The universe is like a watch case that cannot be opened. You can only stand on the outside and guess the internal structure and operating mechanism of the watch. The so-called objectivity and reality are nothing more than a subjective logical model that is self-justifying, temporarily self-consistent, and consistent with observation

----------Einstein< /p>

In 2015, the US "New Horizons" probe sent a signal from 5.2 billion kilometers away, confirming that it flew by Pluto and became the first human probe to detect this distant planet. At the same time, "Voyager" Probe No. 1 is approaching the edge of the solar system. Hubble telescope, "Apollo" moon landing, "Spirit" and "Opportunity" Mars rovers, the Big Bang, black holes, parallel universes and so on. Ever since the ancient Greek philosophers looked up at the stars, it seems that humankind's understanding of the universe has evolved from intuition to the formation of scientific theories and then to practical actions. Although the understanding is extremely limited, it is not as great as Einstein said, " "Can't open" the watch case, and can only "guess" from outside.

Is it really so unbearable?

The watch case that cannot be opened

Humans have only five channels of perception of the outside world: vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. These five channels obtain information sources from the outside world, such as light waves. , air vibrations, chemical molecules, etc., are transmitted to the brain through neurons and converted into feelings of light and darkness, color, sound, taste, etc. As a great scientist, Einstein lamented the "watch case that cannot be opened" because he was actually lamenting the limitations of the human perception system.

The so-called limitations of perception, like running and jumping, are really limited in human running and jumping abilities. In terms of color in vision, color is nothing but a sensory conversion substance of light waves of different wavelengths in the visible spectrum acting on the visual system. The human eye can only recognize light waves with wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers (called visible light), which are reflected by the brain as seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. This range is minuscule in the spectrum of the universe, and light waves with wavelengths larger or smaller than this range are invisible to the human eye, such as ultraviolet light, infrared light, x-rays... Why are there limitations? To put it simply, if you can run at the speed of light and jump to the moon, according to the law of conservation of energy, sorry, the energy of the earth is not enough for you to make it artificially.

Good steel is used on the blade, and living individuals use their pitiful limitations to survive. The reason why humans or animals have evolved the color discrimination function is just to encounter colorful animals while hunting. The object will make your hair stand on end and increase your vigilance, thus improving your survivability. Of course, if you don't have the ability to distinguish colors, you won't be able to clearly and quickly identify a ripe fruit in a forest of uniform colors. You will blindly climb every tree and taste every fruit, only to end up with no stomach full. Tired to death. Human beings themselves are unable to perceive other light waves whose existence is extremely low in nature and which have little impact on survival.

Generally, we think that meat is more fragrant than vegetables. This is because the brain reacts high-energy foods as fragrant and low-energy foods as unscented or even smelly. This allows you to quickly identify the energy level of food. Choose, otherwise you might end up trying what others have thrown out. Therefore, the sense of smell also has limitations. It is impossible for us to use the sense of smell to distinguish the difference between copper and iron, and there is no need.

These perceptions come from the long evolutionary process of individual life, and their purpose is to enable individual life to survive more effectively. Its limitation is that because energy is limited, responses that are conducive to survival have little impact on survival. Relational non-responsiveness.

When we stand in a moving car, we have strong feelings. Because we are afraid of falling, the vestibular organ in the inner ear will guide us to strive to maintain balance. But we stand on this earth that is rotating and orbiting at high speed, but we are totally unaware of it and have taken it for granted. So our perceptions are set up only for survival, not for truth.

Not only is our perception not set up for truth, but it also distorts the true nature of matter and reflects it in the brain to give us understanding. When light waves are projected on an object, the object will absorb and reflect different parts of the light waves. Depending on the characteristics of the object and its own atomic structure, it may reflect green light but absorb light waves of other wavelengths. At this time, the green color we see An object is what the brain has distorted, not what the object is. Just as a bat and I perceive the same tree, is it the tree that I see with my own eyes or the tree that the bat perceives with ultrasonic waves that is the true nature of the tree? Who will be the referee? Hearing the bat and I arguing about what a tree is, the earthworm laughed on the sidelines.

There are no other channels to perceive the universe, and the only five perception channels are limited and subjective (distorted), which directly affects how we perceive the universe. No wonder Einstein shouted "Cannot open watch case".

Guessing

Scientists’ guessing is to upgrade perception to rational logical calculation, from “1+1=2” to “the shortest straight line distance between two points”. Starting from simple logic, we progressed to Ptolemy's geocentric theory (the theory book is called "Thirteen Volumes of Mathematics"), Copernicus' heliocentric theory ("On the Movement of Celestial Bodies"), and then to Newtonian mechanics ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy") ) and Einstein's theory of relativity, we have been tirelessly exploring the universe for thousands of years. These exploration results were all dazzling at a certain period of history, and they also collapsed and disintegrated in the course of history.

Today we regard Ptolemy's geocentric theory as a historical joke, but little did we know that Ptolemy used mathematical models to establish a complete geocentric theory, which effectively guided European agricultural civilization for 1,400 years, including Columbus's route to the New World. It also refers to Ptolemy's calculation model. This was indeed the most objective, realistic and self-consistent epistemology of the universe at that time. To this day, Newton's classical mechanics, which promoted the industrial revolution and scientific revolution, is full of flaws in today's electronic information age. By analogy, a few years later, will this classic, which is still used as teaching content in textbooks, become a self-justifying historical joke like the geocentric theory?

Logic model

With the advancement of science and technology, humans have invented telescopes, microscopes and various inspection instruments. The advancement of science and technology has greatly broken through the limitations of perception. As perception expands, the amount of information we have about the universe will be greatly improved. As the amount of information increases, more logical models can be built. With the logic model, we will not imitate birds with perception like our ancestors did, try to make wings and try to fly and fall half to death. We can send hundreds of tons of aircraft into the air or even into space just by calculating the buoyancy of the air.

When the amount of information is large enough, maybe even the spacecraft is a historical joke. With just a computational model, we can teleport naked.

Explore, anything is possible.