An out of body experience

I can't remember the article but recently, it was reported that a scientist found that its possible to separate the brain from the human body and keep it alive.

Not only that. He also suggested that the isolated brain could, for all intents and purposes, experience sight, sound, smell, taste and touch if suitably wired.

Logically I guess its doable, albeit it being frankensteinish. After all our eyes don't really "see" anything. They translate light into electrical impulses that are dispatched to the brain who does the work of recognizing an image. So strictly speaking, it is the brain that "sees," not the eye. The eye is just a light sensor, and not a very good one at that.

If you are able to mimic the kind of faint electrical signals the eye sends, you can swap it with something else, say a device that senses not just light but also gamma rays, x-rays and infra-red, giving the brain the ability to "see" far beyond what it could when it was attached to human eyes. It'll have night vision and see things you and I can never see. You could even give it telescopic and microscopic sight abilities. Cool.

You could do the same with the ears, nose and so on.

The applications are plenty. You could use it to find a way to give eyesight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, for example.

But it also highlights the thing I've always had to contend with - that popular refrain of skeptics: "I'll only believe it when I see it."

The thing is, even at our peak, we humans can't see, hear or smell very well. But being on top of the food chain does have its advantages. We can't resist taking an authoritative view on things and defining "reality" as something outlined by our narrow-field sense organs. This limited vision has led us to impose many chauvanistic and sometimes cruel practices against one another. The ghosts of Copernicus, Galileo and others would recall how they were persecuted for seeing things that ordinary folk couldn't.

Luckily we have another sense in addition to sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Its sense #6 - also known as the mind. The mind lets us "see" things that the other 5 can't, like a black hole in space. The most powerful telescope in the world can't see a black hole so how can the mind see it? Through mathematical deductions. The mind, via calculations in relativity theory or quantum theory, also "sees" other things like dark energy, dark matter and anti-matter.

Predictably, people react to these realities the same way common folk did during Copernicus's time. If you see it, then you've had one too many, they insist. Or for some, you're the instrument of the devil.

Times haven't really changed that much.

The point I'm trying to make is, while "seeing is believing" is a good rule of thumb for spotting a good bargain, its actually a poor guage of reality. Its worsened by the fact that sometimes you see or hear things that aren't there. You only have to stay home alone on a dark windy night to appreciate how deceptive our senses can be.

In my opinion, the best thing to have when handling info of doubtful truth value is an open mind. Evaluate all ideas with a critical yet logical mind. Don't discount something simply because you've never seen it or because it sounds too "preposterous" from your point of view. Don't accept an idea simply because everyone else does. And never forget the fact that all of human knowledge is a mere drop in a vast ocean.

An ordinary person thinks he knows everything. A wise person knows that he doesn't.