Perspectives on Reality, Knowledge, and
Science
Formerly
Reflections on Mathematics as a foundation
for Reality
12/16/11
RAH
Science wars dvd/notes
has good input here, especially on historicity of science
Reality and
Knowledge of the Universe in Western Science
(Consciousness addressed in
separate papers)
Reality
“What is
reality” is a perennial
question, and to assume this question is irrelevant only means we
subscribe to a particular philosophy of reality.
Sociologist Pitiram
Sorokin sees “systems of truth” as a socially agreed upon construct. In his
classic Social and Cultural Dynamics[1] he postulates that whole
cultures alternate cyclically between a sensate mentality,
which perceives only the material, sensate world as real, and ideational mentality,
which perceives that reality lies beyond the natural material world. He also
identifies an integrated idealistic mentality, which perceives that reality has
both sensory and supersensory aspects. He finds that the reason and logic of “rationalistic” philosophy can provide
such synthesis.
He sees these
three mentalities reflected in the ancient Roman, medieval, and renaissance
periods respectively.
Ideational and sensate values can
be traced back at least to classical Greek civilization, with the ideational
philosophy of Plato on the one hand, and the sensate
philosophy of Aristotle on the other. [2]
Sorokin believes that we are coming to the end of a six-hundred-year-long Sensate day, and that the transition to an Ideational period will be tumultuous.[3]
Knowledge
Professor Steven Goldman sees a conflict in western philosophy between two views of the nature of knowledge. One view sees Knowledge as universal, absolute, and certain. The other view sees knowledge as particular, relative, and probabalistic; as in a type of belief.
This
conflict was expressed in Plato’s dialogue The Sophist as a war between the gods, who espoused Knowledge, and the earth giants, whom Plato
identified as the Sophists, who espoused
knowledge.
Plato
pointed to mathematics as a body of Knowledge that was universal necessary and
certain.
(Aristotle,
the father of natural philosophy and western science, emphasized the importance
of observation, or experience as the key to knowledge.)
The
battle between the Plato and the sophists rages on today, between science and
contemporary postmodern philosophy.
Western Science
From a sensate
perspective, science would be considered a valid tool in the study of
“reality”. From an ideational perspective, metaphysics would be valid.
Goldman
notes that “modern science” inherited several principles from the
medieval study of natural
philosophy: natural phenomenon should be explained in terms of
natural causes; knowledge of nature must be gained by direct experience or
experiment, and mathematics may be useful.
He
makes the case that combination of the (Aristotelian) principle of direct
observation or experience and the (Platonic) principle of the universality of mathematics
introduced an ambivalence or internal conflict in science. [4]
Initially
there was no indication of any conflict. It was only when the two began to
diverge, beginning certainly with the Copernican controversy,
that the scientific community began to become aware of the conflict.
The Copernican “paradigm shift”
The
term "Paradigm Shift" was introduced by Thomas Kuhn, science
historian and philosopher, in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. According to Kuhn a
“Paradigm Shift” is a distinctively new way for a society to think about
“reality”. A valid scientific idea may exist for years, without a corresponding
societal paradigm shift.
Belief in the literal truth of the Copernican concept of the earth revolving about the sun rather than vice versa is often given as an example of a paradigm shift. [5]
Initial
western ideas about planetary motion were based on Plato’s notion of the
perfection of the mathematical circle. In support of Plato’s notion, models were
developed which described celestial planetary motion in terms of perfect
circles by use of epicycles.
By use
of epicycles, the Ptolemaic system accounted for retrograde planetary motion,
but did not account for the observed changes in the phases of the inner planets,
Mercury and Venus.
Copernicus
was able to rid himself of the long-held notion that the Earth was the center
of the Solar system, but he did not question the assumption of uniform circular
motion. Thus, the Copernican model still could not explain all the details of
planetary motion on the celestial sphere without epicycles. However, the
Copernican system required many fewer epicycles than the Ptolemaic system
because it moved the Sun to the center. [6]
Scholars
most likely did not believe epicycles were actually in the natural world [7],
but considered them a “model” giving a more accurate description of the
positions of the planets in the sky.
