Scientific observation has confirmed the interdependence of all life. Everything, it turns out, is joined at the hip. But for some reason, our scientific practices do not acknowledge interdependence. The act of observation changes that which is being observed, from the medium-sized science of clinical trials to the infinitesimal realm of quantum oddities. How can we not affect stuff? How can stuff not affect us?
Yet when we design experiments, we reinforce our first major delusion: that we are separate from the universe, and that the universe itself is made up of other, separate things, which can be studied in isolation to further isolate more things. Enter René Descartes, who taught us that the world is made of discrete parts. If science is the observation of phenomena over time, then the only agreed-upon result that any enduring observation yields is that things are temporary. We can even say that they do not exist at all, at least not in any solid way. I'm not talking Nihilism here. I'm talking endlessly-bursting-forth-in-every-moment life. I'm talking about the exhilaration of groundlessness with no parachute.
Phenomena exist in the way that constellations exist, patterns generated into contexts by shared hallucinations, repeated. Imagine far-flung stars hundreds of millions of light-years apart, made of an arrangement of interactions we have named "light," which is literally ancient history. What we are seeing has often already exploded, and transformed into its next phase of being. Yet we construct a relationship we can hold onto, grasping for a 2-dimensional Orion in an infinite expanse of space that is often "too chaotic to be noticed or named." [4] As Vi Hart says, "I wonder if a proton plus an electron making a hydrogen atom […] is any more real than these stars making Orion. I mean, is it an atom, or does it just look like an atom?"
Read More