The Illusive World

Abstract

The world is a lie, at least according to what I tell my students in my sensory ecology class. What we believe to be the world, the one we perceive with our senses, is at best an incomplete version of reality. Our limited sensory capability, coupled with the perceptual biases and filtering of the neural networks in our brain, constructs a world that really isn’t there. Yet, it is there for me, and I believe that everything I sense to be the truth. Every story in this book has demonstrated that this truth is a pale comparison to an unbiased reality. When I see a red rose, insects do not. When I bend to smell its fragrance, the aroma is not the same for mice. When I prick my finger on its thorn, the fox feels something different. In essence, the fox, mice, and insects live in different worlds than I do.