The
Copernican system gave an accurate description of the positions of the planets,
including correct prediction of the phases of the inner planets. It also
reduced the need for epicycles, the relative simplicity of which has often been
assumed to imply correctness. (This view has been challenged.
[8])
However,
the Tychonic geo-helio
centric system was also a viable option, and was at the time observationally
indistinguishable from the
Copernican heliocentric system. [9]
As there was no clear proof of how the planets “really” moved, the Copernican
and Tychonic systems were both legitimately still seen as alternative models. [10]
Still, Galileo, who wrote “The Book of Nature
is written in the language of mathematics,”
argued for the Truth of
the Copernican model, [11]
but the Church
had a point: how could Galileo KNOW the Truth?
Though
contrary to experience, in time, and with additional confirmation, as put
forward by Kepler [12]
and others, the
Copernican mathematical theory became accepted. [13]
What
appears to have changed
was the increasing credibility of mathematics as not only modeling the
world, but representing the reality of it
in the face of apparently contradictory evidence of every day experience.
The seductiveness of math
Up to a certain
point, mathematics clearly brings insight into our understanding of the
physical world.
Correspondence Between Math and Physical
Patterns
Following the lead taken by natural philosophy, scientists
in the 20th century acknowledged the important role of mathematics.
In 1960, Eugene
Wigner wrote in his book The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in
the Natural Sciences, that amazingly, when physicists pick a pattern from
mathematics to represent patterns in the
natural world, the mathematical pattern often fits nature with amazing accuracy.
Mathematics developed for one particular physical
application often turn out to be applicable to other
physical applications. For example, trigonometry, originally developed in the
study of astronomy, finds application in the modeling of a vibrating spring,
heat flow, and electromagnetism.
Electromagnetic radiation is transmitted by sinusoidal
waveforms. Trigonometric functions are solutions to James Clerk
Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism. [14]
Math
Leads to New Physical Insight
The correspondence between
mathematics and “reality” may result in new mathematics as
well as deeper insight into “reality”.
It was found that
Physical Analogs
Correspondence
between the mathematical description of different
physical systems was discovered.
Maxwell developed his equations from a series of iterations, starting initially with mechanical analogs. These mechanical analogs predicted two new phenomenon: a new type of current, which would arise whenever the electric field changes (displacement current), and the transverse character of EM waves, because the changing electric and magnetic fields were both at right angles to the direction of wave propagation. [16]
In his next iteration he suspected that the ultimate mechanisms of nature might be beyond our comprehension, so he set his mechanical model aside and chose to apply Lagrange’s method of treating the system like a black box: If you know the inputs and the systems general characteristics, you can calculate the outputs without knowledge of the internal mechanism. His first assumption is that EM fields hold energy, both kinetic and potential. Electromotive and magnetomotive forces are not forces in mechanical sense, but act in an analogous way. The result of his new approach was vector calculus.
At a very practical level, systems, or
circuits, of electrical, mechanical, fluid and thermal elements are governed by
the same differential equations, and the elements of these systems have
analogous math descriptions. The electrical analog of mechanical, fluid, and
thermal systems is
the basis for the analog computer. [17]
Symmetry
Symmetry is an
important concept in mathematical physics.
When Maxwell
initially wove the equations of electricity and magnetism together, he thought they
looked unbalanced. He therefore added an equation to make the equations more
symmetric. The extra term could be interpreted as creation of a magnetic field
by varying an electric field. This turned out to actually exist. Inclusion of
the second term allowed trigonometric functions to be solutions to the
equations, or electromagnetic waves.
In the broadest
terms, symmetry exists when something remains unchanged during a
mathematical operation.
Even though the
mathematical symmetries may be hard, or even impossible to visualize
physically, they can point the way to new principles in nature. Searching for
undiscovered symmetries has thus become a major tool of modern physics. [18]
The
Great Schism
Beyond
a certain point, being the very small and the very large, it became obvious
historically that deduction and direct observation were no longer reconcilable with
what the logic of mathematics tells us about the natural world,
and in many cases mathematics cannot be “checked” to see if it indeed gives us
the “correct” answer.
There are
several perspectives:
For
some, the direction of math in the sciences led away from a sensate description
of all reality; a dissolution of the sensate world, based on the dissolution of
reality at the scale of the very small.
