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It’s what we don’t know that makes science so fun, Part 3
The third and final post on what science and the deepening mysteries of understanding even the very basics of our universe and natural world. We previously considered a number of topics that demonstrate the more we learn, the less we know.
What is real?
This mishmash of current thinking and controversies in science all lead back to the same fundamental questions: What is real? And can we know what is real?
Throughout most of human thinking history there has been the assumption of something we can call objective reality. This is the idea that the world out there is real whether we sense it or not. The moon does not pop into existence because we happen to look at it. All of science has been based on this idea that the reality of our senses can be measured, explored, analyzed and to some degree, explained.
Today, scientists and thinkers about science do not seem to be able to conclude anything definite about that. Certainly, others before our time have questioned objective reality, like Bishop Berkeley. One definition:
“Idealism is the metaphysical view that associates reality to ideas in the mind rather than to material objects. It lays emphasis on the mental or spiritual components of experience, and renounces the notion of material…
