In a recent discussion about Sir Roger Penrose’s '3 realms' view of reality, Penrose set the stage by listing his Three Mysteries:
1) “Mysteries (of) the physical world, physical stuff.”
2) Mystery of the “mental world that's our experiences, consciousness, feelings about things.”
3) Mystery of “the world of mathematical abstraction”
(Below the fold I’ve transcribed the full quotes in context.)
Those points stopped me right there. Before continuing I needed to be able to enunciate why I found the above so inadequate for such an exploration of reality.
Here I take a moment to suggest a more fruitful approach. When Penrose mentioned “the mystery of physical stuff,” there was no talk of Evolution. Why?
After all, all the physical stuff around us is the product of an evolutionary process that started billions of years before humanity and will continue billions of years after we are dust and forgotten - why ignore that this Earth created us and we will die back into it?
Seems to me acquiring such an awareness is a prerequisite for any subsequence discussion. While the omission relegates understanding Evolution to insignificance leaving our outlook on “reality” decidedly egocentric and myopic.
