It can safely be said, I think, as I wash foodscraps from my dishes, wondering how many billions of sub-atomic particles I’m consigning down the drain, that the theory of the phenomenal or physical world as the sole reality has hinged on one hitherto undeniable concept – the ultimate decay of all matter; the nothingness of death. Science has taught us that. It’s convinced us that, in terms of reality – what exists and what does not exist – the physical world is all there is.
The idealistic school of philosophy has argued for centuries that this is simply not true. The physical world has no moral or spiritual inclination or aptitude, so there must be another dimension in which values, and all the ethical principles that spring from them, exist. And while everything physical decays, these values are immutable, imperishable, and must therefore be the only thing that’s ultimately real.
In my world of the kitchen sink, I’m inclined to strike an obvious compromise – as many philosophical thinkers have. If I stub my bare toe on the leg of a chair, or fall under the wheels of a car, I’m inclined to accept that the phenomenal world is indeed real – it is a reality. And quite painfully so.
On the other hand, if I look at the way I’ve tried to better myself as a human being all my life – striving for those immutable values that exist only in our ideals, and striving for them for no other reason than to satisfy myself that I’m living my life according to them – then I’m also inclined to accept that there are two realities, and one of them is conceptual, idealistic, spiritual.
I feel intuitively, also, that there’s more to life, more to reality, than what we see around us. I’m not a believer in God, but it’s the same strength of intuition that many philosophers ascribe to religious faith.
But is this idealistic, or spiritual, reality the sole reality, the only one? Up until now, that’s been a tremendously difficult, indeed impossible, concept to argue. But if I bring science and philosophy together, if I take the latest theory of quantum physics, that everything, physical and mental, or spiritual, has an electrodynamic base — is an energy particle – then the question of a sole reality changes dramatically.
For then, as I scrub away in the steaming suds, I return again to the causality of phenomena as a perception of reality to remind myself what I’ve learnt about perception.
Perception, as we all know, is the means by which we experience the phenomenal world; and we do this through sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. But if there’s anything that philosophy teaches us above all other things, it is that this world is definitely not the way it seems.
Our experience of it is limited to our senses – unique and wondrous as they are — and the interpretation they place on what they experience. Anything beyond that is intuitive or clairvoyant. To cut a long story short, modern science tells us that everything about us is made up of clusters atoms of varying mass and speeds of oscillation, which in turn are made up of possibly immeasurable layers of sub-atomic energy particles.
The American science writer, George Johnson, refers to this structure this way “Our world is a wedding cake of layers,” he tells us. “Sub-atomic particles obeying laws of quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics give rise to atoms and molecules obeying the laws of chemistry, which give rise to cells obeying the laws of biology, and creatures obeying, to some extent, laws of psychology, sociology and economics.”
Getting back to the sub-atomic level, though, it’s our brains that apply the interpretation – the reality that we think we experience — to the electrodynamic signals that our senses of sight, hearing and smell receive from everything about us.
These signals, like the bleak, sub-atomic existence they come from, have no colour, sound or smell. To quote an eminent British philosopher of the past, Professor Alfred North Whitehead: “Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves – the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song, the sun for its radiance.”
To quote George Johnson: “We are electromagnetic creatures in an electromagnetic world. With every step we take, it is electrons exchanging photons that generates the illusion of solidity in a world that, we have come to believe, is mostly the empty space inside electron shells.”
Now, it seems to me that if we ourselves apply the colour, costumery, sound and smell to an invisible universe of energy particles about us, then there’s something more to us than the physical reality that one side of the philosophical debate would have us be.
It’s possible, for one thing, that we are the only entities in the universe who can actually perceive it — see it – and I can assure you I’m not the first thinker, by any measure, to contemplate this. Yet, as we already know, it’s nothing like what we see; so it’s entirely possible, on the other hand, that we ourselves have created it.
This may well be – and this, again, has been a mainstream philosophical theory for some time: that our reason for existence and our role in the universe is simply to provide matter with consciousness of itself.
On the other hand, you may have read recently that Britain’s astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, is among those who not only take the theory of multiple universes seriously, but also consider that all mankind and the entire universe around us may be a virtual reality – a gigantic simulation that’s being run by another, obviously far more intelligent, or unmitigatedly cruel, cosmic civilization.
Now, at this point, you may be asking things like: You think all this? While you’re standing over hot soapsuds in rubber gloves washing the dishes?
Well, of course. The kitchen sink is, to my mind, the ideal place for epic thought. It’s where the body can be absorbed in something completely and usefully mechanical while the mind goes wildly adventuring.
Not only that, but the kitchen sink represents something important to me as a philosophical thinker – it’s where the complex, mind-numbing academia and obscurity of philosophy can be brought down to where it should be; down to everyday, or real, life.