zodiac3 Jul 2004

I'm afraid you're the one who's wrong. Reality IS what exists in the universe, including many things which humans have only perceived inconsistently or wrongly.

Look at it this way: suppose I were a person living a thousand years ago and said the reality of earth was that it is covered by a blue-painted shell about a two hundred feet up. Now, do you think the 'reality' of earth, even a thousand years ago, is what I ignorantly spout on about it (that it's covered with a shell), or that it's covered with several miles of air that refract white sunlight, giving the appearance of an opaque blue surface?

Now, suppose modern science is wrong and scientists discover in a few years that earth is really surrounded by banks of tel-o-matics upon which aliens project eye-pleasing blue images. Then has reality changed? No! Not at all!!! Only somebody's admittedly-ignorant idea of 'reality' has changed. The main difference between a scientist and a regular person at that point will be that the scientist will revise his theories and then go on about trying to understand his revised model of the universe, while the regular person will scream bloody murder, sacrifice a half-dozen virgin pullets, and start sucking at his thumb with a maniacal fervor. Then, depending on what sort of undergarment style he prefers as much as anything else, he'll either loudly proclaim that whatever he has always believed without need of proof or verification is now true and'll lord it over everybody else; or he'll claim that the new evidence is flawed, that he doesn't need evidence anyway, and that he's still right in whatever he's always believed. Then they'll start some massive globe-encompassing war with each other using the pure instruments of science for wanton destruction. Tell me, IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT??!?!

PS-The rest of your comment is too silly for words, and shows you to be manifestly unqualified to use science-words (or very many other words, for that matter,) in your poems. Leave them alone. They belong to somebody else.