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| Reality Anchors in the Physical Universe |
Reality Anchors in the Physical Universe
How do you know that any of the three physical zones are real? For that matter, how do you know anything is real? How can you decide between two opposing views of reality?
According to the German philosopher, George Hegel (1770 – 1831), the gradual evolution of the history of ideas leads to the perception of reality. The American philosopher, John Dewey (1859 – 1952), claimed that truth and reality were based on distillations of the rules for action that had proved to be successful.
A more pragmatic approach is that you should be able to detect reality, directly or indirectly, through your senses. On a fundamental level you can touch reality, smell it, and taste it. More precisely, you can measure the properties of reality and you can measure how those properties vary over time.
The use of ‘reality anchors’, analogous to mental anchors, provides a very practical means for establishing your model of reality. A reality anchor is a particular concept in which you have a high degree of confidence. A set of such anchors can help you to maintain a dependable interpretation of reality and provide a framework for reasonable interpolations and extrapolations.
Reality anchors in the everyday realm
The simplest and most reliable anchors are based on direct experience. Your kitchen table is real. You can touch it. You can pile stuff on it. You can measure it. You can leave the room, come back ten minutes later, and there it is again – the same table.
The kitchen table may be one of your first and best anchors in reality. You can expand your realm of reality, and experience your entire home in a similar fashion.
Outside of your home, you can also experience your neighbourhood as a firsthand reality. However, a number of practical difficulties soon become apparent. Your neighbours may not be supportive of your efforts to experience their kitchen tables.
And very soon there would be too many tables, buildings, roads, blades of grass, trees, and fields for you to experience firsthand in a reasonable amount of time. Even if you spent your whole life at it you would never get more than a few kilometres from home.
There are at least two standard procedures for extending a system of reality anchors:
1. The first is to construct a mental model of an aspect of reality that you can use in lieu of firsthand experience. (See section 5.3 for a more complete discussion of models.) After visiting a few buildings you begin to acquire knowledge of their typical properties such as room size, ceiling height, stairs, doors, windows, desks, chairs, and appliances. Soon you can predict, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, the basic structure of the inside of a building after a brief view of its exterior and its surroundings. Similarly, you can soon predict the basic nature of the soil in a whole field just by holding a handful of dirt (sand, loam, pebbles) and glancing at the plants growing in the field.
2. The second way to extend your reality anchors is to rely on the experience of others. Travellers can tell you what they experienced in the next town down the road. They might tell you directly, or you might be able to review recorded versions of their observations.
How can you decide if travellers’ accounts are true and accurate? Continuing the analogy, you can apply one or more of the following criteria:
1. The accounts are reasonable extensions of your own experience in your own neighbourhood.
2. You know some of the travellers personally and trust their ability to observe and report accurately.
3. Some of the travellers are recognized by your neighbours as experienced and truthful observers and reporters.
4. A number of travellers, unknown to each other and coming from different directions, all report similar observations.
5. The traveller explains how to visit the same places he did, so if you wanted to devote the time and energy to do so you could travel down the road to observe the next town for yourself.
Not all reality anchors are equivalent. An anchor that has met several of the above tests is probably more secure than one that has not. If you spend considerable time and effort in expanding your range of anchors and securing them well, then you will probably have a better grip on reality than someone who just checks the kitchen table every now and then.
Reality anchors in the realm of the very large
Around the world, thousands of astronomers spend their professional lives collecting and analyzing astronomical data obtained with sophisticated telescopes and satellites.
All such information gathered during the past three centuries has been used to build a systematic, and consistent model of the cosmos. With ever larger and more complex astronomical instruments new discoveries and clarifications are still being made on a regular basis.
How could you as an individual verify the claims about the properties of this realm? You could use a clock and a protractor to make systematic observations of the positions and apparent motions of the Sun, Moon, and stars. This data could then be used to verify at least a portion of those claims. You could check your position on Earth with a Global-Positioning-System device and verify that all the orbital theories and instrumentation work as advertised. You could read magazines, journals, and texts on astronomy. You could join an association of amateur astronomers. With a few thousand dollars-worth of equipment, and the determination to develop the skills to use that equipment properly, you could observe the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, comets, multiple star systems, globular clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. You could study astronomy at a university; you could become a professional astronomer.