For
others, such as advocates of the
Others
questioned the claim that mathematics was telling us about “reality” at all at
the scale of the very large or small.
Still
others questioned the claim that the logic of science could tell us anything
about reality in even our macroscopic everyday world.
The
result has been not only uncertainty and disputes within the scientific community [19]
, but also a backlash hostility toward
science in a significant portion of the non-scientific community.
Theory of Everything (TOE)
Physicists now
believe that all forces exist simply to enable nature to maintain a set of
abstract symmetries.
They have
come to understand that the known universe is governed by the four mathematically expressed forces of gravity,
electromagnetism (EM), and the weak and strong nuclear forces. The strong
nuclear force holds the protons and neutrons of the nucleus together; the weak
nuclear force allows neutrons to turn into protons, giving off radiation in the
process. The atomic bomb releases the power of the strong nuclear force. Physicists
since Einstein have been trying to understand gravity, and to reduce the
expressions for the four forces of the universe to a single equation. [20]
Einstein’s General Theory, today’s
standard theory
of gravity, deals with large spaces and demands smooth variations in space
time. Currently science has no equations that can be used to describe something that is both very
massive, where
normally the General Theory would apply,
and very small, where normally quantum mechanics would apply. [21]
The search is on to develop the
Theory of Everything (TOE),
and some think a primary contender is the next iteration in
particle physics: “String,” or “Super
String” theory.
In 1967, Murray Gell-Mann was lecturing on the striking regularities in data pertaining to the collisions of protons and neutrons. An Italian grad student, Gabriele Veneziano, became intrigued, and found a simple math function that would describe the regularities. Why this function worked was presented in 1970 in the work of Leonard Susskind and Yoichiro Nambu. They found that Veneziano’s mathematical function would arise from the underlying theory if you modeled the protons and neutrons not as points, but as tiny vibrating strings. [22]
In 1984, John Schwarz and Michael Green resolved the last major inconsistency in string theory. This did not make the theory any easier to solve, but it convinced many leading physicists- especially Edward Witten- that the math based theory had too many miraculous properties to ignore. String theory then jumped from laughingstock to hottest thing in physics. [23]
Edward Witten showed that the
original 5 different versions of string theory were merely different
perspectives on the same thing. His mathematical theory, called “M” theory, requires 11
dimensions, and also predicts multiple universes, [24]
all quite inconsistent with our observed reality.
What is so alluring about String
Theory? Its mathematical elegance; its aesthetics; some scientists
think that certain relationships are so appealing that they must be correct. [25]
Interestingly, in the esoteric tradition, as represented by Charles Leadbeater,
Annie Besant, and the Theosophists in the book Occult Chemistry (1919), the
most fundamental particles were described as positive and negative stringed
vortices of energy, called “Anu”; the “ultimate
atom”. The word Anu is Sanskrit for atom or molecule,
and a title of Brahma. Needless to say, this concept of stringed vortices was not
the product of advanced mathematics.
“Anu”; the
“ultimate atom” [26]
The hydrogen atom was said to consist of 18 Anu units; 9 positively charged, and 9 negatively charged
(antiparticles). Contemporary Anu proponents suppose
the positive and negative spiral allow a transfer of energy to and from the
zero point field [27]
These
purported structures would
correspond to the hypothetical constituents of quarks, given the “Russian doll”
nature of matter. [28] In 1974, physicists Jogesh Pati and Abdus Salam speculated
that a small family of particles they called preons
could explain the proliferation of quarks and leptons.
Although
not currently in favor with many physicists, the preon
idea has not been ruled out. In 1999, Johan Hansson and
his coworkers proposed that three types of preons
would suffice to build all the known quarks and leptons. [29]
The alternative physics community has developed a mathematical concept strikingly similar to the Anu concept: B.G. Sidharth, of the Centre for Applicable Mathematics & Computer Sciences in India, writes: “The physical picture is now clear: A particle can be pictured as a fluid vortex which is steadily circulating along a ring (or in three dimensions, a spherical shell) with radius equal to the Compton wavelength and with velocity equal to that of light.” [30] The topic is quantum black holes, the name is the Compton Radius Vortex, described as another recent electron model by Richard Gauthier. [31]
Dissolution
of the Sensate
World View
A Grand Unified Theory (GUT), as
opposed to a TOE, does not include gravity in its definition. Physicists
willing to avoid unification of gravity see in Quantum Mechanics, and
alternatively the Holographic Universe, and Zero Point Field, mathematics which
dissolves the material universe at one level, but then unifies it at a deeper
level. All three theories tend to produce similar results, account
for biological processes to varying degrees, are sympathetic with the idea of consciousness, accommodate “information” as a fundamental unit, and are ultimately related to one another.
