2
1 Introduction
The honeymoon with the senses, however, is coming to an end, and fundamental physics is emerging in a new form. For example, the theory of quanta
has been stalled for a hundred years by what appears to be a paradox. It has been
known for almost a century that when a fundamental particle such as an electron is not observed, it does not exist in the form of a material particle but as an
abstract wave of probabilities. Yet, the instant the same electron is observed, it
springs into reality as a material particle having a position, speed and direction
of motion. This fact presents a huge dilemma not only for physics, but for our
very concept of how the world works—for it suggests that the conscious mind
has causal power over material phenomena. (It doesn’t). The reason for this
apparent anomaly is that we conflate physical events with the way they appear
to our senses.
The time is now ripe, in science and in philosophy, to undo this tangle. The
advance of science requires us to redraw the boundary between the physical
world and the world as it presents itself to our senses. Our innate model of
reality was designed by nature to promote the survival of our species, not to
probe the cosmos. To understand the universe, the first step is to understand
our senses and how they mold our picture of reality.
For example, the logic of animal vision requires that what we see appear
to be located in the world outside of us. Thus, objects are displayed to the
beholder at varying distances laid out in ambient space—though the visual
image is actually formed in the viewer’s head. This is a necessary deception built
into the brain by nature. In fact, it’s a kind of hallucination. This paradoxical
fact is in the very nature of sensory perception. Everything we perceive is a
“hallucination”—not because what we see is mistaken, but because forms and
features aren’t aspects of brute matter but creations of perception. (See e.g.,
Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty, and Jakob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind).
Moreover, the brain has a specialized module to create the sensation of
motion, and when we have the experience of moving—or watching something
move—the awareness of motion is based on a sensation of visual flow induced
in conscious awareness by the brain. What living beings perceive as motion is
an artifact created by the mind. Physical motion is real but altogether different
from the moving window we perceive.
An essential task of the brain is to segment the visual world and present it
to subjects as divided into separate objects and parts. This is an indispensable
aspect of seeing, for if the perceived world were not segmented and the important objects highlighted and made to stand out, the visual world would not
be intelligible. When viewing a visual display, it is spontaneously presented
to awareness as a collection of discrete objects—but in fact this division is
an artifact of the visual brain. Every species of animal has its own scheme of
1 Introduction
The honeymoon with the senses, however, is coming to an end, and fundamental physics is emerging in a new form. For example, the theory of quanta
has been stalled for a hundred years by what appears to be a paradox. It has been
known for almost a century that when a fundamental particle such as an electron is not observed, it does not exist in the form of a material particle but as an
abstract wave of probabilities. Yet, the instant the same electron is observed, it
springs into reality as a material particle having a position, speed and direction
of motion. This fact presents a huge dilemma not only for physics, but for our
very concept of how the world works—for it suggests that the conscious mind
has causal power over material phenomena. (It doesn’t). The reason for this
apparent anomaly is that we conflate physical events with the way they appear
to our senses.
The time is now ripe, in science and in philosophy, to undo this tangle. The
advance of science requires us to redraw the boundary between the physical
world and the world as it presents itself to our senses. Our innate model of
reality was designed by nature to promote the survival of our species, not to
probe the cosmos. To understand the universe, the first step is to understand
our senses and how they mold our picture of reality.
For example, the logic of animal vision requires that what we see appear
to be located in the world outside of us. Thus, objects are displayed to the
beholder at varying distances laid out in ambient space—though the visual
image is actually formed in the viewer’s head. This is a necessary deception built
into the brain by nature. In fact, it’s a kind of hallucination. This paradoxical
fact is in the very nature of sensory perception. Everything we perceive is a
“hallucination”—not because what we see is mistaken, but because forms and
features aren’t aspects of brute matter but creations of perception. (See e.g.,
Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty, and Jakob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind).
Moreover, the brain has a specialized module to create the sensation of
motion, and when we have the experience of moving—or watching something
move—the awareness of motion is based on a sensation of visual flow induced
in conscious awareness by the brain. What living beings perceive as motion is
an artifact created by the mind. Physical motion is real but altogether different
from the moving window we perceive.
An essential task of the brain is to segment the visual world and present it
to subjects as divided into separate objects and parts. This is an indispensable
aspect of seeing, for if the perceived world were not segmented and the important objects highlighted and made to stand out, the visual world would not
be intelligible. When viewing a visual display, it is spontaneously presented
to awareness as a collection of discrete objects—but in fact this division is
an artifact of the visual brain. Every species of animal has its own scheme of