Philosophy(2)

I have been reading a lot of arbit stuff lately. It began with readings on philosophy, and while at it, I read this astounding article on "Psychic Powers" by Helen Savage; Theosophical Manual . Incredibly the writer is pretty convincing in his arguments and also a lot of what he has written makes good sense. Though probably he was pretty farfetched in his ideas on astral energy and their interference, the article in itself was a written with a sound mind and firm background examples were also provided. Then I searched up some stuff on Wikipedia; String Theory and its predictions about 11 dimensions, about dark matter, dark energy(both things about which we have absolutely no idea!) and ended up reading on Chaos Theory and other stuff. Anyone who remembers anything about Quantum Chemistry that we studied will agree with one thing, that its totally vague!. Whatever we are studying, propagating, researching are mainly vague ideas which are idealized to large extents. Its almost as though, because we want to explain something we come up with theories to do it and when found that its inapplicable in certain cases, we throw them off and move on to new theories. This process has been happening on since eternity.

So while going through all these ¨attempts¨that we make to understand ourselves and nature, the picture that emerged in my mind was that of the four blind men groping at the various parts of an elephant and describing an elephant in his own way. Each one can firmly ¨prove¨ why his argument is right and yet nothing makes sense when taken as a whole. So what if this really is the case?? What if we really are blind? In our case it may not be eyesight that we lack..it maybe another sense totally unknown to us. The term ¨sixth sense¨is a cliché, but what if we really lack it and it is the key to understanding life and universe.

To make things clear, I will refer to another imaginary world. Just like Earth, or even better take it be exactly similar to Earth (lets call it E2). The Sun, Moon, planets everything being in the same position and evolution of life proceeding in the exact same fashion. BUT there is ONE difference between the living organisms in E2 and those on Earth. Its that in E2 none of the organisms developed eyesight. Except for this one simple difference everything else is the same.

So you can imagine an entire race of human beings on E2. They have the same intelligence as we do and will of course be very much inquisitive and curious about everything happening around them. In the course of time (progress will certainly be slow.. but it will happen) they will develop tools and other structures. Their entire life will revolve around sounds and they will attach to sounds more importance than what we can ever imagine. They might form social organizations, might even split into groups based on how different they sound to each other; any such crap may happen among them. But the important factor here is that they will have no clue… absolutely no clue that there is such a thing as sight that exists. Things that seem so apparent and simple to us may seem to be the greatest mysteries to them. During the course of time, they might come up with their own explanations about the workings of earth and like ourselves through the process of trial and error finally arrive at some theories which might help them ¨develop¨ in certain areas.

But the irony here is that no matter how much they think, no matter how much they develop they will never be able to comprehend the realities of the universe. They will never even begin to imagine that there are planets and stars and solar systems and galaxies. They will never ever understand the phenomena of light and other optics. All their theories and discussions will be based on ¨sounds¨and ¨touch¨ just like our theories are so much dependant on ¨sight¨. It’s not a fault; it’s just the way we have been built.

So the point I want to say here is that just like the blind human beings on planet E2, what if the real human beings are also lacking on that extra sense of perception which is required to unravel the mysteries of the universe. I know it sounds totally pessimistic and negative, but I am equally sure that no one will be able to convince the blind beings on E2 that there is an extra sense of perception present in this universe . How do you explain colors to someone who has never seen ANYTHING?.... If this really is the case then whenever we are seeking to solve any universal mystery we are like the blind beings of E2 groping around trying to explain universe from the ¨sounds¨that they can hear. This might very well expalin why the different branches of our science never seem to converge and at many times seems to be totally divergent on several aspects. When taken alone most branches are ¨pretty ¨ well explained, but if u try to combine them the result is disastrous.

There are some more points which i would like to add to this discussion. I will either write a new post or update this one in the coming days. So meantime. just think about it.......

P.S. I came across this new article on Epistemology . It sheds some light on how our knowledge is influenced by our perception. Do give it a look