Perception

1. Who has the innocent mind of youth,
   Has a simple way of discerning truth.
   He won't accept the slightest twaddle,
   Just the two-state logic, of Aristotle.
   His only idea of what's wrong or right,
   Is indelibly etched in black and white.

2. But engineers quickly became aware,
   That seeing the truth needs more care.
   What you're sensing, may be obscure,
   So if it's true or not, you can't be sure.
   So, to Aristotle's logic of NO and YES,
   You need to add: "I can only guess".

3. But it's plain to see, in the world today,
   That truth is, a million shades of grey.
   Our perception is bound, in perpetuum,
   Such that error to truth, is a continuum.
   From −1 to +1, it follows the rule,
   Of the probabilistic, logic of Boole.

4. But how does this, uncertainty arise?
   Truth is inevitably, dressed in a guise.
   Objective reality, is the view we seek,
   But what we see, is a subjective freak.
   It's the way truth is, to us transported,
   That makes it end up, well distorted.

5. I can see only, from my here and now,
   What my direction of view, will me allow,
   Throughout the intrepid journey I trace,
   Along my path through time and space.
   But others view, from a different frame.
   So the truth to them, can't be the same.

6. In the quantum world, uncertainty reigns,
   Atoms and particles in lattice and chains.
   Machines, having finite dynamical states,
   That from one to another, fluctuates. But
   Schrödinger's cat's superpositions of state,
   The channels via which I observe, create.

7. Language, logic, mathematics combined,
   Are laws of thought, that live in the mind.
   These are not laws, of the physical world,
   which are a secret, that can't be unfurled.
   They curb & warp, our power of thought,
   As the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, taught.

8. The laws of thought, create in my mind,
   of what I'm observing, a model in kind.
   It isn't an analogue, of what's out there:
   Just an over-simplistic, symbolic affair.
   Thus, it's susceptible, to imperfection,
   With no means, of objective inspection.

9. Restricted to our physical, points of view,
   By limited senses, and instruments too,
   Subjected to dispersion, and distortion,
   What we see is almost, a total abortion.
   Onwards conveyed, in a symbolic stew,
   How can we possibly, relate what's true.

10. Error can be reduced, by consensual chat,
    But most once thought, the Earth was flat.
    The way that humans, view what they see,
    Is distorted and contorted, inevitably.
    So everything known, in human dominion,
    Can't ever be objective: only opinion.

11. Thus a statement made, in a court of law,
    Is only an opinion, of what a witness saw.
    True statement of fact, can never be got,
    Merely whether opinion, be honest or not.
    Even a statement, that appears to defame,
    Can be naught but opinion, just the same.

12. Within the hands of, a creative redactor,
    The truth can be only, a fuzzy attractor.
    So the truth that nature, puts in a guise,
    Is corrupted yet more, by deliberate lies.
    Politics, thereby, causes all to stumble.
    The seeker of truth, has to be humble.

---

© 10-12 September 2023 Robert John Morton | Related article