The Philosophy of Reality

Then & Now

Classical philosophy began about 2600 years ago when its original thinkers began trying
to explain the nature of everything. The first among these was Thales of Miletus (624 to
546 B.C.E.), a seaport town located along the Aegean Sea across from Athens. We don’t
really know a lot about the grandfather of western philosophy because he left behind no
writings of his own. Nevertheless, his extraordinary ability to problem solve made him a
legendary figure in his own time and among those philosophers who came after him.
During a military campaign against Persia, for instance, Thales discovered that by
digging a channel he could divert water from the Halys River, making it narrow enough
for the army to cross. While in Egypt, he realized the easiest way to measure the
pyramids was to wait until the time of day when his height and that of his shadow was the
same, then measure the pyramid’s shadow. He also accurately predicted a solar eclipse on
May 28th, 585 B.C.E., built a device for measuring the distance of ships sighted at sea, and
taught sailors how to use the constellations to determine their direction.

Despite the practical nature of Thales’ philosophy, many came to see him as being
somewhat out of touch with reality. Plato, born more than a hundred years after his death,
suggested Thales "was so eager to know what was going on in heaven that he could not
see what was before his feet,"1 a problem, Plato considered, plagued all philosophers,
including himself. This is probably because Thales exerted a great amount of effort trying
to figure out the nature of reality. Of course, Thales didn’t mind applying himself to
theoretical quandaries. As he had proven many times, he could easily come up with
practical solutions to minuscule problems anytime he put his mind to it. Instead of taking
economic advantage of his skills, however, Thales lived in poverty as he went about
contemplating the meaning of everything. Aristotle use to sight a legend about Thales in
which he grew weary of people asking, "what good is philosophy? Look at poor Thales."
So Thales used his meteorological knowledge to predict a heavy crop of olives the
following year. Then, with a small sum, he was able to make a down payment on all the
regional olive presses. A year later, when the olive crop came in, Thales made a financial
killing, proving that a good philosopher can become rich anytime.

But, again, Thales preferred contemplating the Universe over get rich schemes. This
led him to believe all things, what he called the many, are related to each other through a
universal substance he called the One. But what exactly is the nature of the One? What is
the basic stuff everything is made of? Although we’re not exactly sure of his reasoning,
Thales came to believe water is the underlying principle connecting all things—a theory
that has proven rather disappointing compared to his many other achievements.
Nevertheless, by positing the question and suggesting an answer, Thales opened the door
for subsequent philosophers to also begin pondering the underlying nature of reality.
 Anaximander, a younger contemporary of Thales, described the primary substance of
reality as indefinite and boundless, which sounds a lot like the description of God in
many mystical religious traditions, most notably the Kabbablah which actually refers to
God as boundless (Ein Sof). Anaximenes (585-528 B.C.E.), a contemporary of
Anaximander, felt this to be too vague and settled upon air as the unifying substance of
all things. A few years later Pythagoras concluded that things consist of numbers, and
Heraclitus, emphasizing that things are always in a state of flux, chose fire to symbolize
the nature of reality.

What all of these thinkers shared in common was their recognition that some sort of
truth exists beyond our ordinary experience of reality. As a result, they were able to
speculate about the nature of reality beyond our sensual experience of it. Perhaps the
most well known among these speculations is Plato’s notion that the visible world is a
poor copy of an ideal realm in which everything exists in a state of unchanging
perfection. But there were many other creative philosophers who dealt with these issues
too. One of my favorites is Zeno, born around 490 B.C.E., who argued there is no such
thing a motion, that movement is just an illusion. To prove this point, Zeno gave us his
famous paradox of the arrow in which he noted that something is at rest when it occupies
a particular position in space. But since an arrow, even when fired from a bow, always
occupies a particular position in space, it must always be at rest. As humorous as this
clever argument may sound, it is difficult to argue against. Zeno is also the first to argue
that a traveler can never arrive at a destination because to do so, one must first cross the
journey’s half way mark. But each time the traveler does so, a new halfway point is
created and the traveler must continue traveling halfway indefinitely.

