My Reality

PROLOGUE: It is approximately the year 400 BC. A Greek philosopher, Plato, writes in his seventh book of "The Republic" about a number of people imprisoned and forced to continuously face a cave wall, where they are only able to view events occurring behind them from the shadows the events cast on the wall . He contrasts their impressions of what reality is, as derived from what their senses are telling them when looking at these shadows, with what actually exists. He postulates that the reality that is perceived by man is dependent on his sensory data, which is incomplete, misleading, and faulty. The realization of the truth of the above statement will strengthen over time with the most famous physicist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, stating: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” It is the year 1687 AD. Science and knowledge have improved greatly since Plato’s time. Our species now knows that the Earth is round and orbits the Sun. Kepler has determined a set of rules that describe the motion of the planets around the Sun and Galileo has found that all objects fall toward the Earth at the same rate regardless of what they consist of. Realizing that these two observations are manifestations of the same phenomenon, a physicist formulates a set of mathematical equations to describe it. The physicist is Newton and the phenomenon is gravity. Newton’s law of gravitation will govern the development of Western Science well into the twentieth century. Based on this law, most physicists of his time will conclude that the world is deterministic and that given correct data, man can describe the future behavior of the cosmos. Toward the end of the nineteenth century a Natural Scientist, during a long sea voyage, makes a number of observations which lead him to realize that life adapts to the conditions surrounding it and it is this adaptation that leads to the formation of new species. This theory contradicts many of the accepted scientific and religious beliefs of the time and the scientist hesitates in publishing it. Once he does publish, the data he has meticulously recorded, as well as the fossil record, cause his ideas to slowly be accepted by his peers. The scientist is Darwin and the resulting Science is named the Theory of Evolution. It is the early twentieth century and the certainty of Newton’s world begins to be questioned. A number of experiments take place to determine the velocity of light, which lead to paradoxical conclusions when viewed from the perspective of Newtonian physics. A physicist resolves these paradoxes by doing away with Newtonian concepts like simultaneity and the invariance of time to different observers and derives a theory, which completely contradicts what an observer’s senses seem to be telling him. He subsequently develops a theory of gravity, which is based on geometry, and is able to describe the birth and expansion of the Cosmos. The name of this physicist is Einstein and his theory becomes known as the Theory of Relativity. During this same period, another group of physicists begin to look at the behavior of very small objects such as photons and electrons. Led by Heisenberg and Bohr, they postulate a world where causality does not seem to exist and where the very act of an observer making a measurement changes the essence of the object being observed. The resulting Science is known as Quantum Theory, and many of the new technologies of the late twentieth century will be based on it. The new millennium is starting. We have sent objects outside our solar system and have generated electromagnetic signals, which are now reaching the nearest stars. We have begun to decipher the genetic code of life and will soon have the capability to modify this code at will. Our species sees out to the edge of the observable Universe as well as seeing within the boundaries of an atom. The science and technology we possess are increasing at an exponential rate, and rest on the pillars of, Relativity Theory, Quantum Theory, and the Theory of Evolution. Our understanding of the Universe we inhabit and our place in it, is in turn, based on these pillars and what our senses tell us. It is therefore appropriate that we examine in more detail where these theories came from, the relationship of our senses to them, how our species evolved to the point where we are capable of proposing and understanding them, and what they predict for our species' future.