My students continue their reflections on the Zander book, The Art of Possibility. This time the musing is about the possible ramifications of the realization that “Reality” is not what we thought it was:

I try not to allow Zander’s conceptualism bother me–it goads me like a poker when he says “language is replete with a variety of ‘things’ that have no existence in time and space but seem as real to us as anything we own–’justice’ for instance….” … If everyone has their own personal framework of possibility, I fear we’ll lose the intimacy of sharing a common framework. Take the Hubble photograph above. The beauty of the Pleiades Cluster is not a construct of my mind–its beauty is there to be discovered by any who would attend to it. The community of astronomers who photograph it share a common beauty between them–something bigger than any one’s construct. Isn’t this what makes possibility appealing? What possibilities are worth seeking and having in my life? R. Swindoll

My response: Wonderful observations and pondering questions. I find it interesting that you comment about trying to not let Zanders conceptualizations bother you and then you spend the rest of the post wrestling with them. You are touching on the universal question between perception and empirical reality. Without going too much into what seems like a “dancing on the head of a pin” question, I believe that it’s foolish to think that there is no external reality. Thus the miracle is that we do seem to share in a common framework of understanding despite the fact that our consciousness is trapped in the “black box” of our individual skulls dependent on imperfect sensory organs to perceive and communicate with this seemingly infinite external universe.

And perhaps the universe was indeed laughing at me, that I would attempt to answer the student’s pondering because, after I had drafted what I thought was a perfectly crafted comment I inadvertently clicked a button on the screen and sent all of those wonderful words straight to hexadecimal oblivion. No small about of screaming or laughing at the absurdity would bring those perfectly positioned words back. Thus the above rendition is the best that I could bring back from a brain that wasn’t very happy with it’s fingers. Imperfect sensory organs indeed.

Music: Goodbye by Kevin Shields from the Lost In Translation – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack