Don't Rely On What You See-2

Don't Rely On What You See-2 

Matter Is Empty Space 

For two thousand years, it was believed that atoms were tiny solid balls - a model clearly drawn from everyday experience. Then, as physicists discovered that atoms were composed of more elementary, subatomic particles or electrons, protons and neutrons, the model shifted to one of a central nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons - again, a model based on experience. An atom may be small, a mere billionth of an inch across, but these subatomic particles are a hundred thousand times smaller still. Imagine the nucleus of an atom magnified to the size of a grain of rice. The whole atom would then be the size of a football stadium, and the electrons would be other grains of rice flying around the stands. As the early 20th century British physicist Arthur Eddington put it, "matter is mostly ghostly empty space." To be a little more precise, it is 99.9999999% empty space.

An Impenetrable Shell

If physical reality is mostly empty space, why does the world seem so substantial and so unyielding? Why the 99.9…per cent empty space of my hand simply pass straight through the 99.9…per cent empty space of the table it is resting on? The simplest way of explaining this is that the electrons spin so fast around the nucleus, they create an impenetrable shell through which other particles cannot normally pass…

Matter Has Little Substance

With the development of quantum theory, physicists have found that even subatomic particles are far from solid. In fact, they are nothing like matter as we know it. They can’t be pinned down and measured precisely. Much of the time, they seem more like waves than particles. They are like fuzzy clouds of potential existence, with no definite location. Whatever matter is, it has little, if any, substance.

Seeing What Isn’t There

The image of the world that appears in the mind is quite different from the actual physical world, and in two complementary ways. On the one hand, our image of reality is more than physical reality, in so far as it contains many qualities not present in the physical reality. Consider our experience of the colour green, for example. In the physical world, there may be light of various frequencies, but the light itself is not green. Nor are the electrical impulses that are transmitted from the eye to the brain. No colour exists there. The green we see is a quality created in consciousness. It exists only as a subjective experience in the mind.

The Concept Of Sound

The same is true of sound. When Bishop Berkeley argued that nothing exists apart from our perceptions, a vigorous debate ensued as to whether a falling tree made a sound if no one was there to hear it. At that time, nothing was known of how sound is transmitted through the air, or how ear and brain functioned.

Sound Is Not A Physical Reality

Today, we know much more about the process involved, and the answer is clearly, ‘No’. There is no sound in the physical reality, simply pressure waves in the air. Sound exists only as an experience in the mind of a perceiver - whether that perceiver is a human being, a deer, a bird, or an ant. On the other hand, our image of reality is less than physical reality in that there are many aspects of the physical world we never experience.

Om Namah Shivay.