As a big fan of the sciences, I have always stressed the role of observation and experiment--and reason. I have rejected mysticism and seek to replace it as a means of learning about the universe with some more objective procedure, one based on the idea that there is an external reality, a "real world", independent of our opinions and our preferences. The moon is there even when we are not looking at it.

But at the same time, I have no choice but to concede that everything we know about the universe is gathered through our senses, limited, easily fooled, and unreliable as they are. And all our concepts about reality our formed by our imperfect brains and filtered through our bumbling consciousness and by what little we can learn about the thoughts of others. It would be foolish to assume that our concept of the universe is truly objective just because we use "scientific method". The fact that scientists disagree and change their minds should be all the warning we need about the limitations of their method.

The little parable of the elementary school is my way of articulating this. All the players see the truth of their own personal reality, none of those kids and teachers is making stuff up or fooling themselves. But their vision of the universe is molded by their own positions in it, even before their subjective desires and prejudices can further distort it. They all have their hands full, with different problems, even though they simultaneously inhabit the same environment.

Sure, there is a "real" universe out there, of atoms and gravity, chemistry and electricity. But Johnny's panic and Grady's broken heart are not helped by knowledge of that quantum, relativistic universe. They are in their own world, and they have no choice but to deal with it. Even Mr Washington's and Miss Clevelands career issues are part of their real world, they are not made up or phony. They are very real and extremely important to their lives.

THe point I am making is that we make our universes, and then we choose how to interact with them. We live in a subjective reality, not an objective one. There is NO objective reality. We make it up as we go along. And that is not a contradiction to the physical world the physicist or chemist talks about. Our personal universe is not truly independent of the "real world" but for all practical purposes, it is. Sure, a man's opinions about Jesus or UFOs or politics may be totally a product of his own internal mentality, but no one else has any way of convincing him of their validity, or lack thereof. All we can do is decide whether or not we choose to go along with him or not. And by the way, that same individual may be managing other aspects of his life extremely competently.

Those of you who have been following my posts here may have guessed by now that this issue (whether or not I deal with it competently) is very important to me. We all live in a man-made universe, but we don't all live in the same one. Yes, there is an external universe that affects all of us, but most of us rarely need to concern ourselves with it. It has little to offer us, we have our hands ful with our own reality.

Rejection of mysticism does not mean we live in a world of total materialism and pure cause and effect. The real human truth always lies somewhere in between. There IS a limit to how much we can learn about the world, because a large part of that world has been created by us. Those who fail to understand this will spend their lives believing they live in a planet inhabited by fools, and that only they can see the truth.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very scientific to me.