Is there something in ZPF and HU
that could correspond to non-locality in QM?
They very likely may be thought of
as three mathematical “lenses”, each of which reveal different aspects of our reality.
Quantum Mechanics
Quantum Mechanics, based vigorously in mathematics, was developed in the 1920s, and has been highly successful at explaining many phenomena, including spectral lines, the Compton effect and the photo electric effect, where electromagnetic radiation (photons) causes a current of electrons. [32]
Multiple logically consistent mathematical
representations of Quantum
Mechanics help to cement it’s (mathematical) credibility.
[33]
Scientists went through a
crisis period in trying to determine what quantum mechanics meant to
macroscopic reality. Particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of
as "self-existent", as they pop into and out of existence in an
apparently random way.
Erwin Schrödinger, originator of
wave quantum mechanics, was not happy with Max Born's
statistical / probability interpretation of waves that became commonly accepted
in Quantum Theory. He believed waves were real, and the “particles” in
wave-particle duality were merely an artifact.
Werner Heisenberg, originator of matrix quantum
mechanics, argued that what was truly fundamental in
nature was not the particles themselves, but the symmetries, or patterns that
lay beyond them. These fundamental symmetries could be thought of as the
archetypes of matter and the ground of material existence. The particles
themselves would simply be the material realizations of those underlying
abstract symmetries. These abstract symmetries, normally only ascertainable
through mathematics,
could be taken as the scientific descendents of Plato’s ideal
forms. [34]
The dominant perspective resulting from what
many termed “quantum weirdness” was the
Renown quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger,
of U of Vienna, found that objects, not merely sub-atomic particles, exhibit
wave particle duality. To show this he used a Talbot Lau interferometer in a
variation on the double slit experiment to show that large and asymmetric
molecules up to 100 atoms, created an interference pattern with itself. ie.,
exhibited wave-object duality. Even molecules need some other influence to
settle them into a completed state of being. [35]
Further, non locality, or entanglement, has
been proven to be macroscopically physically real, and forces a reconsideration
of our most fundamental notions of space and causality. [36]
One
consequence of quantum entanglement is the recognized fact that there is no
such thing as an independent observer in quantum experiments.[37]
Spin is a property possessed by most subatomic particles,
and experimenters have long accepted that the spin of a particle will always be
found to point along whichever axis is chosen by the experimenter as his
reference, defined in practice by an electric or magnetic field. If the experimenter readjusts his apparatus to a different reference angle, he will find
that the spin will again point in the direction of the new reference angle. It is a
property which completely undermine any attempt to make sense of
the concept of direction in the quantum domain. [38]
Experimental
outcome is also
affected by the act of observation. Where there is a wave, when observed,
becomes a particle .
Zero Point Field
Quantum Mechanics and the Zero
Point Field are the most obviously related, as they are mutually interdependent
for their existence.
To quantum physicists attempting
to model the electron mathematically, the vacuum, or Zero Point Field was seen
as an annoyance which introduced infinities into their equations. In Paul
Davies words: “The presence of infinite terms in the theory is a warning flag
that something is wrong, but if the infinities never show up in an observable
quantity we can just ignore them and go ahead and compute.” [39]
The hidden mechanism which
prevents atomic collapse appears to be the Zero Point Field. In 1987, Hal Puthoff was able to demonstrate in a paper
published by Physical Review, that the stable state of matter depends on the
dynamic interchange of energy between the subatomic particles and the
sustaining Zero Point Energy field. [40]
In quantum field theory, the
individual particles are transient and insubstantial. The only fundamental
reality is the underlying entity- the Zero Point Field itself
. [41]
Interestingly, Timothy Boyer and
Hal Puthoff showed that if you take into account the
Zero Point Field, you don’t have to depend on Bohr's Quantum Mechanical model. One can show
mathematically that electrons loose and gain energy constantly from the ZPF in
dynamic equilibrium, balanced at exactly the right orbit. Electrons get their
energy to keep going because they are refueling by tapping into these
fluctuations of empty space
Puthoff showed that fluctuations
of the ZPF drive the motion of subatomic particles and that all the motion of
all the particles generates the ZPF.
