Science has long challenged our human tendency to make ourselves the center of things, so:
“Since our earliest ancestors admired the stars, our human egos have suffered a series of blows.” (Tegmark, 2007).
For example, we once thought we were the center of the universe, because we thought the sun and stars moved around us. Being the center of it all made us feel good, so the question “Where are we?” didn’t arise because we already knew the answer. We were obviously at the center of everything, so when Galileo and Copernicus challenged geocentrism, they also challenged the ego idea that the universe revolves around us. Science now tells us that we live on a little planet circling a medium star, in a galaxy of a hundred billion stars, in a universe of at least that many galaxies. Mankind is like a colony of bacteria dominating one leaf of one tree in a vast forest, but this ego blow was the price we had to pay to understand astronomy.
We also thought we were the center of all life, because we thought that animals and plants were put there just for us. Being at the center of life made us feel good, so the question “When did we begin?” wasn’t asked either, as again we thought we knew. The center of life was obviously there from the beginning, so when Darwin challenged creationism, he also challenged the ego idea that life revolves around us. Science now tells us that humans only evolved from animals a few million years ago, after dinosaurs had ruled the earth for two-hundred million years, until a meteor wiped them out. Mankind is just another species, and bacteria, insects, and plants all exceed us in biomass, but this ego blow was the price we had to pay to understand biology.
Today, we think we are the center of our body, because we think we are in charge it. Being in charge makes us feel good, so the question “Who am I?” isn’t asked because yet again we think we know. We are obviously at the center of the body because we can observe it, so when science now challenges the dualism that a mind controls the body, it also challenges the ego idea that our bodies revolve around a central self. Science now tells us that our brains have no center, equivalent to the central processing unit of a computer, so if the cortical hemispheres are surgically “split”, each takes itself to be “I” (Sperry & Gazzaniga, 1967). We aren’t even the center of our own bodies, but this ego blow is the price we have to pay to understand neurology.
The trend is clear, our ego puts us at the center of things and science repeatedly shows that we aren’t. We aren’t the center of the universe, or of life, or even of our own body, but old habits die hard. We still think that reality revolves around us, that what we see is real because we see it so. Being the knower of reality makes us feel good, so the question “What is real?” isn’t asked because again, we think we know. Obviously, matter is real, so when quantum realism challenges materialism, it also challenges the ego idea that we know reality. Science is now telling us that the physical world isn’t reality central because something else causes it. If physical reality existed by itself alone, it couldn’t have begun, but it did. Light couldn’t travel in empty space, but it does. Space couldn’t curve nor time dilate, but they do. And random events that physical history can’t predict would be impossible, but they aren’t. We aren’t at the center of anything physical, but this ego blow is the price we have to pay to understand our existence.
Table 1.1 (see Next) shows that there is nothing illogical or unscientific about quantum events causing physical events. It may shock the ego but it fits the facts of physics. The only thing denied is the delusion of scientific omniscience (Sheldrake, 2012), the egoism that we already know everything, or are about to but for some loose ends. This delusion implies a Theory Of Everything (TOE) but what if everything doesn’t objectively exist? The idea that we are in a local reality makes quantum realism a query of everything not a theory of everything.