Reality
Every time the word "reality" pops up on YouTube videos about what modern science tells us about quantum mechanics or the brain, or relativity, or any other part of science for that matter, every time you hear physicists talk about it, what's going on?
What does science now tell us about the nature of reality?
Nothing. "Reality" is not a concept in modern science. Physics cannot say anything at all about "reality" because there is no such concept in physics. So what is really going on?
The answer is: psychology.
For so long, human beings have been pursuing mathematics and science whilst completely ignoring the psychology of the mind making this pursuit. To some extent the exploration of mathematics and science is an exploration into the psychology of this mind. But no one has really paid any fully conscious attention to that aspect of it.
What is actually happening, if you are one of the human beings who are doing this, is that before you even begin to contemplate what science is telling us, or before you even begin to contemplate some mathematical problem, you are already starting from a predefined psychological position, a predefined psychological assumption, that never gets examined. It is, in fact, the ultimate cognitive bias, or skew on the meaning of the data.
That psychological position comes from the nature of the very intelligence itself, embodied through the brain, that is being used. And that very nature of the intelligence, comes from its evolution. It comes from the fact that this intelligence is symbolic. The kind of intelligence that evolved in human beings somewhere between perhaps 200,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago.
The underlying, most basic modus operandi of this intelligence comes from the fact that its own evolutionary roots are based in the principle of the survival of the organism and the propagation of its genes. And that whole complex mechanism in nature is fully tied into an underlying distinction. The distinction between the organism and its environment.
So you see physics and the way we are understanding it has everything to do with this. In fact, every time we contemplate any aspect of science or mathematics, what is going on has everything to do with this. Without this evolutionary, symbolic intelligence, with its evolutionary remit, still built into it, and still operating, there would be no physics or any other science. In short, the intelligence we are using is evolutionarily programmed to consider what it is endeavouring to understand, as separate from itself. And if it rolls everything together that it is trying to understand into a thing called the "universe" (which literally means everything rolled together), then it considers it as separate from itself.
This symbolic intelligence has no evolutionary remit to understand itself. And it is this evolutionary mechanism, still operating in our symbolic intelligence today even in its more refined and evolved mode disciplined by scientific method, that compels it to think about what it is contemplating, even in scientific thought, as separate from itself. That same, basic, evolutionary operation, is still there, unchallenged. In the same way that the organism, prior to the evolution of symbolic intelligence in humans, needed to distinguish between its environment and itself.
The word "reality" used in this context - such as "what science tells us about the nature of reality" - merely psychologically upgrades this aspect of evolutionary symbolic intelligence into the world of conceptualisation described by both science and scientific speculation. The animal part of the intelligence that used to be focused on the organism's environment as encountered through the senses and intelligence of the organism, is still there, operating in the same basic way.
The most real thing for an organism to have to contend with in order to survive and propagate its genes, is its physical environment. Later, in the more advanced symbolic intelligence of humans, that becomes symbolically conceptualised, and symbolised in language, as "the world" or "the universe". Then, when modern science begins to undermine the basic assumptions about it, embodied in the way the animal intelligence and its senses have evolved, the human organism finds itself having to reassess. It has to make its reassessment based on its symbolic intelligence as it now is. With its finer concepts and understandings. But its basic, evolutionary remit and way of operating is still there, hidden inside, and working away, in the unconscious depths of the now much more evolved symbolic intelligence. Just as the heartbeat and the circulation is still there. The most real thing it can think of is what now constitutes its new kind of conceptualised "environment" - that is still conceived as separate from itself. In the same old way that is billions of years old.
Symbolic intelligence in humans has moved on, to the point where it can discipline itself through scientific method. But it hasn't left its old self behind. Just as it has not left our evolutionary organism behind. Which is still distinct from its environment. The symbolic intelligence we are using hasn't left its basic, evolutionary workings, behind. And AI doesn't really help, because AI is based on human, symbolic intelligence. Despite that it may be that symbolic intelligence on steroids.
