The Holy Book of Science

Science posits that a tree that falls in a forest does not make a sound. Rather it makes a vibration that we can only describe in algebraic terms. The vibration of the falling tree shakes the air molecules and the frequency of this vibration is transferred to your eardrum in the form of a sound wave. When the sound wave hits your eardrum this shakes the drum, which then sends an electrical signal, again sending the frequency information and not a sound, to the brain. Only at the brain is the sense data of the frequency of the vibration interpreted as a sound with a particular pitch and volume. Thus, science posits that objectively speaking we live in a silent world.

This repeats with all the other physical senses. But I'll just cover pictures you experience. Science again posits that when you look at a room the picture is only in your head. The color you experience is really only the brain’s interpretation of a colorless frequency that can only be described algebraically. Even black, white, and gray are only interpretations of frequencies that in themselves have no color. So from the point of view of science, we live in a colorless silent world. Sound and picture supervene only in the mind. They do not exist in the world.

If we follow this through to its conclusion, we see that the entirety of our experience of the world is “in our head” according to science. We thus do not experience the world as it is, but only a neural interpretation according to science.

I need to clear up one misconception. Some people think that the experience of touch is unlike the other four senses and is direct. Thus they imagine that the feel of the shape of an object is a feel of how the object ‘is in itself.’ This notion is incorrect. In actuality, science posits that the brain and nerves of the skin are interpreting something that the mind cannot directly verify. To assume that ‘the world in itself’ is analogous to the brain’s interpretation of it is again a metaphysical conjecture that has no rational justification at all.

I will take this just a bit further, for it is vital that the reader get a strong sense of just how “in the dark” science posits that we are.

I said that there is no rational justification for assuming that the world as it is in itself is analogous to our experience of how it feels to our touch. There are reasons for believing that it is. But they are not rational reasons. Here are some such reasons.

• • We all assume that it’s that way.

  • It just feels that way.

  • It conforms to my intuitions.

  • I can’t imagine it any other way.

  • It’s just common sense that it is that way.

Conviction in this belief would only be justified by these kinds of reasons if there were no instances where such reasons were used to justify beliefs that later turned out to be false. We needn’t look further than the Earth-centered solar system of Aristotle. Certainly the world has had beliefs that most people assumed were true, that seemed right, that conformed to our intuitions, and that we couldn’t imagine any other way, that turned out to be false. And about the notion of common sense, many commonly held beliefs that are experienced as common sense by a person before he is educated in a particular field of study are abandoned once he becomes fully ensconced in the details of that subject. Additionally, what is common sense to one culture is not common sense to another, and so forth.

We have established that:

• 1. It is a non-controversial point that we only have access to our own internal experience.

  2. We only have our internal experience to rely on as a basis for introspection.

  3. Even our introspection is a form of experience.

  4. This is consistent with the prevailing notions of sciences to date.

This is not to say that there is nothing beyond our experience. We have merely established that we have no choice but to begin to wonder about ‘reality in itself’ along with its mechanics and causes, by observing and contemplating our internal experience. If we don't understand that, then we are too unintelligent to continue.

Chapter Four: Positing a substratum

It's important to understand what is meant by a material substratum.

Very few are actually aware of what the word "matter" denotes. If asked, a common reaction is to point to something in one's experience or to pick something up to show. This is not right. The word "matter" does not refer to objects or substances as experienced. "Matter" is a word for something metaphysical that no one can see, feel, or confirm through observation. It is a theoretical entity, a placeholder for what science assumes must exist in some yet undetermined way. It is theorized to be colorless, tasteless, odorless, and beyond the scope of human imagination.

The reason it was theorized will be explained in greater detail in the next chapter. But in short it is said to be the first cause, to be known by its effects, to be the true underlying substance and fundamental reality that undergirds and creates experiential phenomena, though to this date no one has ever offered any explanation for how it does so. In philosophy it is often referred to as "the substratum." As something that is beyond the scope of observation, yet the fundamental core reality and cause of all things, it has evolved to take on all the characteristics of the deity that it replaces – minus the personality.

The constantly repeated refrain that matter and energy are interchangeable by established equations, and that this somehow establishes something about matter, is misleading. The equations referred to are found in analyzing events in experience – not by observing these theoretical entities. Rather the data found in observing events in experience is attributed theoretically to these entities. They are not actually measures of the substratum. No one is trying to fool anyone; scientists are simply so generally confused by these concepts that many of them honestly think they are touching their created conceptions. Other defenses of the concept of matter that have emerged in the last half century include that matter is simply identical to experience, or that experience is a "function" of matter. These views and others like them offer only semantic solutions to the intractable problem of explaining what matter is, and can offer no proof or observation, in fact or in principle, to test if they are true even if you can make sense of them. Thus such views are no less metaphysical and imaginary than the original form of the notion. In other words, it's just a lot of talk.

