Our Universe
… and how to make sense of it
About
As soon as we are born and become mentally conscious, our senses begin feeding our minds with knowledge of our surroundings. In effect, this knowledge gives our minds the pieces of a complex, ever-changing mental puzzle, which we can only solve by learning to connect those pieces of knowledge together in the right order in our heads; (a bit like a doing jigsaw puzzle). Once we are able to do this, we can use our minds as a mental model with which to represent our surrounding universe, relative to ourselves, to help us to interpret, make sense of and respond appropriately to what we perceive of it. Not only can we use this mental model to make us aware of the present configuration of our immediate universe, but we can also use it to remember past, or anticipate future configurations. Obviously, for this model to work properly, we would have to make it work by the same principles as the universe it represents, otherwise the universe can do things which our mental model of it cannot, (or vice versa), leaving us unable to make sense of those things.
Up until now, the human race has failed to come up with a mental model which works compatibly with the universe that it is supposed to represent. This means that although our increasing knowledge allows us to describe the universe in much more detail, we still cannot understand how it does much of what we perceive it be doing, let alone why it needs to be doing it in the first place.
My Work
In the late 1990’s, while I was creating a woodland sculpture trail, I began to realize that, no matter how complex the universe was, it appeared to work as a seamless whole, whereas my mental model, (which I use to represent it in my head), was full of barriers and compartments. In other words, my mental model of the universe did not appear to work by the same principles as the real thing. To help give consistency to my artwork, I therefore decided to try to give myself a mental model which was more compatible with the way in which the universe worked, so that my model could do anything that I could perceive the real thing to do.
In order to represent things realistically, an artist has to be able to observe things in much the same way as an infant does; from scratch, as if they have never perceived them before. Therefore, by using the objective perception of an artist/infant, one of the first, most obvious things I learnt about the workings of the universe was the relationship between the physical substance of myself and my surrounding time and space, which, (as an adult), I can describe, verbally, as “I am now here”; i.e. ‘now’, compared to my ‘past’ or ‘future’ (in time) and ‘here’, compared to ‘there’ (in space). This relationship defines where and when the physical substance that is ‘me’ stands out within my surrounding time and space; it defines and makes me aware of my ‘existence’.
By simply arranging these observations in common-sense order within a schematic drawing, I ended up with a working drawing of the physical mechanism by which the smallest components, (or entities), of the universe generate their own existence in space over time. Not only does this simple, universal mechanism make everything in the universe exist, it also drives and controls the spatial configuration of those smallest entities of the universe over time; it is what drives and controls the universe. Once we understand this mechanism, not only can we use it to understand how the universe exists and does all that it does, but also why it is doing it – the physical purpose of the universe, (which includes the purpose of our own existence).
Using the physical principles (the common-sense physics) of how this mechanism works, I set about restructuring the framework of my mental model so that it works (enables me to think) by the same principles as those by which the physical structure of the universe works. This means that, like the universe I represent with it, my mental model works as a seamless whole, giving me the potential to connect any or all of my knowledge together within that one model; from gravity to mental health and from the smallest particle to the entire cosmos. What is more, understanding the reason the universe exists and does all that it does, (its physical purpose), gives me the ethics of the universe (the right and wrong way to achieve that purpose), thereby providing my mental model with the ultimate premise upon which to reason.
My (free) book
If you are interested and might like to try a better way of understanding the universe, then please have a read of my PDF book, (click on the image opposite). In this I explain why all previous mental models have failed, (including the problems we have created by using them), how I put my new model together and a description of just some examples of the things it has enabled me to understand. It is free to view, save or print as your own, personal copy.
I am only an ordinary member of the public who happens to have discovered something which, if I am right, would be of enormous benefit, not just to us as individual humans, but to our relationship with each other, the rest of our planet and the universe beyond. The sole purpose of this website and book is to share this discovery with whoever might be interested in exploring the exciting possibilities that it offers. If you find that it gives you a better understanding of our universe, then I hope you will, in turn, see fit to share it with others, so that we might reach a common understanding of the universe and each other.
Contact
Get in touch
If you want to leave a comment or message, then please use this contact box. I will try to read as many of these as I possibly can, but if you want a response, then I hope you will appreciate that I am just an individual and I simply may not have enough time to give one.
Tim Gyles 