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Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Reality ~ through evidences or intentions!

We generally talk about reality and many a times try corroborating it with scientific evidences. It’s good to seek scientific evidences to prove reality of events / things. There is a long list of rationalists / logical positivists out there that look for a hardcore evidence for anything and everything. They see ‘reality’ as explained through evidences / proofs. For them universal rules, principles, formulae apply for everything and unless proven, things cannot be true. This is a typical ‘physical sciences approach’ where everything is explained through a universal rule, principle equation or formula. Here, an oval and circle are clearly distinguished by boundaries more exact than vice & virtue, right and wrong. But is this the only perspective that explains reality? Is anything which does not have a scientific basis is untrue? Let’s see a different perspective. 

Is there anything in universe that exists without a principle, rule or a formula? Well, there may not be anything that exists without a principle, rule, formula or a pattern but there is certainly a possibility that we may not know all such principles, rules, formulae or patterns that can explains everything under the sun. 

Let’s try seeing things that we notice / do in our day to day life without having / seeking scientific evidences. We take decisions on many things without having a scientific data to back them. Many such decisions are based on our own judgments, guts and intuitions. Yes, we seek advice's & information and apply our cognition, intentions and our mantle maps to create our own perspective, a perspective for which we may not be able to produce any scientific evidence. But can our inability of not getting scientific evidence make our own perspectives untrue?

Further, scientific rules and principles apply to matter in the universe but do they apply equally for living organisms more specifically to human beings. Let us try applying some simply understood scientific principles to organisms / human beings. 

Newton’s 1st Law - Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This law has universal applicability for object matter. But try applying the same for living organism especially human beings. Human beings not only change motion but also start zig-zag and even reverse direction without any physical push or barrier. 

Newton’s 3rd law – For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This law, again, has proven to be true to matter universally irrespective of place and time. But does it apply to human beings? Think of it. For humans, there may be a reaction; there may not be any reaction at all. Or there may be different reactions for same actions at different places and/or different times. Can any law of science predict when would there be more reaction or when would it be less or no reaction at all? Any explanation? 

So what external force acts on human beings that change the outcome of a universal physical law? Or what force makes the reaction of human being unequal to the action? The force which acts on human to change the outcome of universal law is human intention. The reality (outcome ~ set into motion / more reaction / less reaction etc) as evident from the universal physical law is altered by the human intention prevailing at the time. If the intention is to stop, the body stops, if the intention is reverse, it simply reverses. And there is no set pattern of such intentionality. Whereas, physical objects do not have any intentionality. Their reaction would remain constant under similar conditions. Hence studying matter is different and possibly easier than studying human beings. 

Thus, while on one side, the reality is explained through scientific rules and principles; on the other side it is understood as either a social construction or as a manifestation of human intentionality. These two sides seem to be two ends of a large spectrum. And it is on this side of the spectrum that one would not be able to find hard code evidence; there are only intentions, understandings, interpretations and perspectives. Most of the logical positivists consider this side of the spectrum as metaphysical because most of it garners little / no ‘scientific’ evidence, as tools used on ‘rational’ side of the spectrum yield no results here. In addition to human intentionality; Intuitions, Cognition, Sensation, conscience, and transcendence etc seems to be other elements of this side of the spectrum. With such elements at the play, can there be a single and universal reality? Thus, a view emerges that there can be infinite number of perspectives and all of them tell about a ‘reality’ socially constructed within that context of time & space, manifested through human intentionality or proven through a scientific evidence. We need to transcend or extend our limits of possible experiences / evidences to understand all those perspectives before we simply shun them as untrue!

I would eagerly await your feedback on the article !