What if our senses were not so limited?

The star-nosed mole outshines humans by six times when it comes to the sense of touch. It’s sense of smell is also much better than dogs even though a dog’s sense of smell is up to 100,000 times better than ours.

The universe includes much, much more than what we perceive.

We know that, and yet we don’t really. That’s because most of what we perceive and know comes through our senses. I say most rather than all because some of our knowledge may be in our genes or even our biome — some call our gut our second brain. And some may come to us through direct non-sensory experience. But, we’ll leave those thoughts for now and focus on the limits of knowledge based on what our senses tell us.

The realization that there is more to the universe than what we can take in through our eyes, ears, nose, taste and touch has led humans throughout much of history to try to expand our senses. The scientific revolution in many ways was spurred by successful extension. The Dutch invented the telescope and the microscope, both in the early 1600s. Galileo improved the early versions and his discoveries and writings can be identified as baby steps which became the age of science.

Today, we have massive and marvelous instruments that extend our senses. Electron microscopes, MRI machines, the Large Hadron Collider, and, of course, the Hubble and now James Webb telescopes. With these instruments we can see creation at work billions of light years away and peer into the far distant past. We can even slow the incredibly…