The limits of human perception?

[Caesar]

[glenthemole]

[Blade Runner]

[James S]

The Universe is definitely not infinite. The evidence is definitely contrary.

Degenerating, aye?

And I thought that dark matter was being frowned upon now, too. I forget what the alternative theory was, though. I think it was VSL. It solves all the problems without imaginary stuff like "dark matter"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light

[chuck]

I don't think the universe is infinite and I don't believe there was a time before its existence.

[Caesar]

You don't have to believe that the universe is infinite or any such thing. Simply, can the human mind as it is now comprehend all the truths of the universe? I simple stated two issues that I felt a human mind could not truly comprehend.

[chuck]

Well I think you're trying to paint a picture of the universe as some ultimately complex and unknowable thing, when it's probably much more black and white than you describe. While I don't believe that humans will ever truly understand the universe, perception itself obscures details, I also don't think it's as mythical as you describe.

[Blade Runner]

Think another way. If you're born blind, can you see colors in your mind? Can you invent another color? Now, can you imagine something that you have never seen? I'm not talking about the fact that you can see a bridge from a side and that you can visualize the rest from your mind. But actually invent something litteraly out of this world?
We are trying to explain the universe with words and images that we all know, and that's why there are such "problems" in quantum mechanics, dark matter and black holes. All of these is a big generalisation of a much more complex world.
Back in time. When it was raining, everyone said it was God, Zeus, Budda, or whatever I'm not a big religion fan. But every civilization had an explanation, very innacurate but it did the job to "understand" it.

[SiGen]

[Maf54]

I actually have watched that movie. Some of the people's views of perception left me behind a bit but it was rather interesting.

[sandmann]

[Caesar]

[James S]

[sandmann]

[Caesar]

Think if it this way. We live in a world with 3 dimensions (time, the 4th dimension is assumed to exist in the following example). We can judge depth, length and width. These help us to navigate our world and discover things. Now say, a being comes along to Earth. This being lives in five dimensions. As such, this being would be able to do things that we think to be impossible. Our minds are limited to three dimensions and cannot see this fifth, therefore our perception is limited and would create a problem.

Our human minds are not capable of seeing the "grand" picture of things because we are limited by the world we can perceive.

As for infinity, we can't really prove it to be a fact. We assume it is (and this is a very good assumption, numbers do indeed go on forever). To try and prove this, we'd have to count from 0 to infinity--we'd have to reach the end of numbers either way.