Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank WallKlein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion
Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall
Klein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion and science
The Idea of Infinity, which we shall refer to in a later View and show
to be a false conception, is therefore a necessary result of the
limitation of our thoughts; our physical Ego cannot conceive beyond
the Finite as long as we are conscious of living under present
conditions. With every act of perception by our senses, we have
therefore not only intuition of the Visible or Finite, but we become
at the same moment aware of an Invisible Infinite beyond. Time appears
to us as an inconceivable, intangible something, which gives us the
impression of movement without anything that moves it. Space is an
omnipresent, intangible, inconceivable nothing, outside of which
nothing which has existence can be even thought to exist. Let us now
try and get an insight into what we mean by perception of distance in
space.
The appreciation of distance depends upon what is called _parallax_,
or the apparent displacement of projectment of an object when seen by
our two eyes separately. If you hold up a finger and look at it, with
each eye separately, you will see that the finger is projected by each
eye on to a different part of the background; the angle which the
lines of sight, from each eye, make when they meet at the object, is
called the angle of parallax, and the further the object is away the
smaller that angle becomes; it is, in fact, the angle subtended, at
the object, by the distance between the two eyes. As the object is
brought nearer the eyes have to be inclined inwards to impinge on that
object; the appreciation of distance then, in our sense of sight, is
dependent upon our perception of the amount of inclination of those
two lines of sight, and is therefore an acquired knowledge. The
distance between the eyes is about 2-1/2 inches, and this is a very
short base line upon which to estimate distance; in fact, without the
help of perspective and known dimensions of surrounding objects, it is
doubtful if anyone could by its means estimate distance beyond a few
hundred yards. The object would, of course, also have to be an unknown
one, as, otherwise, the converse of the above comes into play, and the
distance could be estimated by the angle which the known diameter of
the object subtends at the eye; but this necessitates the size of the
object being known beforehand and the employment of perspective.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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