Elusive “Reality"

 Op Ed by Helge Nome

Over the last year, or so, I have indulged in some philosophical questions that tend to crop up in one’s life, from time to time. Especially as one gets older, I suspect.

Questions like: “What is reality”, “consciousness” or “being”.

There is no lack of discussion on these topics online, and off line for that matter, in books stretching back into antiquity.

For us materialistic westerners, “reality” used to be what we perceived around us, consisting of all kinds of objects with predictable trajectories, as long as we knew all the “facts” about them.

That was yesterday. Not any more: As our increasingly sophisticated tools enabled us to look deeper and deeper into both the micro and macroworlds around us, information gathered indicated that our models of “reality’ have major cracks in them.

So we invented “Quantum Physics” to try to make sense of what was observed, in contrast to what our beliefs predicted should be observed.

We found that mathematical models worked, but conceptual models based on Newtonian physics did not.

One thing we did learn was that the very insertion of an instrument of observation of any one expected phenomenon changed the very fabric of what we wanted to observe, as illustrated by the famous “double slit” experiment.

I have personally experimented with something similar by changing the way my radio receiver picks up faint radio signals by simply walking around the room where it is situated, radically changing the quality of reception by doing so.

And there is nothing mysterious about that: A human body absorbs and reflects all kinds of electromagnetic radiation all the time, including radio signals, interfering with those that reach the antenna of the radio receiver.

Taking the discussion "one level up” our own bodies (we) are an integral aspect of phenomena we do not comprehend, but are manifested to us, via our senses and interpreted as electromagnetic waves. Which, by the way, are conceptual constructs based on our experience with observed waves in water.

So, where is “Reality” hiding in all this? 

From my perspective “Reality” is simply a conceptual creation we humans choose to make in order to feel some kind of comfort in a world full of surprises.