Just like we can't define the universe. We just need to recognize it exists.

His primary point, one I've been pushing here on the Zone for a while, is that we don't know anything at all about the universe. All we really know is what we perceive about it. In other words, we are not dealing with reality, we are dealing with our mental concept of what reality is, and that is based on limited sensory perceptions and questionable interpretive procedures. How can we possibly understand what a photon is? It's amazing we can predict some of its behavior as well as we do. We build cameras that work. That's not the same thing as saying we understand the nature of light.

It's important to understand that what I just said in the previous paragraph is not a claim that there is no external reality, or that it doesn't matter, or that we can make it into anything we want. What I and Russell are saying is that all we know about reality is what we think about it. The real universe, what physicists talk about, is not a reality we study, it is a model we have created. The fact that our model of the universe is constantly evolving, and that we can't seem to agree on very much about it suggests we aren't really thinking or talking about an objective reality., We are talking about a subjective conception of it. The only thing we know for sure exists is consciousness itself. "This may all be just a dream", as every kid has at one time surmised; but the dreamer DOES exist. That cannot be denied. The existence of the dreamer is the only thing about the universe we know for sure.

Russell talks a lot about this external physical reality, and how our knowledge about it is mostly a model we've devised to help organize our observations of it. I go a bit further than that. I submit that the real universe we live in, the world that we worry about and obsess over, has nothing to do with electrons and waves and space-time. It has to do with emotions, careers, human conflicts, pain and pleasure. Even an engineer or scientist who feels he is dealing professionally with the real world all the time, who prides himself on his hard-boiled objectivity, promptly forgets about that world when he leaves the office. His real universe revolves about commerce and politics, family, finances, that annoying cough that only seems to be getting worse, the knock in his car's engine, junior's deteriorating grades, and his wife's all-too-frequent headaches. Those skills from the office may not be very useful in this personal universe, and believing they must be can lead to fatal consequences.

We may live in the material world, but its the psychological and social manifestations of it that really occupy our time and keep us awake at night. We create that world, its different for every one of us, but it is still very real. My goals are not as ambitious as Russells's. I'm not trying to define what consciousness or reality are. I'm just trying to make sense of my strengths and limitations.

The reason this philosophical wool-gathering is important to us here on the Zone is that this is primarily a science forum. We pride ourselves on our scientific method and our objectivity. This method of inquiry has proven to be remarkably successful in understanding the real world, in making predictions about it, in doing things like designing spacecraft or enhancing and interpreting satellite imagery. We also do intensely practical and ordinary things that interface with the world and have vital (to us) consequences. Learning how to operate an automobile safely is more important than knowing whether or not there is a god.

But those things we do so well at the office are not necessarily applicable to the subjective universe we have assembled around us, the world of psychological, social and cultural connections that make up our real lives. Newton and Einstein taught us nothing about how to raise a family or manage a career, or how to be happy, or how to protect those we love.