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Wednesday 18 January 2012

It never happened


Imagine a bowl of rainwater. The bowl sits on a small table in my back garden. A few raindrops fall and I see one single drop fall into the centre of the bowl, causing a tiny splash and a brief cycle of concentric ripples which soon die away. Then the sun comes out and the flurry of rain disappears.

Once the ripples in the bowl have died away, how do I know they ever happened? What evidence is there?

There is no evidence - so it didn’t happen.

Or at least it didn’t happen if we take evidence as our criterion of truth, because I have no evidence of those ripples even though I saw them only minutes ago. No evidence means they didn’t happen as far as the outside world is concerned, because I can't prove it and surely we must be consistent in these matters?

Most of the universe makes an unimaginably vast cascade of such tiny changes, those changes that leave no evidence, changes we can never reconstruct because the universe doesn’t do audit trails. An atom absorbs a stray photon, changes its energy level by a single quantum then emits another photon and drops back to its original state. An unrecorded change leaving behind no evidence.

So it didn’t happen.

Except it did happen, but the universe doesn’t need to prove it, doesn’t need to prove anything. We humans sometimes need proof because we have to convince someone else, but the universe doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone - ever. So we have problems, paradoxes, conflicting evidence and things we can sometimes explain, but never completely. We, the social we, aren’t a single entity and have to gather evidence and and present it to each other which only works if the same thing happens again to other people.  

So what about those personal things we experience and the personal way we experience them? Because your experiences are yours, not mine. What about the purely personal events that leave no public audit trail? Like that drop of water, but more important than that, more personally significant?

Public evidence has to be our criterion of public truth, but where does that leave our private experiences? We have to express them in a public language even to ourselves, but in so doing, do we  miss something real, something important? 

3 comments:

Sam Vega said...

Yes, we do miss something real and important, but there is nothing that we can do about it. In representing the event to ourselves via the concepts and language that are involved in our memory, we change it forever. My earliest memories, for example, have been so rationalised, elaborated, and confused with other similar ones, that they exist as a token in my mind, rather than a perfect representation.

Truth is honouring what there is, whether it is the raindrop as it falls (perfect zen "plop"!) or our fumbling attempts to manipulate the fading pictures.

James Higham said...

even though I saw them only minutes ago. No evidence means they didn’t happen as far as the outside world is concerned, because I can't prove it and surely we must be consistent in these matters

Existence of G-d as well?

A K Haart said...

SV - I try to leave early memories alone because of the fragility you allude to. Whether it works or not I can't tell though - because of that same fragility.

JH - I'd say not, because I'm trying to point out that we can't just demand evidence in all circumstances. The demand itself could trample over valid personal experiences like my drop of rain.