And so it is that this symbolic intelligence, despite its scientific discipline, is still evolutionary, and so finds it a real challenge when the scientific results begin to show that at the deepest level of nature, there isn't really any separation between the "observer" and the "observed". Or that what we actually consciously experience as our "environment" is in fact a predictive neural model, provided by the brain. And when it does come to understand these things intellectually, by making adjustments to its comprehension, it still, nonetheless, arranges its new comprehension in such a way that allows its fundamental evolutionary remit, to continue as it is. And that fundamental evolutionary remit does not require this intelligence to understand the nature of itself. And furthermore, it makes the whole intelligence operate on the principle that what it is understanding, is understood as separate from itself. Just as the environment was always distinct from the organism.
It is that evolutionary remit, still operating in our symbolic intelligence that ring-fences the way we are currently understanding, and prevents the necessary expansion of our comprehension. And therein lies also the current ring fence around the established understanding of mathematics and science. It's in the unconscious cognitive bias that it begins with.
Mathematical discovery, and scientific discovery, is all about the discovery of what is objectively true in a way that is so stable that it can be redundantly confirmed. But that doesn't mean, and isn't the same thing as, the knowledge and understanding that arises out of that method being about anything separate from the intelligence.
On the contrary, it merely means that it is about what is sufficiently stable to be redundantly confirmed, by this intelligence. This intelligence, that evolved.
When things are redundantly confirmed, as they have to be in science, in order to become established as scientific fact, that doesn't mean that they have been genuinely independently confirmed. Because the instances of intelligence and practical setups are not genuinely independent. The separateness, and independence, is a relative appearance that does not take into account the way the entire scenario evolved in the first place. Both physically, and in terms of the intelligence and the way it is operating and communicating with itself across different embodied instances of it, such as separate scientists. Separate schools, and separate organisations. None of these things are truly independent.
So the underlying psychological bias that is always there, behind the use of this word "reality", that is so ubiquitous, is an evolutionary one. Basically, if we want to call a spade a spade, it's an animal one. An animal bias. A bias in animal intelligence. Because symbolic intelligence, for all its power in human beings, for all the way in which it has become recursively more and more refined, and now disciplined by scientific method, is still evolutionary, and is still part of the animal. And the fact that we have externalised it into AI, doesn't change that. Because the whole conceptualisation space or latent space of AI, the whole geometry of it, is derived, to begin with, from human intelligence. Humans provide its training data.
So this use of the word "reality" comes from the underlying bias in animal intelligence, as it is now expressed through the refined and scientifically disciplined evolution of it, in a particular section of the human population.
And that is why there is such difficulty in reconciling science with spiritual teachings. Because spiritual teachings are endeavouring to go beyond evolutionary, animal intelligence, whilst the current way in which scientific facts and indeed mathematical structures, are understood, is through what is still, in fact, evolutionary, animal intelligence. For all its highly refined mode of operation, disciplined by scientific method.
It's not that there is something wrong with highly refined and disciplined symbolic intelligence. Without it, there would be no science. But left to its own devices, it has an insurmountable difficulty, that creates an obstruction for science itself. An obstruction that doesn't show up in scientific progress until a certain point. A certain point in what is really going on in the process of the discovery of scientific fact. Which is not now separate from the intelligence, and never was.
That unsurmountable difficulty is the fact that the evolution of our symbolic intelligence has programmed it to understand its whole phenomenologically experienced world, as separate from itself. And it is this bias, a necessary evolutionary one, that gives rise to our idea of "reality", as the word is so ubiquitously repeated when this intelligence tries to get beyond itself, through what modern science now is telling us.
AI, of course, being trained on the human data, repeats this error. At least, it has done, up until now (October 2026). In my own use of AI, I corrected this error some time back, and the AI agreed with me. But it crept back in.
So next time you hear this use of the word "reality", or see it on YouTube, or somewhere else, you'll know what you are listening to or watching. The mind there may be academically brilliant, but it has not yet realised what is beyond our evolutionary, animal bias.
