Replies

Thank you oh so very much for your excellent essay post!

But, er, you have attributed cornelis' questions to me. I take that as a huge compliment, by the way.

Also, if you need a host for your chart please let me know.

All views of reality are partial. Or so it seems to me…. That doesn’t make our partial view “illusion.” Meanwhile we try to open up our view of things by additions of new knowledge….

I very strongly agree. I have however used the term "illusion" to apply when the partial view is found to be erroneous as in the parable of the ten blind men describing the elephant. Perhaps that is what Einstein meant when he said "reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

In Einstein’s case, perhaps he made the arguments he made in his extended debates with Bohr (e.g., in favor of local realism and contra “spooky action at a distance”) in defense of classical science -- even though he did as much as Bohr to unsettle that paradigm. Yet there are writings and statements from Einstein that suggest a mystical bent to his nature, an openness to the divine....

Indeed.

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is. — “My Credo,” presented to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, in Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, ed., London: Simon & Schuster, 1993, page 262.

Dear Alamo-Girl, I’ve been thinking over your blind-men-and-elephant analogy and how it bears on the problem of illusion.

Here we have an unspecified number of persons who have been blind since birth who agree they would like to know something about elephants. So they find one (or more accutately one has been found for them), and each goes about exploring it, recording the incoming sense impressions of it, from whatever part of the elephant is most accessible to him. One man has the trunk, another, the tail, another a leg, and so forth. Each is supposed to digest his experience, and report back to the group. In this way, a “composite picture” of the elephant can be formed. At least that is the expectation: For each blind man “testifies” to what he has “seen,” and the group duly records his report.

But does any of this really tell us anything about the elephant? For first of all, the elephant has been “reduced” to a part to be investigated by men whose sensory apparatus is hampered. Then they make their reports. The presupposition is that all the blind men speak a common language, and so the several reports are completely intelligible to the group as well as to their respective speakers. But I haven’t seen the elephant yet….

Is this what we mean by illusion — the expectation that wholes can be known by their parts, by men who are blind; and then their work product will be communicated to the rest of us as a comprehensive account of “elephant?” In other words, can an elephant be understood in terms of a process like this?

I think the problem with the “blind man approach” is that it takes the stance of the observer supposedly being “apart” from what he observes, and not “a part” of the system he observes. But both relativity theory and quantum field theory, it seems to me, strongly imply that the observer is a part of and participant in the system he observes. And so, what would the “elephant analogy” look like to someone who is consciously a part and participant of the system he observes?

Here’s a “horse analogy,” from Dr. Grandpierre. I like it a lot because it understands the universe as an “organic unit,” which is what field theory seems to suggest (for fields are spatially and temporally universal).

“If the Universe is an organic unit, it must be more than just the sum of its parts. That given, to what extent can the Universe be understood by examining its elements? The Universe cannot be imagined after the fashion of an imaginary creature who, for instance, living inside a horse, and knowing just a few molecules of the horse, tries to imagine, on this basis, what the horse itself could look like. If this hypothetical observer gets to know, let us say, three or four protein molecules, it might say that the horse must be an enormous protein molecule. For an elementary creature sitting inside and getting acquainted with a couple of horse molecules, it is not easy to find out the essence of a horse: what “being a horse” means, what it is like, what it looks like, what it does, what it feels and thinks, how its life goes, what kinds of pleasures and experiences it has. It is uncertain that this creature could imagine what a fiery steed this horse is; and when a man is riding it at full gallop, what kind of experiences are lived by the horse. Then again, can we hope at all to somehow understand the universe as a whole? At least this example shows that we can see the structure only by recognizing the relationships, by understanding, for example, why a horse is a horse, what its structure and construction are like, what kinds of relationships and existential qualities it has. Therefore, in order to understand the real nature of the horse — and by the same token, the real nature of the Universe — we must examine the relationships that give its substance.”

Our imaginary observer here seems to have the same problem as the passel of blind men. And its reports about its intended object are just as suspect. Or so it seems to me.

But if these sorts of experiences are what define “illusion,” then every observer who thinks, speaks, or writes about his observations is in the illusion business. I just prefer to recognize this phenomenon as an example of human limitation, which is cognitive (or epistemological) in these cases. For every observer has only a very partial view of the whole; and his understanding of it is further complicated by his utter dependency on it, as part and participant. The accounts of different observers will differ accordingly.

And so it seems the best course is to “examine the relationships that give its substance.” Now we are in the realm of non-phenomenal reality. Again. But hopefully this time we can say that truth is not a human construct; it is a human discovery, and yet again a quest. Truth is the exclusive province of God. He reveals it to us freely; we can reliably be guided by His Truth in our search for the truth of reality, by the light and grace of the Holy Spirit.

The alternative is to put man in charge of “the truth business.” Which I think is a thoroughly contemptible idea. If you disagree, just look around you — at the poisonous and poisoning “climate of opinion” that is regnant today. There are just too many people in public life today who are either outright liars, or adepts in “telling the truth skillfully”; meaning they shave the truth wherever possible, and very carefully; but still use it as “the front” for their operations.

May the Lord save us from this horrific, hideous Kultursmog -- which is a prime example of how the collective illusions of second-reality dwellers seeking dominance in our culture and political society have become actually effective in our everyday world.

To sum up: This “blind person” who “swims” in universal fields (that would be me) concludes that the Light (that casts the “shadows” in Plato’s Cave) is the Truth, the Logos of the Beginning that is “beyond” the human world; and speaking as a Christian, it is the Word of God in and by which human souls participate in the divine Life bought for us by the Sacrifice of our Lord, Jesus Christ; which is communicated to human souls by virtue of the Grace of God which is the Holy Spirit.

One is, of course, always completely free to try to make a life and a world in and by means of the Kultursmog. To such I heartily say: Good Luck and buona fortuna.

Thank you so much, Alamo-Girl, for your outstanding essay/posts today!