Of course we know that travelers do often reach their destinations. Zeno’s argument
simply suggests that we don’t live in a world of absolutes—that movement is relative,
which is beginning to sound a lot like modern science with its theory of relativity. This
shouldn’t really surprise us, however, since science, along with medicine, theology and a
host of other disciplines, all originated in philosophy. Nowadays, we speak of the new
science which explores the underlying nature of reality by exploring the world of
quantum physics. But quantum scientists are not the first to comprehend reality in terms
of its tiniest components. Atomic philosophers, in particular, had their heyday sometime
between Thales and Plato. In response to Zeno’s argument against the existence of
movement, and against those who rejected the reality of separate things in favor of a
unifying principle, the atomists affirmed the existence of space, movement and material
by suggesting the so called void of space is not empty at all but is comprised of an
infinite number of indestructible particles they called atoms. This gave rise to a somewhat
mechanistic view of nature which began quite by accident when one of these atoms,
falling quietly through space with all the other atoms, veered a little off course and
bumped into another atom, causing a chain reaction until, before you know it, atoms are
colliding with each other all over the place, creating various forms in the process. So,
instead of a big bang, the original atomists believed creation began as a little bump.

This notion is not unlike those contemporary physicists who are now referring to the
Big Bang as a big bounce,2 based on the theory that space is not a continuous background
in which objects exist and events take place, but is itself comprised of particles, like an
impressionist painting that presents the illusion of wholeness even though it’s really
comprised of numerous dots. In fact, current thinking calculates there are 10 99 atoms in
every square centimeter of space.3 In case you don’t have your calculator handy, that’s
about three-millionths of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. And if
you have trouble comprehending what a billion is, keep in mind a billion seconds ago
was 1972. In short, there are more quantum particles in a cubic centimeter of space than
there are cubic centimeters in the visible universe!4

Scientists have been attempting to comprehend quantum reality ever since Einstein
came up with his Special Theory of Relativity, which, when combined with particle
physics, gave rise to relativistic quantum field theory, the foundation of modern physics.
Because of this, Einstein is certainly one of the most important figures in human history,
and was rightly chosen as Time Magazine’s Man of the Century. In a recent interview
with Scientific America, physicist Brian Greene was asked if many of the recent
discoveries concerning physics would have happened without the intervention of genius.
For the most part, Greene believes these discoveries are somewhat obvious and would
have become evident sooner or later on their own. But when it comes to Einstein’s
importance, Greene has a different response. "General relativity is such a leap, such a
monumental rethinking of space, time and gravity, that it’s not obvious to me how and
when that would have happened without Einstein."5

Although Einstein allowed us to literally make a quantum leap forward regarding our
understanding of the Universe, with his special theory of relativity, E=MC2, and his general
theory of relativity, which led to the discovery of black holes, space warp and the Big
Bang, he was never able to fulfill the dream he worked more than 30 years for, "to read
the mind of God," by developing a unified field theory, or "a theory of everything" as it
has been called.

Fortunately, based on his groundbreaking work, physicists are still trying to arrive at
such a theory and many think they have come pretty close with something they call
string theory. The theory makes the claim that what appear to be quantum particles are
actually quantum strings, probably looped end to end like a rubber band. In this theory,
what we have mistaken as particles are actually vibratory signatures that occur when one
of these strings has been plucked, the same way a note is played by plucking a guitar
string. What’s interesting about these strings is that they are thought to vibrate in a
number of dimensions, perhaps as many as eleven, at the same time. So, just as Einstein’s
theory introduced time as the fourth dimension, which suddenly enabled us to better
understand how things work, studying string theory may open us to new dimensions
through which we can better understand the Universe, or, as Einstein would have put it,
come up with a "theory of everything." Of course, string theory is still highly theoretical,
even though it has garnished a great deal of attention and excitement, and is considered
cutting edge science.

The point here, however, is that fundamental to cutting edge science is the very
question that has been asked since the dawn of history, what is the nature of reality? And,
in many cases, the answers of cutting edge science are similar to the answers our ancient
forbears came up with so long ago. This notion that our perception of reality is caused by
vibrating a quantum string, for example, is not at all dissimilar from the ancient Hindu
philosophy behind the mantra, an essential sound or phrase meant to harness or attune
one with sacred power. From this perspective, each person, like everything else, may in
essence be a quantum sound, a musical note in a harmonious creation. From the first
atomists who thought the universe was created by a collision of atoms to the modern
physicists who say it happened by a bounce against the fabric of space woven together by
quantum strings; from Zeno’s paradox of the arrow and the traveler to Einstein’s theories
of relativity; we continue wrestling with the same questions, and, in many ways, with the
same answers. And whether or not we are ever able to come up with a completely
satisfying theory of everything, the one thing we can be sure of is there is something
beyond our perceptions and our paradigms. And just as the grandfather of Classical
philosophy realized so long ago, the solution is never as satisfying as the question, and
being out of touch with reality might just be more rewarding than all the riches on earth.