By positing a metaphysical entity, by any name, science loses site of the central purity of its method. As said above, it is by focusing more deeply into human experience that science will begin to come out the other end and discover the truth about experience itself, its nature, cause, etc. It is not, as science has vainly attempted and covered its failures with alluring fictions, to be found in circumventing experience by positing non-experienced fantastic analogues.

Science needs to return to examining experience if it wishes to find its cause, and below we begin to make a start at doing just that.

Chapter Five: The public and private quality distinction

Let's talk a moment about the nomenclature of the science of experience.

By the words “experience,” “perceive,” and “observe,” we include those observations that occur through the faculty of thought, the organs of sense, and through the medium of scientific instruments.

One who experiences something, whether we are talking about physical objects and events, or mental thoughts, is called a "percipient."

That which the percipient experiences, whether we are talking about physical objects or thoughts, is called the "percept."

In the relationship between percipient and percept, the percipient is known as the "subject" and the percept is known as the "object."

The various pieces of information that the subject can ascertain about an object are called its "properties" or "qualities."

Now, we are going to point out an important aspect of the object of experience that must be observed with extreme clarity to make further headway.

This aspect is called the primary-secondary quality distinction, and it is mostly misunderstood by this name. Here it will be explained properly and by a different name – public and private qualities.

To point this distinction out it will help to take a very simple physical object that one can go outside and carefully observe or examine mentally. It will also help to choose an object that can be observed with the eyes since the experience of sight is the most constant and thus the most conducive to slow methodical analysis.

The simple object we will examine will be a common stop sign. We will choose a stop sign because it has an easy to discuss quality, a familiar easily describable shape – an octagon.

Normally when examining a stop sign, nothing of particular philosophical interest pops out at us.

But it is when examining one in person and walking around it with another person that its public and private qualities emerge.

The stop sign has two distinct sets of qualities – those qualities that are the same for every observer, and those that are different for each observer. One set are shared. The other are had only by the individual.

Herein lies one of the major clues left in the percept by the Creator to direct man to the truth of the origin of everything he perceives.

Now it is important to properly tease out of the visual image of a stop sign exactly what qualities of the sign are identical for all who labor to ascertain them, and what qualities are different for each individual who observes.

We are going to a great deal of trouble to avoid a common misconception. That misconception is that the shape, in the sense of how you see it with your eyes, is a primary quality. That is entirely incorrect.

The apparent shape of the sign is different for every observer from every given angle. The observed shape is therefore a subjective interpretation of the actual shape that must be the same for everyone. Each observer simultaneously experiences his private qualities (visual and slightly different for every observer) and the object’s public qualities (same for all who labor to ascertain them mentally from his experience).

The public qualities are purely conceptual ones, such as the number, geometry, weight, and mass of the sign along with its electromagnetic frequency. They are only describable in mathematics and geometry.

The private qualities are the individual’s impression of the stop sign, such as color, apparent relative shape, apparent relative weight, apparent relative distance, and apparent relative size.

The public qualities of the sign (such as electromagnetic frequency) are not observed by the same process as the private qualities (such as color). Private qualities are experienced through the medium of the sense organs. Public qualities are ascertained through the medium of the mind while reflecting on that experience.

As mentioned already, a common misconception is that the shape as experienced (the apparent shape) is an objective public quality. There is a difference between the objective shape describable in geometric terms and the apparent shape as it appears to the senses. The first is public; the latter private.

This misconception is often expressed in the statement, "One could imagine for example an apple without color. One cannot imagine an apple without a shape, because it is a primary quality; it exists even if unperceived." This is incorrect. You cannot imagine an apple without color. You can imagine one in shades of grey, but grey is a color. And if you imagine its shape, that too is color and form and is only a memory of its apparent shape. And if you imagine how it feels you are imagining sense data.

Now there is another misconception about qualities that has beguiled philosophers to their great detriment.

It is true that public qualities are not relative in any way. But this is generally misunderstood.

The misunderstanding arises from the belief that the public qualities include number – that number is the same for everyone and is not relative. This is partly true. The number of stop signs is the same for all who count them.

But when we go to apply this to weight and measure, we must make one caveat. In regards to the public weight and measure we are more correct to speak of a ratio that is constant – not a single number. And interestingly ratios are a measure of relativity. What is constant is the measure of relativity (the ratio) and not the unit measure.

