us of the intrinsic nature of microobjects as they exist apart from measurement. Given one system of measurement, results are produced that suggest the presence of a wave phenomenon; given another system, the same measured object seems to be a particle. In the absence of any system of measurement, we have no evidence of waves, particles, or anything else. We may conclude, according to the above principle, that an electron existing as an independent entity is in principle unknowable; therefore this independent entity does not exist as a potentiality, for it does not exist at all. Alan Wallace, Choosing Reality
Anyone who thinks science fiction is about the future is being naive. Science fiction doesn't predict the future; it determines it, colonizes it, preprograms it in the image of the present. William Gibson
What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him, should be of no importance. -Oscar Wilde
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