Human Experience in a Box?

I came across this interesting-looking graphic on Twitter today. This comes from a book titled Eureka! in the chapter titled “Understanding the World Around Us”¹. This depicts human experience along the space-time continuum. This graphic is unique in the way it represents the human experience. Although, it covers only ~6% of the total possible time-space continuum - more on that later. The extremes of the axes in this graph are explained in the text as follows:²

1. Lower end of the time axis (10⁻²³s) - Scale at which fundamental particle processes take place.

2. Higher end of the time axis (10¹⁷s) - The age of the universe

3. Lower end of space axis (10⁻¹⁵m) - Fundamental particle dimensions - It actually extends all the way down to 10⁻²⁷m with the discovery of the Oh-My-God Particle.

4. Higher end of space axis (10²⁶m) - The space the visible universe occupies.

whereas, the human box is represented in the chapter as:

1. Lower end of human time axis at 10⁻³S - It appears to be³ actually 2x10⁻² to 3x10⁻²s - therefore is too optimistic by order of magnitude

2. Higher end of the time axis is said to extend to 100 years - but we can experience (through writings of historians) way more than this, going way back to the Bronze age atleast⁴! - but more on why looking at the human reach of time to 100 years in the future like this is wrong read on…

3. Lower end of the human experience of space is said to be 0.1mm - probably something like the width of a human hair? - then again, just limiting this resolution by taking the resolution of the human eye is wrong.

4. Higher end the human experience of space is said to be the diameter of the earth at 12,000 km - Honestly, I do not understand how this is the extent of human experience at the higher end?!

Pretty depressing-looking 6% human box we sit in, huh?!

But is this representation correct?

I don’t think so. Here is why:

1. The human experience is NOT limited to direct experience from the senses. Even with help of instruments like electron microscopes and space telescopes, we are extending the direct experience all the time. Like the recently launched JWST. So to be generous, this graphic is at best, only a snapshot of particular human progress.

2. But that is not it, with human imagination and creativity, we can not only ponder about the edges of the universe but beyond. Similarly, we have the capacity to think and imagine time beyond the age of the universe.

3. Some might say, yes but those would only be imaginations and not reality - to which I say, what are direct observations anyways? - are they also not our brains cracklings after the senses detect them?

4. As the title of the chapter might have you believe, THIS is the extent of human understanding - this is wrong, human understanding is first always increasing as knowledge grows over time, and second, it is impossible to predict a priori what the limit of this growth could be. Could anyone in the year 1200 be able to predict the existence of the internet? - similarly, we can not today predict what humans could be able to achieve in the year 3000!

In conclusion, I think texts like these are very anti-human and literally put humans in a box!. On the contrary, humans are the only entities that have infinite reach. They are the only entity that can think creatively about solutions to problems!

PS: I have more bones to pick with more text in this chapter such as this:

This is wrong!!, but may be on another blogpost…

1. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZqiiwZ7zJPsC&pg=PA9&dq=%22Human+experience+of+space+and+time+in+the+physical+world.%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiyktfQyPPnAhX8g3IEHYFVBhkQ6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q&f=true

2. Check this awesome app that lets you explore the space continuum interactively (https://shop-us.kurzgesagt.org/products/universe-in-a-nutshell-app?variant=32360295071792)

3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289440657_On_the_flexibility_of_human_temporal_resolution

4. https://time.graphics/line/647426