The creative human mind

"WELCOME TO MY WORLD" is a popular country western song composed by Hank Willliams. What the song implies is that there are different worlds, and in truth, such is the case. All humans dwell in two. One is the world of nature that we share with minerals, plants, and animals, namely, the everyday physical world. The other is the world of culture and, in a very real sense, the truly and exclusive human world. It is the place in which we live and breathe and have our being. Our physical surroundings are man-modified--too much so, maintain the environmentalists. The world of nature was here before the human race and will continue to be here long after we are gone. Call it God's creation if you like.

The world of culture, however, entirely is made, thought, structured, and dominated by humans. It is our very own creation. Nothing within it can be understood except in relation to humans. For example, to know what a hammer is, we must know the nature of humans, especially their brains and hands, for it is we who have created it. And for our purposes, one might add. It is no different with science, mathematics, literature, art, music, and, daresay, religion. Perhaps what we consider as the real world, the world of reality, intimately is related to us and is every much a part of us as apart from us. To the person on the street, this may appear scandalous, an affront to his or her own common sense. Yet, our own experience tells us that the observer alters what he or she observes. The Heisenberg principle of interference prevails everywhere. Let's say that someone who knows nothing about a refrigerator opens its door. Each time the individual does so, he or she sees a light on inside the refrigerator. Knowing nothing about automatic switches, it would be hard to convince this person that the light is out when the door is closed, for every time the door is opened, the light is on.

When the Big Dipper or Seven Sisters constellations are pointed out, one is prone to think there are such things. In fact, though, they only are points of light, having no intrinsic meaning. We forget that it was we who organized them in our mind and gave them the names they bear. We do so in order to invent meaning for ourselves. If we are looking for the direction "north," the Big Dipper's pointer star will help us. If we were aboard a ship whose rudder was broken, to get help we only would have to radio the ship's position in terms of latitude and longitude. Yet, oddly enough, there is no such thing as latitude nor longitude. For that matter, one cannot cross the equator it is another imaginary projection created by mankind. They are useful devices of the human mind, but do not exist separate from it. There are no points, lines, surfaces, or circles in reality--but there are linear and circular objects as well as smooth and rough surfaces.

The structuring mind also affects religious experience. Most religions have a "sacred" number of events "happen" in accord with that number. The Christian tradition, for instance, favors the number three. Browsing through the New Testament, we might ask: How many wise men came to honor the baby Jesus? How many persons are there in the Trinity? How many members in the Holy Family? How many tents were set up at the Transfiguration? How many times did Peter deny Christ? How many were crucified at Calvary? How many days was Jesus in the tomb? The answer in each case, of course, is three. Did all these actually occur in threes, or did we force our mind-structuring tendency upon them?

Another example is the Axel Orlic Law of Threes as applied in folk literature. Note how many children's songs and stories center on that digit: Goldilocks and the Three Bears; Three Blind Mice; The Three Little Pigs; Rub a-dub-dub, Three Men in a Tub; The Three Little Kittens, etc. The number three, however, also is common elsewhere, as in "Three cheers for the red, white, and blue" or "The genie will grant you three wishes" or "Three strikes and you're out." Note how incongruous it would seem if the number two or four were substituted. In the culture of the American Plains Indians, though, four is more often the sacred number. For them, creation was in four days; there are four sacred fire arrows; four winds; four chances; etc.

Various mental structures are imposed upon raw reality so that it may be better comprehended. Biblical literature exhibits contraries such as Christ being god-man, Mary as virgin-mother. Even the trickster-god can be found in Christianity, where one exclaims, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

The success of science, in large part, is due to its method of imposing structures on reality. These can be different, but each has its own uses. They are called models. For instance, light may be explained by wave length theory or by particle (photon) theory. We use Newtonian principles when explaining the macroscopic world, but quantum physics when explaining the sub-atomic world. Both Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometry models are employed, despite that they contradict each other.