Imagination is Greater than Knowledge - perception, cognition, reality, consciousness

Imagination, consciousness, knowledge, perception, thought, feeling, emotion, subjectivity, objectivity, culture, civilization, language, music, science, art, humour, beauty, ...

I assume that the reader of these pages, at least occasionally, uses an eraser. (That rubbery little thing used to erase unwanted traces of a pencil on a paper.) And furthermore, I assume that it happened to the reader that this rubbery little thing fell somewhere under the desk. And you look and look and can't see where that damned little thing is. It just disappeared. Just like that - in thin air. You shake your head and answer the phone. Afterwards, you try again and that damned little thing is there - under the desk. It's just a bit off where you expected it to be - "magic".

This page was published in October 2000. Exactly three years later, Nature Science Update published article "Brain fakes it" on a finding in neurobiology that strongly supports the general approach of this site.

And you are not wrong - this (and other numerous examples from everyday life) is a phenomenon at the core of the magician's or illusionist's art. Not one scientist fell for it, but I did not hear of anyone taking a lesson from it. And the lesson is simple and an answer obvious - we do not see what we do not expect to see - we see what we expect to see. Obviously, there are discrepancies between our perception of the world that surround us (and ourselves within it) and what really is "out there".

For a long time, I have been bewildered by science's ambivalent approach to the observer and the reality. Timid claims of objectivity, ending with more or less implicit introduction of observer (bearer of subjectivity) were not followed by a clear statement. This ambivalent approach, of which Einstein's famous theory of relativity is a good example, lead to an uncertainty: What is the object of the scientific approach? An answer to this question may bring science to a rediscovery of its humanity with all its glory and limitations.

Some scientific evidence suggests that what we call objectivity is just a generally accepted form of subjectivity. A closer look might give us a better understanding and maybe help us to narrow the gulf between our "reality" and what really is "out there".

These pages are an attempt to imagine a science with a cornerstone of objectivity replaced by another cornerstone - subjectivity, without a denial that there is something out there. The purpose of the science is to describe the world that surrounds us and, I would add, ourselves within it. The broaden concept has numerous implications. But the most important is that it brings you, me and others into the picture with all our human elements and feelings. It replaces the dehumanised world perceived by nobody with a world acted in by us.

Would such science still be scientific? I would say - yes. It may actually gain a new vigour and respect.

The most of the content of this site is available in zipped PDF (378KB) or Microsoft Word (198KB) format (courtesy of Carol Boyle).