20
R. Barrett and P. P. Delsanto
to our method of questioning [9]. Our view of reality is myopic, limited by our
instrumentation, and quite possibly distorted, like that of a goldfish viewing
the world outside of its bowl through the curved glass. As poet William Blake
wrote: If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man
as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow
chinks of his cavern [10].
The belief is that external to us there exists a “true” reality, but there is
no way to prove such an assertion. Would an alien, assuming one exists on
another planet somewhere, see the same reality as we do?
As we will see in Part 2 of this book, the progress of physics from the
turn of the 20th Century has been mainly to extend our “understanding”—a
term that we clarify in the next Chapter—to the very small and to the very
large and distant. However, our pictures of these two regions of reality are
somehow contradictory, and problems arise when they overlap. Will future
instrumentation enable this dilemma to be resolved, or will some questions
always remain unanswerable? One may regard science as a methodology for
testing out various hypotheses that we, as human observers, hold about the
physical world. We may strive towards truth, but the more questions we
answer, the more new ones that surface and require an answer.
Another issue to be considered is whether society will continue to support
research into areas such as these, which, although indulging humankind’s
curiosity into the origin of the world and of life, produce few practical
outcomes commensurate with its huge costs. In other areas, e.g. modification
of the human genome, human ethics have placed limits on research, when the
knowledge obtained would likely produce undesirable social consequences.
The same cost restraints do not apply to theoretical physics, but as we will
discover in Chap. 4, other issues become relevant. We have already seen in
Sect. 1.3 how Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise puzzled philosophers for centuries. Eventually this enigma was resolved, but others remain.
The field of mathematics was shocked by the incompleteness theorems (see
Chap. 4) proved almost a hundred years ago by the Austrian mathematician,
Kurt Gödel (1906–1978), which showed that some propositions in mathematics are unprovable. As physics is based on mathematics, surely similar
limits to knowledge must apply also in physics.
In considering questions such as we have raised here, it is important that
the debate is not left entirely in the hands of scientists. Science concerns
us all, since it has brought countless benefits to the whole of humanity. It
has also brought its shares of woes. Science can be a frightening toy in the
hands of the amoral or malevolent. For most people what is really relevant
to their everyday lives is the use of technologies, such as those required by
R. Barrett and P. P. Delsanto
to our method of questioning [9]. Our view of reality is myopic, limited by our
instrumentation, and quite possibly distorted, like that of a goldfish viewing
the world outside of its bowl through the curved glass. As poet William Blake
wrote: If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man
as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow
chinks of his cavern [10].
The belief is that external to us there exists a “true” reality, but there is
no way to prove such an assertion. Would an alien, assuming one exists on
another planet somewhere, see the same reality as we do?
As we will see in Part 2 of this book, the progress of physics from the
turn of the 20th Century has been mainly to extend our “understanding”—a
term that we clarify in the next Chapter—to the very small and to the very
large and distant. However, our pictures of these two regions of reality are
somehow contradictory, and problems arise when they overlap. Will future
instrumentation enable this dilemma to be resolved, or will some questions
always remain unanswerable? One may regard science as a methodology for
testing out various hypotheses that we, as human observers, hold about the
physical world. We may strive towards truth, but the more questions we
answer, the more new ones that surface and require an answer.
Another issue to be considered is whether society will continue to support
research into areas such as these, which, although indulging humankind’s
curiosity into the origin of the world and of life, produce few practical
outcomes commensurate with its huge costs. In other areas, e.g. modification
of the human genome, human ethics have placed limits on research, when the
knowledge obtained would likely produce undesirable social consequences.
The same cost restraints do not apply to theoretical physics, but as we will
discover in Chap. 4, other issues become relevant. We have already seen in
Sect. 1.3 how Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise puzzled philosophers for centuries. Eventually this enigma was resolved, but others remain.
The field of mathematics was shocked by the incompleteness theorems (see
Chap. 4) proved almost a hundred years ago by the Austrian mathematician,
Kurt Gödel (1906–1978), which showed that some propositions in mathematics are unprovable. As physics is based on mathematics, surely similar
limits to knowledge must apply also in physics.
In considering questions such as we have raised here, it is important that
the debate is not left entirely in the hands of scientists. Science concerns
us all, since it has brought countless benefits to the whole of humanity. It
has also brought its shares of woes. Science can be a frightening toy in the
hands of the amoral or malevolent. For most people what is really relevant
to their everyday lives is the use of technologies, such as those required by