The Fall of Realism

Realism sounds like a good idea. It's a very simple concept: Things really are the way we think they are.

Science, which starts out as a child of realism, seeking to provide a sound basis for it, winds up contradicting it on many accounts:

Realism: We can distinguish one object from another, therefore they are separate in reality.

Science: Objects do not have firm boundaries, but blend into each other at the borders. Not only that, but all objects are almost entirely empty space -- and empty space is more like a smooth energy background than nothing.

Realism: What we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel is what is really there.

Science: Our senses are an interaction between the object sensed, our sense organs, and everything in between. We don't see objects themselves, but photons that have bounced off them. We don't hear objects themselves, but pressure waves that radiate from them. We don't smell objects themselves, but molecules that float off them. Furthermore, the contact that we do have produces consciousness, in a way that is not understood, so it is not clear what the relation is between consciousness and what is sensed.

Realism: There is one moment "now" that divides past (which is dead), present (which is alive), and future (which is unborn).

Science: "Now" and "at the same time" are relative to each observer. Everything that ever was, is or will be forms an inseparable whole, the space-time continuum, which is entirely present at once.

Realism: We can recognize objects from one time to another; therefore, they persist, changing over time.

Science: Objects do not move through time. Two occurrences separated in time are different space-time events, even if the human mind labels them as the "same" object, although they may be related.

Realism: There is one reality, the one we see.

Science: When we aren't looking, the universe exists as a "wave function" including all possibilities, equally alive. When we observe, the wave function collapses into the one version that we experience. Not only that, but we only see the four dimensions of our space-time, and the universe might actually have an unimaginable number of space-times in an 11-dimensional whole.

Realism: Human thought processes, especially logic and mathematics, are capable of understanding the universe.

Science: Maybe, but the evidence provides plenty of room for doubt. Understanding even current theories requires highly advanced mathematics beyond the intellectual capability of probably 90% of human beings. The universe's actual geometry is probably even more complicated than these theories. The "either-or"/"true-false" approach of logic does not seem to apply to the universe, which exhibits wave-particle duality, mass-energy duality and the wave function. Furthermore, the uncertainty principle implies that we can never have perfect knowledge about any space-time event.

Our senses and thought processes are practical. They help us do what we do. Science also is practical. It provides us greater capabilities for doing things. However, senses, reason, and science are only approximations, and believing that they provide direct knowledge of reality is naive.

If this is the case, should science be studied merely for the practical applications of technology, or is there a deeper benefit in continually improving our understanding of the universe?

Next: Toolset #1