Sense Experience and Science

Some scientists, and logical positivists, claim wrongly, that reality is best known by simply starting with sense experience and working from there. In fact, sense experience is homeostatic. That is, to some degree, sense experience is affected by the environment in which it operates. Thus, a person's hand feels cold when it is place in tepid water after having been placed in a bucket of hot water. Similarly, a person coming out of a dark room into sunlight will have to adjust his or her vision in a way that would not happen if the person had entered a dimly lit room. The taste of some food tastes different when another food is eaten first, such as a food which is either sweet or sour. Also, with respect to hearing, it is clear that human hearing does not cover the full range of sound that is being produced in the outside environment. Thus, a dog can hear a dog whistle, but a human being cannot. Finally, there are optical illusions which can only be explained throught the use of human understanding, such as, why it is that a straight dowel looks crooked when place in a glass tank of water, and then is observed from the side of the tank.