With accurate and systematic observations spanning months, years, and decades; you could determine the orbits of our planets about the Sun; you could determine the orbits, sizes, and masses of binary stars; you could determine the periods of stars that oscillate in brightness. With more sophisticated equipment and mathematical analyzes you could measure the velocities of stars and galaxies, and determine their distances.
None of this information is secret. If you are willing to spend the time and effort, you could make all the observations and deductions yourself. If you discovered something substantially new or different, the attention of thousands of amateur and professional astronomers would be diverted to explore your claims. And if your discovery were confirmed, existing knowledge would be adjusted and updated to include it.
Reality anchors in the realm of the very small
The realm of the very small is studied by microbiologists, material scientists, biochemists, organic and physical chemists, quantum physicists, and electronic engineers. In the past few centuries they have developed sophisticated instruments to explore the properties of microscopic materials. With this knowledge they have developed new materials, new medicines, and the whole field of electronics. The Internet, e-mails, cell phones, digital TV, iPods, penicillin, and digital cameras all exist because scientists have developed and successfully applied theories of the very small.
How could you verify descriptions and claims about the properties of the realm of the very small? An inexpensive microscope and some basic skills in sample preparation would provide the means for you to observe amoebae, paramecia, plant cells, and animal cells. The structures of crystals such as table salt, ice, and diamonds are reflections of the properties of their constituent atoms. Any working device using transistors supplies a verification of the quantum properties of material at the very small level. Turn on your television set, or your computer, and you have evidence that engineers can manipulate the flow of electrons to transfer energy and information. You could also read technical journals and texts; you could study appropriate courses at university. You could ask experts in the field: a microbiologist could provide details of living organisms as small as the structures within cells, a chemist could provide details of atomic structure, a particle physicist could provide descriptions of subatomic particles.
An expanded world view helps you to appreciate that the universe is an integrated system of physical events. Every day, humanity is applying its talent, tenacity, and curiosity to expand our knowledge of the universe.
How do you know that any of the three physical zones are real? For that matter, how do you know anything is real? How can you decide between two opposing views of reality?
According to the German philosopher, George Hegel (1770 – 1831), the gradual evolution of the history of ideas leads to the perception of reality. The American philosopher, John Dewey (1859 – 1952), claimed that truth and reality were based on distillations of the rules for action that had proved to be successful.
A more pragmatic approach is that you should be able to detect reality, directly or indirectly, through your senses. On a fundamental level you can touch reality, smell it, and taste it. More precisely, you can measure the properties of reality and you can measure how those properties vary over time.
The use of ‘reality anchors’, analogous to mental anchors, provides a very practical means for establishing your model of reality. A reality anchor is a particular concept in which you have a high degree of confidence. A set of such anchors can help you to maintain a dependable interpretation of reality and provide a framework for reasonable interpolations and extrapolations.
Reality anchors in the everyday realm
The simplest and most reliable anchors are based on direct experience. Your kitchen table is real. You can touch it. You can pile stuff on it. You can measure it. You can leave the room, come back ten minutes later, and there it is again – the same table.
The kitchen table may be one of your first and best anchors in reality. You can expand your realm of reality, and experience your entire home in a similar fashion.
Outside of your home, you can also experience your neighbourhood as a firsthand reality. However, a number of practical difficulties soon become apparent. Your neighbours may not be supportive of your efforts to experience their kitchen tables.
And very soon there would be too many tables, buildings, roads, blades of grass, trees, and fields for you to experience firsthand in a reasonable amount of time. Even if you spent your whole life at it you would never get more than a few kilometres from home.
There are at least two standard procedures for extending a system of reality anchors:
1. The first is to construct a mental model of an aspect of reality that you can use in lieu of firsthand experience. (See section 5.3 for a more complete discussion of models.) After visiting a few buildings you begin to acquire knowledge of their typical properties such as room size, ceiling height, stairs, doors, windows, desks, chairs, and appliances. Soon you can predict, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, the basic structure of the inside of a building after a brief view of its exterior and its surroundings. Similarly, you can soon predict the basic nature of the soil in a whole field just by holding a handful of dirt (sand, loam, pebbles) and glancing at the plants growing in the field.
