Page 670 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

For instance, when you touch something hot, if the nerves responsible for transmitting the sensation of
pain to your brain are impaired, it is impossible for you to feel that you are being burned. The burning sen-

sation and the consequent feeling of pain are all just interpretations by the brain. Similarly, a feeling of per-
ception may be established by artificial production using electrical signals, even though no outside stimu-
lant is present. So we may feel that our hand is burning, even though there is no fire nearby. This is anot-

her proof that the sensations arise solely in our perceptual world. This significant fact was expressed by
the famous 20 -century thinker Bertrand Russell:
th
As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the elect-
rons and protons of our finger-tips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons
and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the

sensations, in spite of there being no table. 63
For our perceptual world, the essential feature of matter, its solidity, disappears in the scientific sense.

In the same way that our seeing a thing provides no evidence about its true physical appearance, so our
touching an object provides no clues concerning its real solidity. What we touch consists solely of an en-
tity forming in the brain. Its true nature and appearance on the outside is a dream that we can never know,

as the science writer J. R. Minkel sets out in an article in New Scientist magazine:
You’re holding a magazine. It feels solid; it seems to have some kind of independent existence in space. Ditto

the objects around you—perhaps a cup of coffee, a computer. They all seem real and out there somewhere. But
it’s all an illusion. 64

Sensory area
Cerebrum

Skin

Thalamus

Spinal cord
Sensory nerve

Motor nerve

When our hand touches something hot, if the nerves responsible
for transmitting the sensation of heat to the brain are removed
from the equation, it is impossible to feel the sensation of burning,
because this feeling arises solely in our perceptual world.
Muscle fibers

668 Atlas of Creation Vol. 4