By Mike McGee
In this discussion of cosmology, we will explore the rather unusual relationship between Man and light, and then discuss how our very indirect relationship with light may compromise many of the “factual” observations of cosmologists. I have arranged each statement so that it is accurate to the point where scientists would generally agree with the truth of each such statement.
We are a light-based species. Almost every aspect of cosmology, as well as everyday life, is dominated by what we can see with our eyes. Even the giant lens of the most powerful telescope is attached either by an eyepiece or a computer screen to a human eye. There are of course some exceptions where electrical waves or cosmic rays are captured by a collector and fed directly into a computer. These waves are for the most part, though, translated into charts which are viewed entirely by the human eye.
The eye, then, is our window to the cosmos as we receive it from cosmologists. Yet does the eye actually receive and visualize light? We cannot really be sure. No one throughout history has ever actually “seen” what input enters the eye. In fact, we cannot be entirely sure that all the input into what we “see” actually comes solely from the eye.
What we “see” with our eyes has no provable relationship to what actually enters the body or the mind through the eye or elsewhere. We are fairly sure that whatever it is that excites the nerves of the eyes is what sends electrical impulses to the visual cortex in the brain, which displays a colorful and informative scene. This is about as much as we can say about the process of “seeing.”
The brightly lit image on the monitor screen of a computer, such as the home page for Windows, is “seen” identically by millions of computer users. Yet absolutely no one can follow the cable back from the monitor screen into the works of the computer and find anything which even remotely resembles the beautiful, colorful and user-friendly light display on the home page screen of the computer monitor. It just isn’t there. All we find at the other end of the monitor cable is hard parts and electrical flow, and stored programs and flowing data in bits and bytes. There is no light inside the hardware of a computer; yet what we see at the other end of the monitor cable is almost entirely light.
This situation with the computer is almost an exact analogy to the process of “seeing” in human beings. The computer monitor is analogous to the visual cortex of the brain, which presents us with a colorful and user-friendly display which helps us to do most of our tasks and move about from place to place, and displays also for us the cosmos, which we presume is high above in the sky.
The optical nerves move electrical impulses from the eyes to the visual cortex, just as the computer monitor cable moves similar electrical impulses from the hardware of the computer to the monitor screen. To be very precise, the visual cortex in our brain is activated by electrical impulses, NOT by light. There may be other processes which participate in activating the visual cortex of the brain, such as hard-wired neural processes and stored memories, yet light is not one of the activating factors.
So, our relationship with light is at best very indirect. We don’t even know for sure if it is light that is activating our visual cortex. We don’t even know for sure what’s out there beyond our optic nerves. Of course we have four other senses, yet all of these senses have the same limitations: we perceive the evidence of all our senses as meditated by neural “cables” which carry only electrical impulses to the centers for perception of each of our senses.
“Let’s imagine what a human body looks like through a microscope…. Molecular cells are moving and the whole body is loosely arranged as if composed of sand…. completely different from the human body we see with our eyes. This is because this pair of human eyes can create false impressions for you; prevent you from seeing such things.” (Li Hongzhi, source unknown)
It is absolutely certain that the “human eyes” have created a false impression, as described in the quote above. It is also absolutely certain that the eyes have prevented us from seeing the actual nature of what is before us. Science cannot dispute the accuracy of the above quote.
“Now some people believe that the physical eyes can see any substance or any object in this world of ours. Therefore, they fall into a rigid notion, believing that what is seen through the eyes is true and real, and they do not believe what they cannot see…. Our eyes have the capacity to stabilize the object in our physical space into the state we have now seen. Actually, it is not in such a state, not even in this space of ours.” (Li Hongzhi, source unknown)
What these quotes don’t address is the assumption that we “see” with our eyes. In fact we “see” with our visual cortex via electrical impulses through the optic nerves, as I have described. Yet the quotes bring out by specific examples the essential point that what we think we “see” is not in any way analogous to what is actually out there.
“People ask how large the universe is…. The inside of the human body from molecules to micro-particles is as large as this universe. It sounds like a tall story. When a person or a life is made, his specially given composition of life and his nature have been already formed in the extremely microcosmic state.” (Li Hongzhi, source unknown)
Yet if there are seven billion people now on earth, and each person is made up of trillions of individual cells and other microcosmic components – as scientists agree is so – then the microcosm (the body) and the macrocosm (the universe) could be identical. Try multiplying seven billion by the reliably estimated 50 trillion cells and 10 x 10^26 molecules in each human body. I am too exhausted by the concept itself to compute this number.
Let’s look very closely at one human being, either you or me. “If we take roughly 2.3 x 10^13 (23 trillion) as the number of molecules in a cell, and roughly 5 x 10^13 (50 trillion) as the number of cells in a human body, we get approximately 10 x 10^26, or 10^27, or one thousand trillion trillion molecules in each individual human body.” (Cite: David C’s computation, at http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091023021908AAGOeL3). Saima at the same source computed an answer in a more poetic way: “The human body consists of about 50 trillion cells, and each cell has about 10,000 times as many molecules as the Milky Way has stars.”
This number is almost unimaginably vast for one person only, either you or me. All these numbers are within the microcosm of each human body on the earth.
And these numbers, multiplied for the seven billion human beings on earth, do not even take into account the fabulous number of individual molecules which make up the inorganic portion of our planet: the earth itself, rocks, soil, water, air and the elements.
Now let us move from the realm of demonstrably stated scientific fact into the more obscure area of theoretical reasoning.
Imagine if you will, if mankind had developed over the past few thousand years with all our senses intact except for our vision. We would reach up and feel the leaves of the trees, and construct theories about how these leaves are the distant reaches of the universe.
We might even in our advanced scientific vision-free society have discovered ways to build ladders which go high into these trees, and construct theories about the even farther distant reaches of the universe, with a treetop as the infinitesimally small source and origin of the universe. Yet all we’d really be doing is touching the things which are around us in everyday life.
It is quite true that each human body is a microcosm of trillions of trillions of cells and more trillions of molecules within these cells, held into place by what may be analogous to gravity. So therefore, it is possible that when cosmologists “see” the universe, what they are actually “seeing” is the microcosm within each human body, or within the confines of the planet earth and its inhabitants. I recognize that this statement is somewhat far out, yet it is not beyond the realm of the possible.
The truth is, the phrase “seeing is believing” is no more than a superstition. “Seeing” is a much more complex process than we normally own up to. The act of “seeing” into the cosmos by cosmologists, and the scientific data drawn therefrom, are open to very many equally probable interpretations.
The current crop of cosmologists should not be too quick to accept the canon inherited from the past. It might even be better if some of these absolutely brilliant and enthusiastic men and women turned their attention to more pressing scientific problems right here on earth; such as the invention of new clean energy sources, for example.
From http://www.mcgeepost.com Copyright © 2013 by Michael H. McGee. All commercial rights reserved. Non-commercial or news and commentary site re-use or re-posting is encouraged. Please feel free to share all or part, hopefully with attribution.
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