Reality as an illusion

by Praveen Lakthilaka

Being an 18- year-old school graduate who focused on studying the scientific nature of the elemental world for the last four years, I have many questions about my surroundings. Although I have learned many things about the world at school, the material at school wasn't enough to answer my questions. By this time, YouTube had a moderate amount of videos that attempted to answer the questions I asked. One video was on the basis of reality, it was this video that inspired my mind to ask all these questions. In other words, this video inspired me to ask if reality is an illusion.

Perspectivism Pic: Courtesy eliheissfiles

Are we really seeing what we are seeing? Is my green really green, or is it really someone else's blue? The truth is - our perception of the reality around us always goes hand in hand with what we have been taught to call it. For example, it doesn't matter what the receptors in our retina record, because once those signals reach the brain, what has been taught to us comes into play. It is this factor that contributes to one's sense of reality. It is the balance of our perception against the nurturing of our minds.

Reality as a reality

Based on this argument, I would like to break into a question that has befuddled many scientists and physicists: "Is reality an illusion?" One of these scientists (I am using the term "scientist" broadly) was a renowned physicist, Albert Einstein. One of his most famous quotes was:"It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware of." If we were to analyze the keyword in the statement, "possible" distinguishes itself over the others. Albert Einstein said this over 60 years ago. What breakthroughs have been accomplished today to prove or disapprove this "possibility"?

To start off with, recent studies have concluded that nothing is truly physical. Scientists have made many discoveries to come to this conclusion, but I would like to focus on two, the first is 'the alpha-scattering experiment' which was conducted by Ernest Rutherford in 1906.

The experiment was simple. Rutherford used a radioactive substance that emits alpha particles behind a piece of gold foil and the gold foil was observed under a microscope.

The characteristic flash from an alpha particle allowed Rutherford to see it under the microscope.

At the end of the experiment, Rutherford realized that more than 99% of the alpha particles went right through the gold foil. Before drawing any conclusions, Rutherford repeated this experiment with the help of physicists Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden at the University of Manchester and concluded that more than 99% of an atom is empty. Today, more than a century since these experiments were conducted, scientists have confirmed that 99.9999% of an atom is empty space.

Before moving onto the next experiment, let's ask the question: Is there really a "physicality" in our sense of reality? Our sources of input into our perception of reality are our five senses. If we were to analyze the sense of touch without physicality, this dimension of our perspective tends to crumble. So where does this leave us with our perception of reality?

Most would say that without physicality our perception is hindered, but let's not jump to any conclusions yet. We still have four more senses to go, but for the purpose of this argument, I will only discuss touch and sight, because including the other senses will complicate the scope of the argument. The second discovery I would like to draw upon is the discovery of the Angstrom. It is a unit of length named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Angstrom. What's interesting about this physicist is that he was a pioneer in the field of spectroscopy.

In 1868, Angstrom created a chart of the spectrum of solar radiation and concluded that light waves have a range of wavelengths from 4000-7000 Angstroms. What's interesting about this concept is that recent studies have shown that the diameter of an atom is less than one Angstrom. So the question is: If sight depends on the reflection of light off of matter, but the light waves are bigger than atoms themselves, what are we really looking at? The sense of sight, I believe, is most crucial when it comes to our perception. Now that it is hindered just like the sensation of touch. What can we really believe? Nothing seems to be real anymore...

Exist in so-called 'reality'

That is a very good discussion point. Here, I would like to propose a thought experiment. I came across this thought experiment in a philosophy book written by the British Author and Philosopher Steve Grand. To paraphrase, Grand says: 'Try to remember a distinct memory. Why do you remember it? It's because you were there, isn't it? Here's the bombshell: You weren't there; not a single atom that was in your body at the time is in you right now.'

What did Grand mean, when he wrote this? I believe he was writing about the natural biological process that takes place in the human body. We constantly keep adding new substances into our body and keep discarding the old ones. The atoms in our bodies get replaced constantly, so in a way what Grand said is true. How do we remember something if we didn't exist at the time it occurred? Our sense of existence seems to be distorted.

So now I come to my final question: Is reality an illusion? I can't answer this question but science has shown humanity that the sense of touch seems to be an illusion; the sense of sight seems to be an illusion. Even our very existence seems to be an illusion. What does that tell me? Is reality an illusion? I don't know, and it doesn't matter because I am a perspectivist. As a perspectivist, I don't have to follow just one explanation.

German Philosopher Freidrich Nietzche sums up perspectivism in this statement thus: "Perspectivism denies the existence of facts and insists there are only interpretations of the world."

As a perspectivist, if scientific facts show that reality is an illusion, it is merely an interpretation. Therefore, I believe that it is important to judge reality from different angles instead of sticking to one interpretation. I also invite the readers to consider perspectivism.

Question everything...

Learn along the way of discourse...

And gather as much information as possible to help you discover your own interpretation of reality...