Let us look at an example. The sign can be weighed with a scale to be 100 pounds. Anyone who labors to weigh the sign with the same type of scale system will arrive at the same number – 100. From this it is sometimes assumed that the number itself is primary and is not relative. But in this case we are mistaken. The actual number is merely an outcome of the units of the scale used. To measure the weight of the sign with a truly universal scale would require a scale that compared the weight of the sign to a fixed object in its Universe. This measure (a ratio) would then be a real constant and it is this ratio that is primary and not relative.

Now consider the laws of nature. Those that can be quantified are always ratios of time and space and never single numbers. The speed of light is not a constant number, but a constant ratio between a unit of duration (time) and a unit of distance (space). The numbers in the ratio 186,000 miles per second are arbitrary units. What is constant is the ratio that they express. Any people using any system of unit measures would eventually arrive at the same ratio, 186,000:1. All measurements, no matter what system, would be reducible to this ratio. Thus it is the ratio that is a constant. This is repeatable with gravity, etc.

There are just a couple more things to know about public and private qualities of perceived objects.

The only public qualities are:

• 1. The number of objects under consideration.

  2. Their location relative to other objects in their environment.

  3. Their motion relative to other objects in their environment.

  4. The geometry of those objects, understood in abstract geometric terms only, not in the sense analogous to the impression, although derivable from impressions considered by the mind.

  5. The laws of nature that govern those object and their particles, understood in algebraic terms, once again not analogous to the impression, though derivable from it.

  6. The frequencies of vibrations understood as ratios of time and space – not analogous to the impression, though derivable from it.

The private qualities include all the sensations derived by the medium of the sense organs, including the eyes, mouth, nose, ears, nerves, and brain.

These qualities include:

• 1. Color – includes the impression of light and dark, shape, line and hue.

  2. Sound, including pitch and volume.

  3. Fragrance

  4. Taste

  5. Touch, including numerous impressions such as ache, itch, tickle, nausea, vertigo, numbness, energy and exhaustion, hot and cold, pain in the eyes from light intensity, pain in the ears from loud noise, pressure or resistance on the skin, weight, and form.

  6. Apparitions of imagination.

Now we have made the public and private quality distinction very clear. It is time to see the past attempt to explain this and see why it failed. Then we will show the a coherent system that can account for it.

Chapter Six: Materialism

The traditional explanation for the distinction between public and private qualities is as follows.

The public qualities can be discovered by anyone who examines them in equal measure. For this reason they are called “objective.” It is supposed that these objective qualities inhere in the objective object and are independent of perception.

It is true that public qualities persist when human beings are not witnessing them, as we know from testimony. Thus they are independent of individual perception. However, the problem that arises in the view that the public qualities inhere in the objective object is that no one has ever been able to explain what they mean by this.

While it is not difficult to articulate a cogent sentence such as that certain qualities inhere in the object, the notion creates numerous irresolvable questions. We will cover some of them one by one.

What is the object they are inhering in?

In order to make the notion that public qualities of observed objects inhere in the object make sense, it is necessary to postulate an invisible metaphysical object or material that is independent of those qualities. For, what would “inhere in” mean without something to inhere in? This something has had many names in the history of thought – most notably material substratum and noumenon.

It must be fully understood that this something, whatever it is called, cannot be directly perceived, for all that is directly perceived are the private qualities. No one will deny that we can imagine no more than what it is possible to perceive by means of the senses. Since this something, whatever it is called, cannot be perceived by the senses it cannot be imagined. The substratum is thus not only invisible but beyond imagination and conception.

Remember that science is reasoned-based analysis of sensation upon our awareness. As such, the scientific method cannot deduce anything about the realm of reality that is beyond what is observable by existing means.

Thus materialism is not science, but metaphysics.

Beyond the fact that it is not really science, someone could still argue that there is nothing wrong with science adopting a fundamental metaphysical position as an intellectual anchor so long as it is good metaphysics. But is materialism good metaphysics?

There is only one reason for postulating the presence of an invisible and undetectable substratum. That is to explain the public private quality difference.

So to see if materialism is good metaphysics we should see if it actually achieves this aim.

In what sense do the public qualities inhere in or adhere to the invisible substratum? What exactly is the relationship that these words name? What is the mechanics of this relationship?

The answer is that no one has ever been able to propose an answer to these questions, because we are talking about something we cannot even imagine, let alone see.

How do the public qualities get into the brain or mind?

