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Reality The biggest mystery mankind is trying to unravel. There is a strange yet beautiful world surrounding us.

. To understand the mystery of why or what constitutes this world has been our greatest quest. Trying to define reality is a daunting task. People spend their entire lifetime to unravel this mystery. It all starts with the simple question What is there? Or what is reality? Even I am engaged in that pursuit of defining reality. Being a layman, I only have my wits with me. And common sense and conventional wisdom are not guides. So how to begin this quest ? Not by trying to find the answers, but by trying to ask the right questions. "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. - Albert Einstein Reality is more intriguing than it seems. It might be comforting, reliable and it seems as though it all makes sense. But thats conventional wisdom .Analyzing the same conventional wisdom leads to a puzzling insight. If you are reading this article then you are actually zooming across space around the sun at 67000 miles/ hour .You are rotating around the same area at 1041 miles/ hour. 70 percent of your body is made of liquid yet you appear to be solid. There might be a god watching over your actions. At this very moment a child is born. A person is dead. Around 7 billion human hearts are pumping blood. There are over 1,740,330 living species right now. All this comes under one single term called as reality. Yet there is no single definition for reality. So to define it, we have to depend on the tools that we have at hand. The first tool that we have in our hand is our senses. Senses What is there? . When someone first asks this question, the most common answer would be look around. Whether can we trust what we observe?. This is the question that I have. Can we trust our senses? Consider wax. Wax appears to be a solid but when it is subjected to heat it melts. Our sensory perception of wax is clearly distorted as it changes its state. Consider the metal Mercury. All metals are shiny solids except Mercury. Mercury resembles a liquid but has all the metallic properties. Are Our senses wrong when we see, touch or sense Mercury ? Ancient man, when engaged in spear fishing realized that the actual location of a fish in water is different from the one that he perceives. We have learnt that refractions and reflections are also distortions. Consider the Honey bee. The visual sensitivity of the honey bee lies in the region of ultra violet. Then the ontology of honey bee is clearly different from the ontology of humans. So what we see differs from what the honey bee sees. Consider my case. I am colorblind. They way i see the world is completely different from the way a normal person sees the world. Now the question we have is that whether our senses always deceive? How can we be sure that what we perceive is reality? Has the process of perception changed reality into a distortion? What we might be sensing might be manifestations of peculiar sort. So can this be branded as reality? Then what are thoughts and ideas? What are cells, atoms, electron and quarks? They do not come under the world that we see, hear, touch or feel. Can we choose this observational method to define reality? The answers depend on the mode of inquiry and the sensory apparatus that we have at the given time. This implies that there is far more to reality than that is accessible to any of our senses. We cannot depend on our

sensory perceptions alone as they have proved to be deceptive. Are there any other tools that can help us comprehending this abstruse reality? This leads to the tool called mathematical rationality. Rationality We are pattern seeking creatures. We have so much desire to impose pattern on chaos. The best example of this pattern seeking behavior is constellations. Up above the sky, there is a huge labyrinth fully filled with shiny dots resembling chaos. Yet we choose a few dots and connect them to form a pattern. Is the pattern already there? Or have we defined them? Another example is the golden ratio. After establishing or stumbling across this weird mathematical irrational number, we associate it with many other aspects of reality. The arrangement of branches, the arrangement of human veins and nerves, the proportions of chemical compounds in crystals all tend to form in some way or the other, the golden ratio. It was also touted as the universal law. But this is still disputed and nothing is substantially proven to be a fact. Also the golden ratio is represented as a mathematical number. Then is mathematics real? Pythagoras was the first person to fuse mathematics and nature. Till then mathematics was a mere tool. It was used to represent patterns. It was used as a frame of reference. He suggested that ultimate reality constituted of numbers. It is arguably true from his stand point. But is it actual? It is highly logical but offers only a conception of reality but it does not support a perceptual view of reality. So what we need is a tool that will help us to comprehend the world at both conceptual and perceptual level. This tool is called knowledge. Knowledge Knowledge arms us with a collection of facts. Facts which are supported by both conception and perception. Facts that are acquired through many cognitive processes such as learning, understanding, reasoning etc. Do these facts help us in our quest ? Well lets consider the laws of physics. We know that the laws of physics are almost universal. These laws are formulated through rigorous analysis and reasoning. We understand the concept of time only through this reasoning . You may say that the laws of physics will hold good throughout the universe. But how do you know for sure? The best answer is look back in time and analyze. It has been true so far so it will be true in the future. But this is a belief than actuality. Most significant claims are based on this systematic knowledge . So the laws of physics become a prediction. We believe that the laws of physics can be applied but we cannot actually know. Even the tool of knowledge can be questionable. We are questioning these tools and none of them can be chosen. Also trying to choose leads to infinite regress. So we need more than tools. We need methods of understanding . So we need something different. Something transcendental!!!

