Art Reboot

34 understanding allows to stand for the animal. Equally, a mathe- matical equation is a convenient analogy representing some perceived truth. The five symbols of Einstein’s E = mc 2 stand for an axiom of our universe; they are little marks that are an analogue for inherent universal structure. But human consciousness is larger than intellect and analysis. It evolves through planes of understanding, each higher and more subtle than the last; anomalies inexplicable at one level are resolved at the next. The signpost leading from one level to the next is paradox. Paradox forces us to reconsider an inefficient or exhausted theory of reality in order to move to the next level. It stems from once-reasonable assumptions that turn out to be critically flawed, as seen in the shift from a flat-earth to a geo- centric to a heliocentric cosmology, to the recognition that we are one of billions of planets potentially hospitable to life in one of billions of galaxies. And that’s just in the parts of the universe we can know. It is your intellect that will allow you to assess the perspec- tives presented in this book, and to judge their potential to change your viewpoint. The challenge is to persuade the intellect that it is fundamentally limited; and at least as importantly, to persuade it that it is not the autonomous arbiter of Meaning, even if it is the arbiter of its lower-case country cousin: relative meaning.