Empiricism In Space

It is supremely difficult to get across, in words, the essence of the last post. Let's give it another go.

Try this: Whenever you look at a photo from NASA, or the cover of a sci-fi novel, or read about building a colony on Mars, or watch youtube video of life inside the ISS, remind yourself, gently, quietly, but clearly, that no human being in recorded history, to the present moment, has ever looked out into the deep darkness of space above our atmosphere with unshielded, unencapsulated eyes. No human being in recorded history has ever felt the rays of the sun on their skin, above the Earth's atmosphere, except through glass while encapsulated in steel. No human being in recorded history has ever set a bare foot on or taken in a naked breath of or seen with naked eyes the moon's surface. Nor the rings of Saturn. Or the Horsehead Nebula. Or the Andromeda galaxy.

No human has floated in 'empty' space, and looked all around in every three-dimensional direction and observed for themselves, even if only through coated glass, except the small list of astronauts taking spacewalks, whose view is mostly taken up by the beautiful blue and green and white and tan globe of Earth.

No human being, naked or encased, has ever traveled beyond the Moon. Ever.

No human being has ever dived down thousands of feet into the ocean, naked and conscious, to see and feel and taste and smell and know.

You yourself have never set eyes on, bare foot on/in, smelled with bare unfiltered nose, felt with uncovered skin, heard with unaided ear, probably 99.999999999999% of the surface of the Earth. You yourself have never set eyes on, bare foot on/in, smelled with bare unfiltered nose, felt with uncovered skin, heard with unaided ear, probably 99.999% of your own state, and 99.9% of your city.

So clearly, unequivocally, you - we - have very, very....VERY little empirical data to go on, when we're trying to explain to ourselves what's real and what's not. What we can - and have - touched, seen with our own eyes, smelled and heard, and what we can't, and haven't, touched or seen or smelled or heard or tasted.

What's solid, and what's not.

What's a dream, and what's not.

Don't you think?