setting out from Earth at the appropriate speed and direction, would rendezvous
with the planet Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after a journey of over six years and
3 billion kilometers.
The basic assumptions behind the modern scientific method are the existence
of a reality outside our own bodies, and that said reality can be understood by the
human mind. It is, of course, conceivable that we are all characters in somebody’s
dream, but this is something we cannot prove or disprove (were it true
one cannot but commend the dreamer on the richness and vividness of his/her
imagination ... and hope the alarm-clock does not go off). The reality of
the universe around us is something that ultimately must be taken on faith.
Still one can provide plausibility arguments such as the following one by
W. Churchill4 that considers the possibility that our Sun is the result of our
fertile imaginations:
... happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing
the reality of the Sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes
of mathematics entirely separate from their senses, astronomers are able to
calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot
will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of
sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated ... We have
got independent testimony to the reality of the Sun. When my metaphysical
friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their calculations
were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of their senses, I say
‘No’. They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by automatic calculating
machines set in motion by the light falling upon them without admixture of the
human senses at any stage ... I am also at this point accustomed to reaffirm
with emphasis my conviction that the Sun is real, and also that it is hot – in
fact as hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there
and see.