The New Uncertainty Principle

There is the well-known uncertainty principle in physics, usually referring to the orbitals of electrons around an atomic nucleus. This principle was established by Werner Heisenberg and sets limits to how much we can know.

I would like to add to this uncertainty principle on a cosmic level. Our consciousness was never designed for observing the cosmos. It was designed for everyday tasks such as building, farming, hunting and, fishing. The truth is that we see reality through our own lenses and it is very difficult for us to tell how much those lenses distort what reality really is.

We can look at a rock but can we really be sure of what it would look like in absolute reality? How much are our own senses distorting what the rock really is as we see it? If we could really see, we would almost certainly be shocked at how much what we thought we saw clearly was illusion and distortion caused not by what reality is but by what we are.

We can be certain that our visual sense and the nature of our being distorts the information that it gives us but since that distortion is roughly equal, we do not detect it and it does not impede our functioning. As long as the distortions in reality as we see it are uniform, it is possible for us to exist without ever becoming aware of the distortion or what reality "really" is. Such distortion would only be detectable if it was unequal as a whole.

Distortion in perception is related to scale. The objects that we can most easily relate to are those closest to us in scale, not atoms or galaxies. Reality of a scale far different from ours is not likely to be seen by us as clearly as those closer to our scale. An ant observing the world around it would have a different "distortion range" that we do.

Our view of reality depends on the nature of light waves. The wavelengths of visible light are of a scale that is far different from the "scale world" that we inhabit. The result is that we see colors (colours) such as red, blue and, green that do not actually exist in absolute reality. Blue skies and red sunsets are further distortions of reality as we see it by the scale difference as well as the nature of light.

I described, in this theory, that when an astronomer looks through a telescope, his eye and brain become effectively part of the instrument. The way we see the universe is due to a combination of what it is and what we are, but we have much more awareness of the former than the latter. Not only can we never know what true reality really looks like but we can never know that we do not know unless we can think outside ourselves.

We are simple beings with distorted vision hindered by confidence in our own vision. In fact, the very definition of learning is overcoming the limits of our vision. The way to approach the universe is to take account of everything we see and consider how much illusion it might be. To try to learn and work around the ways our vision and the nature of our being distorts reality.

There is a lot of talk today about "thinking outside the box" in terms of creative solutions. In approaching the universe, we need to "think outside ourselves" in the same way. Cosmology should be centered around getting outside our vision. When I realized how important this is, I developed my Theory of Stationary Space. Our senses were designed primarily for everyday tasks such as building, farming, hunting and, fishing and not for exploring the cosmos.

But there is more to The New Uncertainty Principle than the sense distortion due to the fact that what we are factors into how we see the universe. Even if our senses gave us perfect information about the way the universe "really" is, our brain capacity is limited by simple physics just as is the storage space on a hard drive.

Suppose we were to put a map of the entire world on a hard drive using satellite imagery. If we wished to put every street and building in the world on the map, we would run into the limit imposed by the available storage space on the hard drive. So it must be with our brains.

The fact is that the universe, down to the level of subatomic particles is trillions of times as vast as the network of neurons in the brain that stores knowledge and memories. Since we must store a model in our brains of everything we know, that imposes a practical limit to how much understanding we can have of the universe even if the information we received from our senses was perfect, which it isn't. Add the fact that only a limited amount of the area of the brain actually stores acquired knowledge.

It is true that the average intricacy of the brain is much greater than that of the universe as a whole, at least as far as we know. (Note- I define intricacy as existing complexity in relation to total possible complexity as determined by the number of units). It is also true that the many different brains of different people multiply the comprehension capacity of one brain and media such as books complement the brain in storing knowledge. But still, the complexity ratio of all possible knowledge to the structures in our brains available to hold that knowledge must be trillions to one.

When I was a child, I had a set of those Lego building blocks that were made in Denmark. These were made of plastic and were used to build all kind of structures such as houses and buildings. Suppose we were to give a child 20,000 Lego blocks, which the child used to build an elaborate series of structures. Now suppose we gave another child only 20 of the Lego blocks and told him to construct a model, as best as he could with his 20 blocks, of the elaborate structure that the first child had built. The best that could be hoped for from the second child would be a very crude model of the elaborate structure constructed by the first child.

There is simply no way to build a perfectly accurate model of a complex structure with many fewer blocks than the original structure contains. A crude approximation will be the best result. It is the same principle as taking a photograph and displaying it with only a limited number of pixels. We can only understand that which is simpler than the structure that we have in our brains to hold the knowledge. This adds to the New Uncertainty Principle because of what we are. We are naturally unaware of this limit to our knowledge.

There are three realms of knowledge: 1) That which we know 2) That which we do not know and know that we do not know 3) That which we do not know and do not even know that we do not know. The third realm must be many, many times the size of the first two simply because of the physical limits of our brains.

For one thing, we can never fully understand our own brains because to do so we would have to be smarter than ourselves, which is impossible. We do understand the repetitive patterns that guides how the universe operates, such as the elements and the fundamental laws of physics. But there must be so much more that we cannot fathom. Each atom may store a record of everything that has ever happened to it that we cannot comprehend.