Religion "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one" - George Bernard Shaw Religion has always claimed that there is a universal being (god) that governs our actions. Also many people claim that enlightenment or the unique sense of awakening gives a meaning or helps them comprehend the entirety. But are these claims real? The claims of existence of a supreme being have always fascinated me. I have always asked the question, if god created us , then who created god ? Why is it not visible? Who gave it all the powers? . (Us.) These are the basic questions which challenge the faith in religion. How does this faith come about? Faith stems from two basic characteristics Trust and loyalty. These two characteristics are imbibed into us by the society. Why is everyone so scared or apprehensive to question faith? Its because of systematic knowledge without any basis or reasoning. Belief in god or a supreme being offers an easy way out of this quest to comprehend reality. It is also the epitome of intellectual laziness. I do not wish to follow that path . The existence of god, is merely an imagination of human mind, an idea that has taken over the world, but it is definitely not real as there is no conceptual, perceptual, logical, rational evidence for its own existence. So is there a transcendental or ethereal or spiritual realm of reality? Every mode of inquiry shows that there isnt any. Logically, if there is a realm of such kind, then we should not even be talking about it as we should not know that it exists because we cannot adopt a stance that is not human. This logically results in materialism. Materialism Democritus stated that ultimate reality unimaginably large number of atoms and space . ( atomos Meaning :- cannot be split further ). This is actually proved by science. We have identified almost every single element and we have associated the corresponding atoms with those elements. Nothing leaves the materiality. Everything is made of voids and stuff. This definition of reality can be explained through every mode of inquiry we have established so far. But this is counterintuitive. Then what about thoughts, desires, emotions, consciousness? Are these atomic? What about the good, evil, beauty, fate, chance? Are they real? Do they exist? These are unanswered by materiality. Man is the measure of all things - Protagoras This is where the quest becomes a melancholy prospect. This is a dialectic predicament. Nothing really can be chosen as the above discussed methods can be questioned. What is needed is a stance that will give us a holistic definition of reality. For this we need a standard , independent of human nature. But a standard independent of human nature will be ineffable. So we have to make choice. A humble choice that can at least define pseudo-reality which conceptually, perceptually, rationally tries to define reality

and never stops us asking never ending questions. To create this pseudo reality, I choose to revisit the basics. One of the basic elements which will help me to redefine reality is Thought. Thought What is real cannot be clearly answered using all the tools and the methods that have been discussed. Therefore by reductionist logic we arrive at the only thing that is real. Our thoughts. (When I thought of this I had an eureka moment which was soon ended after reading some ideas of Ren Descartes. Here, when I use our or we, I am making an assumption that everybody knows only his own thoughts. Else it becomes difficult to explain without entering into the consciousness, self debate) Thoughts are the only things that we know exist. We do not know anything else as everything else can be questioned. Thoughts are the only things that manifest into ideas, imagination thus led us to invent languages and ways of expression. I define logic as the thought that explains its own complexity. ( To illustrate this : Think of a thread. Thread manifests into various complex forms like shirts, trousers etc, but the characteristic of the shirt is completely dependent on the composition of the thread. The thread defines the complexity. (Moral fibre?) " I think therefore I am " - Rene Descartes By keeping logic as the basic thought, mathematics becomes real as it shows all the characteristics of logic. Therefore conceptual way of definition is partially accepted. And since mathematics acts as a frame of reference it is easier to express oneself and easier to define patterns, when needed. If mathematics is accepted, then, systematic knowledge with reasoning , logic and rationality can be included. This systematic knowledge has answers to all the logical questions and serves as the tool for wisdom. Materialism is also added as it has supports almost every logical mode of inquiry. If mathematics and systematic knowledge are real, then Fate , Destiny or Chance cannot be real. Fate or Destiny claims to predict the future or claims to predict certain human characteristics without any logic or systematic knowledge. Chance on the other hand can be disproved by logic itself . "It is strictly and philosophically true and in nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident ; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing anything that is truly an agent of a cause of any event : they signify merely man's ignorance of the real and the immediate cause " - Samuel Clarke (My way of disproving: Chance according to OED is a probability of something happening. Probability is the ratio of number of favorable occurrences to the total number of occurrences. In reality, the total number of occurrences is infinite. Ergo probability becomes Zero thus chance becomes inexistent. ) Again by considering logical systematic knowledge, religion can be ruled out. I offer a modicum of respect for the people who have chosen to take the path of Enlightenment. It might result in altruism .

But I really do not want to take that choice because it might not lead to innovations and effective enrichment, development and growth of humanity as a whole.

With the fusion of mathematics, systematic knowledge and materialism we arrive at method called as Science. Science tries to define everything that is there. There is humility with which science questions reality. Science is the only method through which the quality of life of a human can be enriched. Science the method through which we evolved from being barbaric to a civilized society. Science is the method explains its own formation through evolution. Science is the only method which can question its own methods logically. I choose to believe in the fact called Evolution When I say the above sentence, I make a choice. A logical Choice. A humble choice. I understand that there are greater things in reality than humanity. I understand that I belong to a pale blue dot. I understand that mathematics and systematic knowledge has helped us to uncover who we really are. I choose science as my reality. My weltanschauung. It satisfies my insatiable need to learn. It gives proper evidence supported at all levels of inquiry. It defines reality as quest to find itself. It gives me my meaning of life. It also prompts me to ask this question.

Is that all there is?

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