A Sixth Sense: Facts, Ideas, and the Mystery of Perception (Part 1)

Not surprisingly, post-modern thought and science find themselves at a crossroads of opposition. The course of deconstructive analytics has created nuanced views of experience, calling into question the nature of explicit fact. It has succeeded in identifying the tacit content of experience and reconstructing a view of reality where experience and perception are functions of one another. It is fair to say that post-modern thought has created a tautological explanation of existence, perception, and fact. In other words, when one looks in the mirror, one sees what he has learned to see. When one considers the word "blue", its meaning is both highly subjective and completely personal, based on the conditions of one's experience of "blue". Meanwhile, science (specifically physics) presses forward in search of a unifying theory of matter, seeking to quantify the distance between probabilistic events (particle physics) and cosmic motion (relativity). It stands on the precipice of defining the precise content of a moment, and a deeper understanding of the nature and role of time.

To that end, in an increasingly complex world, we are faced with theoretical and observable evidence from all directions that historical conceptions of "facts" are under assault. The course of thought has lead us to an acceptance that my "blue" is often not "blue" at all, and the course of science explains that the most elementary constituents of existence often have no definite location. Despite their different approaches and the subtle disagreements amongst conclusions, these two modes of thought do offer a couple areas of common ground: 1. Perception of a moment is enough to change the content of a moment; 2. Individual perception is not replicable or universal.

With the nature of fact thrown into such controversy, we are left to re-assess the role and power of perception. While we have long-ago accepted that the human experience of sense (taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight - henceforth, the Objective Senses) lacks the capacity to perceive the entirety of the universe, we have yet to consider that this list of senses could be amended. The course of science has been to expand the capability of the Objective Senses (particularly sight and hearing) to allow humans to observe the universe beyond their biological limitations (IE microscopes, SONAR, and particle accelerators). These technological and scientific achievements do not address a more fundamental question: what is the relationship between observation and fact? Perhaps it can be more basically expressed as: what is the relationship between the past and the future?* Thus, I propose a re-evaluation of the Objective Senses as the sole determinants of fact, and posit that Ideas (as the placeholders of experience) are a credible, tangible, and necessary constituent of perception and fact.

To be continued ...

* Scientific methodology relies on the assumption that the observed "Laws of Nature" persist without regard to time. For example, we have observed certain patterns in the motion of objects in relation to the forces that act upon them (IE if you toss a ball in the air, it will follow a certain path before ultimately coming to rest on the ground), and from that deduce that these patterns will always obtain. In the example, we may all be willing to accept that the theories of motion will not cataclymically change tomorrow; however, this does not address the central question, and it also raises questions on which scientists now effort (including research into the particles that cause forces, most notably the graviton which exists only in theory, yet to be observed). Namely, how can science establish certain laws and theories as absolutes (on the basis of having observed them) when it does not know exactly what the conditions are that cause these theories to exist? How can it adhere so strongly to the need for evidence to support conclusions, yet advance conclusions for which there is no evidence (IE that the next time I throw a ball, it will adhere to the "Laws of Motion" or that in 150 million years the "Laws of Motion" as they exist today will still be applicable)? We can explain gravity in terms of evidence, however we can not explain WHY gravity happens, or what conditions may cause the effects of gravity to change (this is important because cosmology necessitates that the force of gravity changes - again, this has only been observed in theory). Thus, science is a sort of objective history of matter (what did what to what, when, and for how long), but within its theoretical framework, it relies on the "faith" of its adherents to justify extending those explanations into the future.