Dominant Perspective Foram Fanasia | Physics | M.Sc. 2
What would change if one day you wake up and discover that some theorists came up with a concept that there are no electrons to start with? Nothing. The objects/bodies you see, the electricity that flows, the water you drink, nothing would change. The only thing that would change is the way you would see them scientifically. If we take a look at the scientific world, everything works from the perspective of scientists and theorists. There is no doubt that all these facts have been somewhat proven, but consider a hypothetical situation where Rutherford never came up with his model of the atom. Every theory would be explained by Thomson’s atomic model, and we would definitely come up with theories supporting the plumpudding model. The fire you light would still be lit and the electricity would still be flowing, all with Thomson’s perspective. In recent studies by physicists, it has been suggested that there is no dimension
as time. That’s right, time, as described by Newton an absolute quantity, is not true. It has even been published in authorized papers. What time really is, is a mathematical quantity to measure which has no prime existence. But as we have already adapted to the idea of time as a quantity, it would be difficult for us to change our following theories and discoveries which are based on the fact that time is a dimension. Time being a quantity is a perspective, and we construct everything around us according to it. And as it has been authenticated, it becomes dominant. Even if we discovered this idea to be false, nothing about our physical quantities will change. The things we see and feel will remain the same, no matter how we see it. But our curious minds will never stop reasoning behind the cause. This isn’t limited to just science and technology. This act of curiosity can be brought down to as simple and insignificant as cloud watching. Cloud watching is a relaxing
hobby, with no equipment and only imagination. This art is entirely based on one’s imagination and perspective. Imagine you are standing under a clear sky with a friend, he notices a microphone-shaped cloud and asks you if you see the microphone too. Your first instinct would be to see a microphone in that randomly shaped cloud. Even if the cloud is remotely shaped like a microphone, you might conclude that it is a microphone-shaped cloud, even if it resembled more to a hand or a fist. All in all, we can say that usually, our perspectives in every area of imagination are influenced by other perspectives. And even if we have a perspective of our own, which can be off track from the truth, we tend to set everything that affects it to fall in the pit of our interpretation. We will always reason our way out to let a particular dominating perspective be satisfied.
Perception Of Suffering Yukta Malik | Chemical | B.Tech. 3 For Thaabo Moorsi, it was a nightmare. His home in Bantustan, South Africa was destroyed and he was tortured and detained just because his skin was a darker shade. At the same time, Henry Kichka lost his family in a death camp in Auschwitz, Germany and had to escape just because he belonged to a different race. Both these men were totally unaware of each other’s suffering because they were too troubled in their own worlds. An adversity becomes a suffering when the person experiencing it, perceives it as one. This perception constitutes of years of learning and experience and is indicated by one’s individualism. We tend to favor conversations that are directed towards our own sufferings and thus relate
more to the people who went through the same. In analogical terms Hitler was just another politician for Thaabo; but for Henry, he was the face of evil. It is also natural for any information to corrupt while it travels through several people, or moreover, it is intentionally altered. A research on two different Syrian newspapers inferred that both presented completely different opinions on Syrian refugees. While one focused more on the humanitarian aspect and wrote about their tragedies, the latter was tilted towards political explanations and criticism of opposition. And the majority’s perspective was decided by the source that reached more number of audience.
The above paragraphs will make no sense if the reader himself is not interested in forming any opinion. We are indifferent to many hardships just because it is not being faced by anyone from our community or we are physically separated from them. On top of that many incidents don’t even get reported or documented enough to grab our attention. Suffering never comes in a single form, even to a single individual, and as they say, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison”, it is all a matter of perception at the end.
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