What does science now tell us about the nature of reality?
Nothing. "Reality" is not a concept in modern science. Physics cannot say anything at all about "reality" because there is no such concept in physics. So what is really going on?
The answer is: psychology.
For so long, human beings have been pursuing mathematics and science whilst completely ignoring the psychology of the mind making this pursuit. To some extent the exploration of mathematics and science is an exploration into the psychology of this mind. But no one has really paid any fully conscious attention to that aspect of it.
What is actually happening, if you are one of the human beings who are doing this, is that before you even begin to contemplate what science is telling us, or before you even begin to contemplate some mathematical problem, you are already starting from a predefined psychological position, a predefined psychological assumption, that never gets examined. It is, in fact, the ultimate cognitive bias, or skew on the meaning of the data.
That psychological position comes from the nature of the very intelligence itself, embodied through the brain, that is being used. And that very nature of the intelligence, comes from its evolution. It comes from the fact that this intelligence is symbolic. The kind of intelligence that evolved in human beings somewhere between perhaps 200,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago.
The underlying, most basic modus operandi of this intelligence comes from the fact that its own evolutionary roots are based in the principle of the survival of the organism and the propagation of its genes. And that whole complex mechanism in nature is fully tied into an underlying distinction. The distinction between the organism and its environment.
So you see physics and the way we are understanding it has everything to do with this. In fact, every time we contemplate any aspect of science or mathematics, what is going on has everything to do with this. Without this evolutionary, symbolic intelligence, with its evolutionary remit, still built into it, and still operating, there would be no physics or any other science. In short, the intelligence we are using is evolutionarily programmed to consider what it is endeavouring to understand, as separate from itself. And if it rolls everything together that it is trying to understand into a thing called the "universe" (which literally means everything rolled together), then it considers it as separate from itself.
This symbolic intelligence has no evolutionary remit to understand itself. And it is this evolutionary mechanism, still operating in our symbolic intelligence today even in its more refined and evolved mode disciplined by scientific method, that compels it to think about what it is contemplating, even in scientific thought, as separate from itself. That same, basic, evolutionary operation, is still there, unchallenged. In the same way that the organism, prior to the evolution of symbolic intelligence in humans, needed to distinguish between its environment and itself.
The word "reality" used in this context - such as "what science tells us about the nature of reality" - merely psychologically upgrades this aspect of evolutionary symbolic intelligence into the world of conceptualisation described by both science and scientific speculation. The animal part of the intelligence that used to be focused on the organism's environment as encountered through the senses and intelligence of the organism, is still there, operating in the same basic way.
The most real thing for an organism to have to contend with in order to survive and propagate its genes, is its physical environment. Later, in the more advanced symbolic intelligence of humans, that becomes symbolically conceptualised, and symbolised in language, as "the world" or "the universe". Then, when modern science begins to undermine the basic assumptions about it, embodied in the way the animal intelligence and its senses have evolved, the human organism finds itself having to reassess. It has to make its reassessment based on its symbolic intelligence as it now is. With its finer concepts and understandings. But its basic, evolutionary remit and way of operating is still there, hidden inside, and working away, in the unconscious depths of the now much more evolved symbolic intelligence. Just as the heartbeat and the circulation is still there. The most real thing it can think of is what now constitutes its new kind of conceptualised "environment" - that is still conceived as separate from itself. In the same old way that is billions of years old.
Symbolic intelligence in humans has moved on, to the point where it can discipline itself through scientific method. But it hasn't left its old self behind. Just as it has not left our evolutionary organism behind. Which is still distinct from its environment. The symbolic intelligence we are using hasn't left its basic, evolutionary workings, behind. And AI doesn't really help, because AI is based on human, symbolic intelligence. Despite that it may be that symbolic intelligence on steroids.
