As a follow up to my last post about Robert Burton and how do we know anything. What this is taking into account is that we all have the same basic 'knowing' abilities, the standard human kit, but of course, this isn't true. Right off the bat I think of people who have synesthesia. Their ability to process information and understand it in different ways is very different so in effect, they may 'know' things we don't. In other words, they see patterns we don't.

The other follow up idea I had was how he uses the example, "Try to visualize the big bang - a single infinitely dense point that suddenly explodes." to show "...how reason cannot be separated from bodily sensations. Any notion of space - no matter how abstract - must be filtered through our bodily perceptions of space." At first I though, "exactly, he's right, we'll never be able to really think about those type of concepts in the right way." But later after mulling it over, I realized that perhaps the fault lies in the description, not the interpretation of the description. There are an infinite amount of ways to describe something, just because science says 'a single infinitely dense point' doesn't mean that is the only way to describe it. And by describe it, I mean conjure up the feeling in someone of what the concept is.

Perhaps this is why 'science' falls so flat for so many people. Because they expect everyone to see the world as a right brain nerd would. But we don't, in fact I would argue, we're built in the complete opposite, NOT to see the world that way. So we're constantly trying to learn a language that we're not naturally good at speaking. We speak in stories, we feel in stories, we grasp concepts in stories. Maybe the right way to describe the beginning of the Universe never mentions any of those things, maybe it is a song, or a painting or a strange dance in the Outback.