2. The second way to extend your reality anchors is to rely on the experience of others. Travellers can tell you what they experienced in the next town down the road. They might tell you directly, or you might be able to review recorded versions of their observations.
How can you decide if travellers’ accounts are true and accurate? Continuing the analogy, you can apply one or more of the following criteria:
1. The accounts are reasonable extensions of your own experience in your own neighbourhood.
2. You know some of the travellers personally and trust their ability to observe and report accurately.
3. Some of the travellers are recognized by your neighbours as experienced and truthful observers and reporters.
4. A number of travellers, unknown to each other and coming from different directions, all report similar observations.
5. The traveller explains how to visit the same places he did, so if you wanted to devote the time and energy to do so you could travel down the road to observe the next town for yourself.
Not all reality anchors are equivalent. An anchor that has met several of the above tests is probably more secure than one that has not. If you spend considerable time and effort in expanding your range of anchors and securing them well, then you will probably have a better grip on reality than someone who just checks the kitchen table every now and then.
Reality anchors in the realm of the very large
Around the world, thousands of astronomers spend their professional lives collecting and analyzing astronomical data obtained with sophisticated telescopes and satellites.
All such information gathered during the past three centuries has been used to build a systematic, and consistent model of the cosmos. With ever larger and more complex astronomical instruments new discoveries and clarifications are still being made on a regular basis.
How could you as an individual verify the claims about the properties of this realm? You could use a clock and a protractor to make systematic observations of the positions and apparent motions of the Sun, Moon, and stars. This data could then be used to verify at least a portion of those claims. You could check your position on Earth with a Global-Positioning-System device and verify that all the orbital theories and instrumentation work as advertised. You could read magazines, journals, and texts on astronomy. You could join an association of amateur astronomers. With a few thousand dollars-worth of equipment, and the determination to develop the skills to use that equipment properly, you could observe the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, comets, multiple star systems, globular clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. You could study astronomy at a university; you could become a professional astronomer.
With accurate and systematic observations spanning months, years, and decades; you could determine the orbits of our planets about the Sun; you could determine the orbits, sizes, and masses of binary stars; you could determine the periods of stars that oscillate in brightness. With more sophisticated equipment and mathematical analyzes you could measure the velocities of stars and galaxies, and determine their distances.
None of this information is secret. If you are willing to spend the time and effort, you could make all the observations and deductions yourself. If you discovered something substantially new or different, the attention of thousands of amateur and professional astronomers would be diverted to explore your claims. And if your discovery were confirmed, existing knowledge would be adjusted and updated to include it.
Reality anchors in the realm of the very small
The realm of the very small is studied by microbiologists, material scientists, biochemists, organic and physical chemists, quantum physicists, and electronic engineers. In the past few centuries they have developed sophisticated instruments to explore the properties of microscopic materials. With this knowledge they have developed new materials, new medicines, and the whole field of electronics. The Internet, e-mails, cell phones, digital TV, iPods, penicillin, and digital cameras all exist because scientists have developed and successfully applied theories of the very small.
How could you verify descriptions and claims about the properties of the realm of the very small? An inexpensive microscope and some basic skills in sample preparation would provide the means for you to observe amoebae, paramecia, plant cells, and animal cells. The structures of crystals such as table salt, ice, and diamonds are reflections of the properties of their constituent atoms. Any working device using transistors supplies a verification of the quantum properties of material at the very small level. Turn on your television set, or your computer, and you have evidence that engineers can manipulate the flow of electrons to transfer energy and information. You could also read technical journals and texts; you could study appropriate courses at university. You could ask experts in the field: a microbiologist could provide details of living organisms as small as the structures within cells, a chemist could provide details of atomic structure, a particle physicist could provide descriptions of subatomic particles.
An expanded world view helps you to appreciate that the universe is an integrated system of physical events. Every day, humanity is applying its talent, tenacity, and curiosity to expand our knowledge of the universe.
