The Bubble Universe

[ALien]

Does a spider exist in the same universe as a human being? In one sense, yes, we can splat them. They can scare us. So in some physical way we exist side by side in the same world, the same universe.
But does this extend to our appreciation of reality? Does a spider intuit the same universe as a human? Does it inhabit, experience and understand in the same way as us? This, we have to conclude, is doubtful.

There is an important point here.

alpha-spider-web1Much of the way we see the universe is based on our knowledge of it. Indeed, reality is a compromise between how the universe thinks it ‘is’, and how we appreciate how it ‘is’.
Reality – the universe – becomes a subtle construct based upon our consensual view of it, combined with universal realities that help to fashion the consensus. When a scientist talks about ‘laws of nature’, he isn’t exactly being honest. Some can be obviously seen as such – things fall – but other ‘laws’ are based on theory, and are the laws of ‘man’.

Consensual realities are not exact.

The human race itself lives in a cauldron of conflicting consensual realities, the most obvious being the ‘scientific’ and the ‘religious’. In either case, the ‘realities’ of our knowledge confirm the paradigm.
It is almost as if reality is like a vacuum – and knowledge abhors a vacuum, if I may paraphrase a famous scientific ‘law’. ‘Reality’ is flooded with how we think it ‘is’. And the ‘observer’ becomes intrinsic to the ‘reality’ we think we experience.

Let’s go back to the spider.

We can now see that it is feasible to say it doesn’t exist in the same reality as us, and the religionist doesn’t live in the same reality as the scientist. Rather, differing realities co-exist, intermingle, but are fundamentally different.
It is almost as if there are societal ‘bubbles’ of knowledge. But we can complicate the subject even more than this. I’ve written in the past of how the ‘law of large numbers’ leads to greater order dependent on increasing numbers involved.

I’ve applied this to the universe.

In effect, the universe could be made of layered constructs, with a lifeform being less ordered than a species; a species less ordered than a planet, a planet less ordered than a solar system, etc.
This is actually understood in ecology. Existence is constructed of interlaced ecosystems, each reliant on the other, and extending from the planetary ecosystem to the fungi between your toes. And it is unlikely that it understands its existence causes the higher function of a human scratching it because it itches.
The ‘systems’ of ecosystems can, I think, be transferred to the argument I am raising here. We can exist in our own ecosystem, which we recognize both physically and intellectually, but we could also, unbeknown to us, also exist in an ever-increasing number of ecosystems both parallel to ours, and larger with higher function.
We may well appreciate some effects ‘physically’ from those higher systems – for instance, we experience wider influences such as light and gravity (whatever they are), but this does not mean that our ‘understanding’, based on our own little ‘system’ is anything like as high as the larger interlinked systems ‘appreciate’ and react to.
Rather, from differing paradigms, thru lifeforms, to the nature of the universe itself, we could be part of an interlinked web of existences, which we have barely begun to experience and conceive. Existence, good reader, could well be ‘bubbled’.

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[Mingus]

I believe this is a good second perspective for those who prescribe to the ubiquitous idea that we will be raising our consciousness in 2012. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with 2012, but it does have fundamental links to the progress humanity supposedly makes throughout the period before and after the event(s).

[Tecnos]

This article is a very flat regurgitation of Schrödinger's cat and The Quantum Mechanics - Many Worlds Interpretation

Who the Hell gave it blog space?

[kidflash2008]

This is the same type of question as: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make noise? Not really science, but philosophy.

[raves475]

I thought this was going to be an article about parallel universes floating in a sea, the title is a little misleading. Everybody perceives the universe differently and sometimes the way you perceive the universe changes (e.g. with age, after a traumatic event). Maybe we're constantly slipping into parallel universes without knowing it because anything that's different your mind just believes that's how everything always been. Maybe in you're reality you never die because you "slip" into a separate universe in which you're death never took place.

[kidflash2008]

I think the term reality would apply here other than universe. Perspective also would apply, as it changes as we age and have life experiences.

[holeg2212]

my brain hurts...

I honestly think the TRUTH about the universe and our reason for being here is to complex to even fit in the human brain or on any super computer....

[Mingus]

Which, not to be disparaging, is exactly the same thing (roughly) that Isaac Newton, Darwin, and others said when they were on the cutting edge of things. When Newton wrote Principia, he noted that he could only conclude that God was what kept the unstable orbits in place. Laplace later wrote, after correcting Newton, that biology was an unknowable study (as he began some of the earliest explorations of biology), and later the shroud around biology was thoroughly removed. God is becoming less and less an answer and more of a challenge to science.

If a lot of this New Age philosophy is worth it's grain in salt, then science and the supernatural are interchangeable. We are supernatural beings, though only to creatures beneath our intelligence, with our technology. If we can keep up both sides (science and spirituality or the supernatural), then we will benefit from having the two for new ideas and aspirations. In my opinion, we need both in order to keep the natural motivation going.

[kidflash2008]

Thank you Mingus on a thread well thought out. That is my point, in that we need to keep attuned to our spirituality while still being scientific. We are on a too materialistic approach to everything, and the spiritual side gets laughed at by many scientists.