Part of Reality Cannot be Perceived [View all]

[Boojatta]

It can, however, be conceived.

Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks; but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house.
- Henri Poincare

We can make an analogy: grasping is like perceiving. You can say that grasping an idea is like perceiving light or sound. However, it's no more than an analogy. Ideas are neither physical objects nor perceptions of physical objects. Ideas occupy their own realm. So the claim that only what can be perceived is real is self-defeating for people who value science.

Saying that ideas are nothing but electro-chemical processes in human brains isn't a way out. If you say that, then you're going way beyond the old notion of the universe merely physically revolving around the Earth. When alien mathematicians in other galaxies have occasion to refer to the number 3.141592..., they aren't considering the simple idea of a circle that naive people think is available to almost any intelligent being in the universe. No, there aren't any ideas. Those aliens are studying the electro-chemical processes in human brains. We the people of the planet Earth pwn the realm of ideas. All your pi are belong to us.