[ Friday, May 09, 2003 ]
Reality Bites
Maps of the world were once rife with areas of terra incognita, “undiscovered countries” and warn-ings that “here be dragons.” Sailors feared the horizon line, which they believed to be the edge of the flat earth.
That was the sum total of the world for them, the extent of knowledge, the defining lines of reality.
Today, the Hubble space telescope looks backward through time by scanning incredible distances into the void, searching for the leading edge of the Big Bang — the singular point in space and time where and when the universe began. Scientists and theologians alike wonder what they’ll see in the murk beyond that point.
Where does the real world end? Where does it begin? And how can we even know that something is so?
Aristotle called such ideas “The First Philosophy,” and Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century BC labeled Aristotle’s work “metaphysics.” It deals with the fundamental concepts of existence and causality — that which lies at the root of an individual’s sensory experiences.
Heavy stuff. It doesn’t seem the sort of thing people would use for popular entertainment — mov-ies, music and video games, for instance.
But that’s just exactly what we do.
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“I just found out there’s no such thing as the real world.”
—John Mayer,
‘No Such Thing’
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Unknown [9:51 AM]