Timothy Boyer showed that many
of the weird properties of subatomic matter which puzzled physicists and led to
the formulation of strange quantum rules could easily be accounted for in
classical physics, if you include the ZPF: uncertainty, wave-particle duality,
the fluctuating motion of particles all had to do with interaction of the ZPF
and matter. [42]
Holographic Universe?
Peter Russell has pointed out a
few of the paradoxes of light. In relativity theory, at the speed of light time
stops, which means for light there is no time whatsoever. Further, a photon can
traverse the entire universe without giving up any energy, which in effect says
for light there is no space. [43]
Light has other interesting properties, including the capability of producing
optical holograms.
The physics and physical process of
constructing a 3 dimensional hologram using two dimensional photographic plates
and coherent (laser) light sources is based on interference and
diffraction of light, and can be
“described by” complex Fourier mathematics.
William Tiller notes: “The entire basis of
holography is wave diffraction. Further, the resultant wave intensity
diffracted from any kind of direct space geometrical object can be shown to
arise from the modulus of the Fourier Transform for that geometrical
shape.” [44]
Vlatko Vedral notes that
in the invention of
optical holography, Dennis Gabor showed that two dimensions were
sufficient to store all the information about three dimensions. Three
dimensions are able to be represented due to light’s wave nature of forming
interference patterns. “Light carries an internal clock, and in the
interference patterns, the timing of the clock acts as the third dimension.“ [45]
The Fourier transform
itself, with both phase and amplitude information, can be used to create the optical
hologram, a process called Fourier transform holography. This means that the
physical process of coherent light interference patterns and the Fourier
transform are interchangeable, which in turn implies they are in some sense
identical. The physical process “is” the mathematical Fourier transformation.
Bohm postulates a “Quantum Potential” which acts
on an elementary particle, in addition to the conventional EM, strong, and weak
nuclear forces.
The Quantum Potential carries information
about the environment of the quantum particle and thus informs and effects its motion. Since the information in the Quantum
Potential is very detailed, the resulting particle trajectory appears chaotic
or indeterminate. Bohm’s causal interpretation
suggests that matter has orders that are closer to mind than to a simple
mechanical order.
Bohm made use of the idea of the optical
holograph to illustrate the concept of enfoldment of an implicate order,
a holofield where
all the states of the quantum are permanently coded. Observable reality emerges
from this field by constant unfolding of the “implicate order” into the
“explicate order:” These correspond to the holographic plate and holograph in
optical holography.
His holographic theory, developed between
1970 and 1980, yields numerical results that are identical to conventional QM,
but has not been examined in a serious way by the physics community.
The concept of a “holographic universe” has
been supported by the results of an investigation into gravity waves by a
German team. Their gravity wave detector had been plagued by an inexplicable
noise. According to a
researcher at Fermilab in
Holographic Brain
In a series of landmark
experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley
found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he was unable to
eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery.
No one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious
"whole in every part" nature of memory storage. Then in the 1960s
Carl Pribram encountered the concept of holography
and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking
for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in
neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that
crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light
interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a
holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes
the brain is itself a hologram.
The brain is able to translate
the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light, sound, etc)
into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies
is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort
of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of
frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes
the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to
mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the
inner world of our perceptions. Pribram's theory, in
fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists. [47]
Reality and
Knowledge reconsidered
Information
Logic, logical analysis and
mathematics only arose as a result of the development of writing: you write it,
then you can analyze it. Writing, logical analysis, and mathematics itself is
thus a development of increasing availability of information.