It isn't difficult to tell a story about light bouncing off the substratum and hitting the eyes and stimulating the nerves in the corneas. But remember that such an account imagines light as something analogous to the image of light spilling in through a window. But there is no reason to believe that light has such form. Remember it is the public quality we are talking about, which in the case of light is merely a frequency that can only be described in mathematical terms. To imagine it as a substance analogous to water or something in the percept is to commit the historical fallacy – where one reads into a process the results that occur because of that process. The same holds for the substratum that is imagined as analogous to an object in appearances.

The error in thinking is best seen with an example. Consider the stop sign again. A fallacy of reasoning is made when a person imagines that the public qualities of the sign – such as the geometric concept of a hexagon or the natural laws that govern the sign’s subatomic particles – behave and act just like objects found in the percept which have their relative extension, location and so forth. It is of course not denied that the stop sign has extension and location relative to other objects within the frame of experience – but to read these qualities into the cause of the experience is very primitive thinking. The actual sign does not really have location. It is not analogous to the sign that is seen. It is conceptual. This error of committing the historical fallacy is the main one made in current science, but this is likely to change very soon as consciousness increases.

Once the public qualities have arrived in the brain, how does the brain or mind convert the public qualities into private qualities? Or conversely, how do the public qualities, once they have arrived in the brain, convert themselves into private qualities.

This conversion has never been figured out. It is left hanging. It is called “the mind-body problem” and is accompanied by a parade of long but ultimately unsuccessful books attempting to solve it. Most attempts are merely linguistic attempts, hoping to solve the mind-body relationship with semantics in much the same way that the Bush administration tried to solve the problem of torture by playing with words and definitions. Such attempts satisfy their proponents, but no one else.

How did the invisible substratum of the world come into being?

Intelligent scientists avoid the postulate that 'it always existed' because there is no scientific basis for believing it. They don't know. They aren't even sure what the question refers to as there is no clear referent.

What are the natural laws, how did they form, what was the mechanics of their evolution, what is their ontological nature?

There are no current answers to any of these question. While they rightly belong within the scope of science (since the effects of natural laws are observable) science ignores these questions because its metaphysical approach to understanding nature at its core precludes even forming a guess.

The prevailing notion of an invisible substratum, whose sole purpose was to explain human experience of the phenomenal world along with the public and private qualities found in it, has not actually explained it.

From a scientific point of view a theory is an hypothesis that has gained a high degree of acceptance within the scientific community, and an hypothesis is an attempt to explain a set of observed phenomena.

Therefore, from the point of view of science, a belief that succeeds in explaining nothing is not a theory.

It follows that the belief that there is an invisible substratum, having explained nothing, is at best a poor theory and may not be a theory at all. Even to say it is weak makes no sense, for it manages to explain nothing. It can’t even be coherently understood.

There is a position in philosophy that there is an invisible world where mathematics exists. This world postulated by philosophers is believed by them to cause the phenomenal world (the world of our experience). However, they do not speculate how this is possible. It is not a theory, but rather a philosophical position without arguments. The only thing that the belief is meant to explain is the philosopher’s inability to resolve the private public quality distinction.

But as if it wasn’t bad enough that the substratum concept failed to explain the phenomenal world it was postulated to explain, it has an even worse problem. The notion of the substratum has added to the body of things to explain its own postulates which it has failed to explain. So while, in the beginning, there was only the visible world to explain, proponents of the substratum have added an invisible one. What is it? Where did it come from? How did it form? How does it work? The philosophers started out with only their experience to explain, and by postulating metaphysical entities to explain it that didn’t wind up doing that they wound up with more and not less to explain. This is working in reverse. There is one postmodern notion that famously takes this problem to its absurd conclusion – string theory. String theory adds and adds and adds entities to explain, but still never winds up explaining the only thing we ever really had to explain – experience.

Not only is materialism not science, but it is poor metaphysics. Of the view that there is an invisible parallel world of mathematics that mysteriously causes our experience – I can't see how to argue with it because I can't see how to even understand it.

The meaning of the opening story of the planet whose priests believe in a magical set of explanations that don’t explain anything, but are beyond repute, should now be obvious.

It’s time now to explain the only system that actually works.

Chapter Seven: The evolution of consciousness

Go back to the stop sign. Remember that we found in it two sets of qualities, those that are the same for everyone that checks them and those that are a little different for each observer.

The traditional way to conceive of this was to postulate that the public qualities were objective (inhered in the object) while the secondary qualities were subjective (inhered in the subject). This created a problem in forcing the theorist to postulate an invisible object. This invisible object wound up being conceived as analogous to the subjective one. This committed the historical fallacy and the theory never really had a chance.

