In the Box

In an illuminated box one may see as far as the eye can reach. With the aid of microscopes and telescopes one may see a little further into the microcosm and the macrocosm. However when we consider the universe to be that box, we come to realise that our senses, even aided by technology, are very limited. Faults in the technology may limit our visual images and even distort them. Indeed, our own perceptions are also likely to do so since our own brains are not without their flaws. It was Kant who pointed out that what we experience is distorted in our perception so that perception is never entirely reliable.

We have touched, with our machines, some of the other planets in our solar system and other devices have enabled us to reach out to the stars. But it is here that we find our feet on the earth and it is here that we attempt to interpret all the data we collect. Faulty data, processed with errors, then understood with more errors is likely to give a less than perfect conclusion concerning what is “there”.

Maybe it is the illumination that is a fault and being fitful and unreliable then our conclusions and our interpretations of further data are likely to have additional faults. Even if our senses were acute enough and if we were big enough then we could never take in the furthest distances. Even then our own position in the box and our responses to others and theirs to us affects the situation and distorts our perceptions.

Even could we perceive accurately everything within the box we would still not have a proper view of the box for we would need to see it from a position outside as well as from within. We would need to see, simultaneously the inside and the outside of the box. Of course that would include every aspect of the box all at the same time.

Since the box which is the whole of creation or the universe, or whatever we like to call it, also has a dimension in time then we also need to have seen it from the beginning and to the very end all simultaneously as well as having an understanding of every change and movement and the ways in which all the movements in the box affect one another.

There is so little chance of that being possible that it is clear that human science, however ingenious, has no chance of being able to measure and to understand the universe in all its multi-faceted aspects. Indeed it is also very unlikely that even if the box were reduced to our own solar system, or even to just the planet on which we dwell, we would be able to understand but a small part since we are not able to view it from all sides at once and from the very beginning to the very end.