A matter of perspective?
Bishop George Berkeley stated that size is not a primary quality of an object, as it varies with the distance of the object from the observer. A man standing next to you may be as tall as you, but from the end of the street he is shorter than your little finger. This law of perspective affects the size of everything in the universe and seems imperceptible only in relation to one’s own body. One’s hand appears to be a constant size, whether at the dinner table covering a saucer or from a high-flying jet covering a city.
The Greek philosopher Protagoras said that “man is the measure of all things.” All we know is the perception of a human mind and all knowledge is relative to the human condition. The sum total of knowledge is so vast that it is easy to forget that it was compiled entirely by human beings. It is easy to conceive of knowledge as something abstract and independent of humanity, but this is a mistake. Even if some religions claim that the knowledge revealed by God came through a human being.
Big is bigger than the human scale and small is smaller. The size variations are so great that they must be expressed as powers of ten, and even then the numbers are large. The largest thing we know of, the universe, is about as many times larger than the human scale as the smallest things we know, subatomic particles, are smaller. The universe and the quark are approximately equidistant from man. Is this just another example of wherever you are, do you seem to be in the center, or is this whole phenomenon a unique feature of the human mind? Is the man at the center for a reason and a purpose?
Bishop Berkeley had another interesting idea. Since all objects are mere perceived qualities, he doubted that an object existed if no one was looking at it or perceived it in some other way, and argued that its continued existence depended on God’s will – he was always looking at it. ! Berkeley even presented this idea as proof of the existence of God; someone had to be watching everything all the time.
Since Laplace’s time, explanations have been sought that do not require God’s intervention, and that makes the idea of the Bishop even more interesting. Man is the only known conscious being, and everything that is known about the universe has been observed, measured and recorded by men, so is the presence of man necessary for the existence of the universe? If the only evidence for the existence of objects is the qualities perceived by men, can the universe have any existence independent of the mind of man?
Mind and matter used to be considered separate substances; the questions were asked:
What’s going on? Never mind!
What is the mind? Never mind!
Modern neurological research seems to suggest that mind could be an emanation of matter, but could Bishop Berkeley be right in viewing matter as an interpretation of mental perceptions? Is the mind the culminating achievement of the evolution of matter: the agency by which matter knows itself, or is it a consciousness that constructs the material world as a “visual reality” that encompasses all the senses?