After that the problem arose that this configuration could not really explain anything. That’s because it was wrong.

In actuality, both sets of qualities are subjective. But there is a public subject and a private subject.

Furthermore the private subject (the individual observer) is himself contained in the public subject.

In mystical vocabulary these two subjects are referred to as the individual mind and the Universal mind.

First the inorganic world (as public qualities) evolves in the Universal mind. Then the individual mind evolves in the Universal mind.

Thus you are seeing the public qualities (such as natural laws) from the vantage point of the Universal mind, and the private qualities (such as color and apparent shape) from the vantage point of the individual mind.

First the laws evolve as laws conceptually in the Universal mind. They are mathematical, geometric, i.e. purely conceptual. Out of the laws supervenes the body and organic world (not originally seen as such) and the body evolves by Darwin's laws. Once the body evolves enough to have brain and sense organs the public qualities (such as math) are seen as private qualities (such as color, sound, etc.). The body and brain are thus a medium or lens for converting primary qualities into secondary qualities. The relative location and condition of the body naturally shifts the image slightly and gives it an individual cast.

This so easily explains and accounts for the private and public qualities that it is hard to know what else to say.

Chapter Eight: The cosmology of substance

Note: The word "schema" means a way of organizing something. "Schemata" is simply the plural form of "schema."

Here I'll explain how the historical fallacy can be avoided.

Remember that the historical fallacy is when something found in an effect, brought about as the result of a completed process, is read into the process.

Going over it again – an example of this fallacy being committed would be imagining that the cause of our phenomenal world is much like our phenomenal world. When we fall victim to this fallacy while trying to explain the process that gives rise to our experience, we postulate metaphysical substances analogous to ones found in that very experience we're trying to explain, metaphysical moving objects analogous to ones we see, factors such as time and space analogous to those that condition our experience, etc. This is the primitive thinking that has caused an impasse for science. Once this primitive thinking is transcended, smoke clears and a full understanding of the mechanics of the Universe becomes attainable.

To avoid this error we must take special care not to postulate any metaphysical entities. Rather we must supplant the notion of inventing entities with consideration of an earlier evolutionary process of events and happenings that we already find all around us. By extrapolating a process of what is occurring, from simple to complex, rather than postulating original theoretical entities, we can avoid the errors of the past.

In addition we must not make the prior mistake of making an unfounded metaphysical claim that perception and the thing perceived are separate. By doing this we are inadvertently inventing a parallel world, and this is far too Platonic to work within the rules of science, which only accept what is confirmed by observation.

This does not mean that we assume that objects are in the individual mind – as in solipsism. This is a useless absurdity. Rather we must account both for the objective (public) and subjective (private) aspects of experience. Thus we speak of perception not solely as an individual possession, but as a global indivisible and self-evident occurrence. For no one would deny that perception is occurring. We thus postulate an evolution of this occurrence from simple to complex – and disregard the two-world metaphysics that has been our undoing.

We find that it is possible that the private experience is an outcome of an evolution of the public experience. For this to make sense, the public experience must evolve first.

Starting then at the beginning of this evolution:

Now if there is originally only a single indivisible eternal occurring of perception that sees nothing since there is nothing for it to see but itself, what could change this indivisible eternal occurring of perception in such a way that it would begin to see objects?

It is essential not to add anything to perception. That would just give us something else to explain. Thus we merely postulate 'ways of perceiving.' In the East these ways of seeing are called "sanskaras" and in my book I call them "perceptual schemata," by which I simply mean ways that experience might be organized.

The following is roughly how I explain it in my book:

The first perceptual schema was time. Seeing through and thus in terms of the schema of time (a way of organizing experience temporally) perception occurs temporally. The same is repeated with space. Seeing through and in terms of the schema of space, perception occurs spatially.

Through the schemata of space and time, pure relations (or ratios if it is more helpful) become conceivable to the Universal Mind that is beginning to emerge.

Now notice something: Space can only be understood in terms of time (i.e. through the schema of time) – for you must have here and then here. [In case this isn't understood, you can't conceive of a spatial separation between two objects when those two objects are conceived at the same time. A temporal sequence is necessary to apprehend a physical distance. Try it.] And motion is released as a potential as soon as you have both time and space. And natural laws (ratios of time and space) are conceivable as soon as there is time space and motion. Out of natural laws supervenes (through evolution) the inorganic world, and out of the inorganic world supervenes (through further evolution) the organic world. And in the organic world are forms with sense organs that allow perception to experience the organic world in terms of color, sound, and various other types of sense data. Thus the conceptual becomes tactile.