Science has a huge blind spot: It can never be “truly” objective due to the influence of the society that produces it. But what if there is no “objective” and universal truth that’s accessible to science? If you’ve already come to this conclusion feel free to skip to the next (previous) post. If you haven’t, maybe this will blow your mind: The current scientific consensus is that two observers can have a completely different understanding of the universe, and yet still both be perfectly correct. And that an observer (read: a consciousness) can affect the outcome of an event simply by observing it (read: experiencing it). Or said another way, we influence reality by seeing it. Warning! I’m about to come down pretty hard on one side of the “if a tree falls in the forest, etc. etc.” debate.

The first example is the aptly named Theory of Relativity. There are a myriad of ways that this theory, which has been empirically proven using atomic clocks, would cause two different observers to measure the same simple phenomenon differently: The length of a ruler, the number of seconds in a minute, the mass of 1 kilogram of gold. My personal favourite is that two different observers could experience two events either simultaneously… or not… which has huge implications on the concept of time, but that’s a subject for a different post. The kicker is that each observer would be absolutely correct in their experience and measurements. Said another way, there’s no reason to favour one view of what’s true over the other.

The second example is quantum mechanics and the wave-particle duality of light. Again, the dual nature of light, which has also been empirically proven, smashes to bits the idea that there’s something “out there” that we can describe more accurately the more impartial and less obtrusive we become. A photon is like an “atom” of light and is both a particle, and a wave… until it is observed. Check out this video for a better explanation than I could hope to offer: The passive act of observing the experiment… changes the outcome! In other words, there’s no way to separate “true” reality from the person experiencing that reality.

So back to the tree question: It most definitely does not make a sound. Something isn’t real until it’s experienced, and what’s more how it is experienced is always relative to the person experiencing it. So where does that leave us? The best tool we have to understand truth (Science) is flawed, and there’s not even an objective reality to understand anyway. How can we even relate to one another? Are we each just making up “reality” as we go along? Wait… Maybe there’s another way to experience “true” reality. Maybe there’s a “super-reality” that isn’t conceivable or accessible to us intellectually or rationally, and is the source of these seemingly irrational findings. And maybe it comes with benefits that an impassive analytical tool (yes, I’m talking about science) can’t offer?