A Book by Manoj Thulasidas
The realm of science is reality as we can sense it. And,
what we sense is far from real! This is the thesis of my
book The Unreal
Universe.
The Unreal Universe is an exploration into the
interconnection among seemingly unrelated domains ranging
from spirituality to
physics. The first half of the
book concentrates on the similarities between philosophy and notion of reality in
neuroscience. In the second half, the overlap between
philosophy and science on the subject of reality is applied
in understanding certain aspects of physics in a quantitative way.
Knowledge and Reality
This overlap in knowledge may seem unremarkable at first
glance. Of course, everything is linked, the entire body of
knowledge that we possess resides in our brain, and that is
where it overlaps. In order to make use of this seemingly
trivial interconnection, we need to appreciate the real
import of the statement "Knowledge resides in our brain."
What is knowledge? Is it just the product of our logic and
deduction? Does it also include the concepts and
assumptions that our logic operates on? How about the
objects and space we see, the sounds we hear and everything
else we sense? Where does knowledge end and reality begin? It turns out that reality
is not distinct from knowledge.
Reality and Science
Cognitive neuroscience treats reality as a representation
of sensory inputs. Certain lines of spiritual philosophy
also view reality as an artifact of our perception. The
perceived reality, the cognitive representation, is the
unreal universe. Because reality is merely a model based on
sensory inputs, any limitation in the chain of sensing
should have a manifestation, a measurable and predictable
effect, on our reality. And because reality is the input to
physics, its theories have this manifestation built in. Can
we identify the limitations of perception and disentangle
the consequent manifestation from physics? This question is
the central theme of the book.
Reality in Physics
It is the quantitative application
of a philosophical notion of reality in physics that sets
The Unreal Universe
apart from other books dealing with the philosophy of
science. We have already come to appreciate the interplay
between physics and philosophy, but we have not started
applying philosophical
insights to physics. The spiritual philosophy of
reality has become a scientific insight through
neuroscience. Once the scientific view of reality as a
representation of sensory perceptions (rather than the
philosophical statement that nothing is real) percolates to
physics, what is explored in this book will become part of
our basic knowledge. We will clearly see the role of
sensing and perception in physics and its theories. From
there, it is but a small step to viewing our endeavors in
physics as applied spirituality, wondering if the reason
for the sanctity of light in special relativity has
anything to do with the biblical "Let there be light."
Along with the amazement at the accuracy of the ancient spiritual wisdom comes
the respectful appreciation that our repository of
religious knowledge may have other insights with potential,
and hitherto unsuspected, direct relevance to modern
sciences.
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