The Case Against Reality

WYSIWYG Down

The Case Against Reality -
How Evolution Hid The Truth
From Our Eyes
by Donald D. Hoffman
Penguin
ISBN: 9780141983417

Just a very short shout out (because I’m not technically and scientifically minded enough to do a long review of something like this) to my annual ‘popular science book I read out of my comfort zone once a year’ (although this year it may well be two... some more brain stuff later in the year, hopefully), this one being Donald D. Hoffman’s book The Case Against Reality - How Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes. This is a book which sets out to prove... mainly using logic and scientific research... that the way we process reality through our senses is not only not actually giving us a good handle on what reality ‘looks’ like... but also not an objective perception colluding that well with what everyone else sees. In other words, the old acronym WYSIWIG applied to on screen interfaces for software standing for What You See Is What You Get, is similarly in no way a signal to what actually sits in the bucket of bolts you call a computer... but our personal interfaces with what we see as ‘space-time’, are all probably varying wildly from each other too, although at least relative to each other.

It’s not such a radical concept for me actually. Ever since I was a kid (and I assume I’m not alone in this, it’s a common question right?) I have challenged the idea that our perceptions could be different to each other. Specifically I’ve always wondered how I know that a colour I see is the same colour that somebody else sees. I mean, okay, we both call that same colour red because that’s what it’s called... but how do I know your actual perception of that colour isn’t the same as my green? And so on for every colour and every object in my perception of my external world.

Starting with the not so bold statement that “Your eyes will save your life today.”, Hoffman uses optical illusions, examples of such things as beetles trying to mate with bottles and the fact that our eyesight comprises of millions of photoreceptors and neurons perceiving blocks of photons interpreted in the brain by billions of neurons every time we open or move our eyes, to make a very convincing argument that our brain is deliberately tricking us into perceiving a subjective version of reality based on goals leaning towards fitness/survival rather than anything else we might imagine to be existing... such as an accurate picture of any physical reality (if indeed physical reality named as space-time even exists).

And however outrageous that might seem to a certain percentage of the population of this planet... he makes a very convincing case. A case which it would seem that all the different branches of science have finally come to conclude... although, it’s not something you’d hear being reported about on the evening edition of the news. So, although this may be a scary avenue for any reader to attempt to digest, all those different branches of scientific enquiry have been forced to conclude... hold on to your inconclusively perceived hats... that there is no such thing as ‘spacetime’. That reality as you think you know it does not exist... not that any of these sciences are exactly ecstatic to discover this because... a) it means everything is wrong... including physics such as explained by the likes of Einstein (again, I’ve heard that before in terms of physics but not for the same reasons) and b) we need some kind of alternative to physical reality to be able to base the next gazillion years of scientific enquiry on... and that alternative won’t come quickly, if at all.

And the writer gifts or curses the reader (depending on your point of view) with this information in a really charming, humorous and (for the most part) easily understandable manner. So you will encounter sentences like “If rocks have orgasms, they’re not letting on.” Or when speaking specifically about colour perception (or relative recognition at any rate), “Instead, you astutely enhance the distinctive oranges of the tiger, helping the tiger stripes to pop out visually from the brush, so that the tiger won’t pop out viscerally onto your torso.” So it’s one of those books which entertains as well as informs, for sure.

Some of the book lost me a little. There’s a whole chapter on modern studies of quantum physics which kind of left me behind but, there’s a heck of a lot which makes a lot of sense, I would say. For example, when discussing how our eyes shift constantly to help build and rebuild our very personal interface with the possibility of a real world (never expected I would come across the old ‘if a tree falls in a forest’ analogy in a book on scientific thought), I found my own metaphors to explain to myself how our eyes are constantly shifting to make detailed observations to translate into the illusion of reality. Namely, through one of my favourite music composers, György Ligeti... and how he uses micropolyphony, aka the constant and simultaneous use of very short notes repetitively going on over the top of each other to maintain an illusion of a series of long, sustained notes with no breaks in them at all. Or perhaps, indeed, the way that Philip Glass will sometimes use his cells of fast, repeated sequences of notes to create a shifting, tonal range which is actually giving you a slower melody in the foreground/background which is either something you are realising and are keyed into or something which is hitting your subconscious.

And that’s pretty much all I want to say about the wonderful reading experience that is The Case Against Reality - How Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes. It’s a brilliant and probably important book and some of you should certainly take some time to delve between it’s pages. Although, I will offer one slight criticism on my way out here. And that is... I know this is an important book because, hey, it’s under the Penguin imprint. So why then, especially in the chapter about Polychromy which also includes the importance of synaesthetic experience, should a British book put out by Penguin allow the terrible American spelling of colour, in the book as color, within it’s pages (yeah, okay spellcheck, I already knew I spelled it color just then, that’s the point). Just seems wrong and not something you’d want to teach the kids, it seems to me. Other than this though... fantastic book.