Perception

Welcome back to all of those that did not sent me hate mail or drop me after my last blog. Well, hang on, especially welcome back those of you who did send me hate mail! Keep it coming!

As promised this week I’m going to be talking about human perception. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well read on!
What is perception? Well Webster’s defines it as : the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding. That pretty much sums up the point I wish to make, Our perception is a construct created by our brain in order to perceive the world around us.

I think it important for a minute to look back in time and see where we come from, (I will NOT debate to fiction that is creationism here, as stated in my last post, I have checked out of that world view). We evolved the senses we did in order to survive the environment around us, that is this world and time scale. To quote Richard Dawkings “our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude of size and speed in which our bodies operate”. We also, as a species, took evolution into our own hands after we created societies and cities through concepts of beauty and what and given society found important ant any given time, but more on that later.

It is also important to look at how the brain works. If there was ever a more amazing or complex structure than the brain I would have no idea what it is! What an adaptable organ it is! As you are reading this you are probably not at all aware that you have two rather large blind spots in your field of vision. It basically they correspond to the 2 ‘clock and 10 o’clock positions. Hold up your hand in one of these positions, what do you see? Well your hand of course! Now hold of a piece of paper with two large dots on it about 5 inches apart, look at the lower dot and place the other in your blind spot. After about 20 seconds the upper dot will disappeared. Why,? How is that possible, I saw my hand! Well your brain is VERY good at filling in the gaps, wither they are visual, auditory, sensory, or intellectual. There are many studies that illustrate this amazingly well. Phantom limbs and alien hand syndrome are just two.

So what do we have? A brain that evolved to survive in a specific world and that is very good at filling in the blanks.

So now lets apply this to our world and see what happens! Physicists have been struggling to figure out the quantum world (very very small) for about 80 years now. We don’t seem to have a problem with things that operate in our world of perception, such as the theory of relativity or Newtonian mechanics, but when we leave that realm out understanding breaks down. The reason that quantum mechanics seems so ungrassapable is because it is beyond out realm of reason; we never evolved in the sub atomic world. Our perception is clouded by our biology. We can imagine them, devise theories, but they will always somehow be imperfect. And hence the struggle to unify the world we live in (Einstein’s theories) with that we have no experience in (quantum theory). Is it any wonder that our math is 10 biased? Our brains are structured to think that way.
This can also be applied to religion as well. Early mans brain confronted a world he could not understand (the night sky, death) and created a reality in order to survive. Unfortunately this outdated philosophy still exists today.

I have to wonder, on a side note, just how many unexplainable events (ufo’s, ghosts) are just the brain coping with the unknown. I do consider myself quite the skeptic, but I do break on the skeptic society on this one point. To categorically dismiss all unusual events is missing the opportunity for some really interesting research! So let’s just say you do see a ghost, and let’s just rule out the obvious, that the dead are communicating with you and that is some mass hallucination. The question remains, what stimulus is causing the brain to create this illusion? What psychological mechanism is at work? And why can more than one persons experience it at once?

Well I hope you are enjoying my brain droppings and thanks for all the supportive emails, frak, I even got one from my father! Just remember, you are all going to be behind me when they come for me with the pitchforks, right? Right? Until next time…….

Simon

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
-Arthur Eddington