Claude Shannon saw that
modern human beings communicate through codes—strings of letters,
words, sentences, dots and dashes of telegraph messages, patterns of electrical
waves flowing down telephone lines. Information is a logical arrangement of
symbols, and those symbols, regardless of their meaning, can be translated into
the symbols of mathematics. From this,
In the
early 1950s, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered that genetic information
was transmitted through a four-digit code—the nucleotide bases designated A, C,
G, and T. Biologists and geneticists began to draw on
So,
once again we have gone full circle, back to the Greek idea of the smallest indivisible
unit, this time with out mass, but still not knowing what it even is.
Mathematical Correspondences
Mathematics not
only describes, predicts, dissolves, and unifies the material universe.
Intriguing correspondences
between nature and mathematics continue to be discovered, whose
significance is not yet, and may never be, understood.
For example, Georg F.B. Riemann
added an improvement to an early formula for determining prime numbers which
gives the “steps” we see in the actual distribution of prime numbers. The
improvement consisted of adding waves at certain frequencies. Rieman’s guess of frequency values needed is called “Rieman’s hypothesis”, and also “the music of the primes” as
well as the “zeros of the Rieman Zeta function”.
These waves are the key to the successful prediction of prime numbers. Quantum
systems have discrete energy levels, corresponding to waves vibrating at
certain frequencies. Likewise the distribution of prime numbers is encoded in a
discrete set of wave frequencies: the “magic frequencies” Amazingly, Rieman’s frequencies look like the frequencies of a
“quantum chaotic system”.
There is some
undiscovered chaotic system whose quantum counterpart would hold the secret to
the music of the primes. Chaos, atoms, and prime numbers all connected. The Prime numbers of our
mental world are connected to the atoms of reality, and the link between them
is chaos. [48]
Although
mathematics can describe, predict, dissolve, and unify aspects of our material
universe, or offer tantalizing hints of connection, some mathematics appears to
offer no connection to the material universe.
We have
observed polar views of reality and knowledge. Reality can be viewed as
physical or metaphysical; knowledge can be viewed as absolute or relative. Can
these polarities be resolved?
Goldman has noted that science, as
opposed to math, has a historicity; that is, it changes iteratively and
inevitably through time.
Quantum
Mechanics, the Holographic Universe, and the Zero Point Field show how the
physical world dissolves into what might be called metaphysics at the level of the
Planck length.
This dissolution is
paralleled by the diversity of theories within the scientific community which
address problems in various levels of complexity in a description of “reality,”
which play out as if the human species has found itself on a featureless plain,
where all directions point equally to truth and falsity.
What
about knowledge?
As Steven Goldman points out, [49]
Immanuel Kant’s 1871 Critique of Pure Reason performed a Copernican revolution
on the concept of knowledge. In the old view, knowledge results when mind takes
in information from the senses about what is “out there” as experience. In Kant’s view, experience,
including math, is
constructed by the mind, and there is no direct knowledge or experience of anything “out there”.
Kant’s philosophy is a further
development of the earlier notion of primary and secondary sensations, in which secondary
sensations, such as color, taste, and odor
are produced by our sensory apparatus from the “powers” of the primary
sensations of size motion and shape which really are “out there”
Kant’s view is remarkable
consistent with our understanding of quantum mechanics, as well as the concept
of a holographic universe.
Kurt Gödel’s
Incompleteness Theorem
complements Kant’s philosophy in rendering not only reality, but our mind as
unknowable. This theorem states that every formal system contains, at any given
time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own
defining set of rules. This theorem is normally applied to math, traditionally
accepted as being the most complete and universal form of knowledge, and shows that all
logical systems of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete.
Gödel's
Theorem … has been taken to imply that human beings will never entirely
understand the mind, since the mind, like any other closed system, can only be
sure of what it knows about itself by relying on what it knows about itself. Although
this theorem can be stated and proved in a rigorously mathematical way, what it
seems to say is that rational thought can never penetrate to the final ultimate
truth. [50]
Going
back to Sorokin’s conceptions of reality, we see that contemporary science has
allowed us an “idealistic” mentality, as we see that reality at the everyday macro
level has sensory qualities, while at deeper levels it has supersensory or
metaphysical aspects.