Shades of Darker

We'll develop this line of thought later on with more examples but for now let's make a pause to realize what we just analysed. We described the act of performing an experiment as the interaction of one item with the many, as a mechanical interplay of a bigger, blunter agent with a more susceptible one. The study of this simple model with dramatically unorthodox outcomes proved that the idea is more than just a philosophical concept but one of real world significance and, as such, it showed us the importance of understanding the implications of being ourselves a natural phenomenon. Too often do we study the stuff we're made of as a dead substance, subject only to the simple rules we make of its behaviour, without realising it also turns us into mere happenings, general tendencies in the motions of atoms, cultural trends in the behaviour of molecules. Our thoughts, our emotions, everything we trust to set us apart from all that oblivious stuff are like moving shades in the wheat on a windy day, pressed between opposing forces.
As scientists, we know that perception, measurement and decision must be natural phenomena and therefore we can only to a limited extent approximate them by an external agent, independent of the whole system. While that simpler view can help us understand simple things, it can also blind us to the greater implications of our true nature.
To bear this in mind is a crucial ingredient if we are to study the mind of other phenomena. It's an essential sanity aid if we are to accept and explore a world filled with rich subjective experiences, of conscious perception at every corner of existence. In the next section we will describe how concepts, learning, pleasure and suffering come about naturally in many systems.