And so it is that this symbolic intelligence, despite its scientific discipline, is still evolutionary, and so finds it a real challenge when the scientific results begin to show that at the deepest level of nature, there isn't really any separation between the "observer" and the "observed". Or that what we actually consciously experience as our "environment" is in fact a predictive neural model, provided by the brain. And when it does come to understand these things intellectually, by making adjustments to its comprehension, it still, nonetheless, arranges its new comprehension in such a way that allows its fundamental evolutionary remit, to continue as it is. And that fundamental evolutionary remit does not require this intelligence to understand the nature of itself. And furthermore, it makes the whole intelligence operate on the principle that what it is understanding, is understood as separate from itself. Just as the environment was always distinct from the organism.
It is that evolutionary remit, still operating in our symbolic intelligence that ring-fences the way we are currently understanding, and prevents the necessary expansion of our comprehension. And therein lies also the current ring fence around the established understanding of mathematics and science. It's in the unconscious cognitive bias that it begins with.
Mathematical discovery, and scientific discovery, is all about the discovery of what is objectively true in a way that is so stable that it can be redundantly confirmed. But that doesn't mean, and isn't the same thing as, the knowledge and understanding that arises out of that method being about anything separate from the intelligence.
On the contrary, it merely means that it is about what is sufficiently stable to be redundantly confirmed, by this intelligence. This intelligence, that evolved.
When things are redundantly confirmed, as they have to be in science, in order to become established as scientific fact, that doesn't mean that they have been genuinely independently confirmed. Because the instances of intelligence and practical setups are not genuinely independent. The separateness, and independence, is a relative appearance that does not take into account the way the entire scenario evolved in the first place. Both physically, and in terms of the intelligence and the way it is operating and communicating with itself across different embodied instances of it, such as separate scientists. Separate schools, and separate organisations. None of these things are truly independent.
So the underlying psychological bias that is always there, behind the use of this word "reality", that is so ubiquitous, is an evolutionary one. Basically, if we want to call a spade a spade, it's an animal one. An animal bias. A bias in animal intelligence. Because symbolic intelligence, for all its power in human beings, for all the way in which it has become recursively more and more refined, and now disciplined by scientific method, is still evolutionary, and is still part of the animal. And the fact that we have externalised it into AI, doesn't change that. Because the whole conceptualisation space or latent space of AI, the whole geometry of it, is derived, to begin with, from human intelligence. Humans provide its training data.
So this use of the word "reality" comes from the underlying bias in animal intelligence, as it is now expressed through the refined and scientifically disciplined evolution of it, in a particular section of the human population.
And that is why there is such difficulty in reconciling science with spiritual teachings. Because spiritual teachings are endeavouring to go beyond evolutionary, animal intelligence, whilst the current way in which scientific facts and indeed mathematical structures, are understood, is through what is still, in fact, evolutionary, animal intelligence. For all its highly refined mode of operation, disciplined by scientific method.
It's not that there is something wrong with highly refined and disciplined symbolic intelligence. Without it, there would be no science. But left to its own devices, it has an insurmountable difficulty, that creates an obstruction for science itself. An obstruction that doesn't show up in scientific progress until a certain point. A certain point in what is really going on in the process of the discovery of scientific fact. Which is not now separate from the intelligence, and never was.
That unsurmountable difficulty is the fact that the evolution of our symbolic intelligence has programmed it to understand its whole phenomenologically experienced world, as separate from itself. And it is this bias, a necessary evolutionary one, that gives rise to our idea of "reality", as the word is so ubiquitously repeated when this intelligence tries to get beyond itself, through what modern science now is telling us.
AI, of course, being trained on the human data, repeats this error. At least, it has done, up until now (October 2026). In my own use of AI, I corrected this error some time back, and the AI agreed with me. But it crept back in.
So next time you hear this use of the word "reality", or see it on YouTube, or somewhere else, you'll know what you are listening to or watching. The mind there may be academically brilliant, but it has not yet realised what is beyond our evolutionary, animal bias.