The science and wonder of the unseen.

What are you? What is the world? How does it appear? Does its appearance represent its true nature? These are all confounding questions, but they have surprisingly simple - and remarkable - answers.

The world as we see it isn't really the 'world'; we've evolved to see certain things in certain ways - what we see isn't 'true'; it's merely 'useful'. We are middle-sized creatures that have evolved to perceive middle sized-objects moving at middle speeds across middle-sized distances. We find perceiving the very, very small and the very, very large difficult because we haven't evolved to be concerned with them - it just so happens that the scientific method has revealed a lot about the world and the universe that our everyday senses are incapable of perceiving.

If we were atoms or subatomic particles (like neutrinos), we would notice that physical matter is composed almost entirely of empty space. However, humans are vast conglomerations of hundreds of millions of cells, composed of trillions of atoms. We can't travel through walls (or other solid objects) because all the atoms - and their constituent subatomic particles - in our bodies exert electrical, repulisive forces - the same as every other thing composed of large numbers of atoms.

We haven't evolved to see the world as being mostly 'empty' because that's not useful to us - our brains tell us that we simply can't travel through physical objects because of certain physical laws (so we perceive them as being entirely solid).

Bats don't see in light - they 'see', and create an image of, the world via sound (through echolocation). Bees don't see red light - they can see in parts of the ultraviolet area of the spectrum that we can't perceive. Water skippers aren't very large and so don't really feel the effects of gravity - they're more 'bothered' by the phenomenon of water surface tension.

We humans like to see ourselves as being special. But, compared to every other species, we aren't. In truth, every species is 'special' and no species has any qualities that are intrinsically 'better' than the qualities of any other. We just so happen to think ourselves special because we appreciate, and find useful, language, sight and scents, rather than, say, echolocation, animal pheromones, extra-ultraviolet light (outside the visible spectrum), or the minute electrial signals given off by organisms (which sharks can perceive).

However, we humans wield an impressive amount of potential and power - power to do both the extremely stupid and dangerous and the impressively beautiful and wise. What we do is up to us. 

If we wish to see the end of the 21st century, we're gonna have to make some big changes. We're going to have to stop seeing in such short-sighted ways; we're gonna have to embrace science and reason and shake off the last superstitious beliefs that plague the world; we're going to have to change our ways and be less greedy. Most importantly, we need to appreciate the world and see all the variety and beauty of it for what it is. We could potentially lose it all, and commit suicide as a species.

What say you? Shall we do something 'special'? It's down to us. If we go, the Earth will be here for  a long time after we're gone - and it shall purify itself. Imagine if the evolution of our species - from the first primordial bacteria that lived 3.9 billion years ago to the evolution of our species from our nearest common ancestor that lived on the African plains some 3 million years ago - turns out to be all for nothing. We simply can't afford to destroy all we've worked for. It's time to embrace the more noble elements that animate us and allow them to live, and overtake us. It's time for us to become fully 'human'. Thank you for reading.