From Time to Topology: Is a Process Driven by Chance or Necessity?

Abstract

The data from our senses and the measurements recorded by our instruments are only a shadow of reality. We analyze the data and the measurements to reconstruct the Platonic “artifacts” that produced those shadows. For example, we use the spots on an X-ray diffraction pattern to infer structural information about the three-dimensional shape of a protein. The physical spots on the photograph, that we can touch with our fingers, are further removed from the reality of the protein than the “cartoon” of protein structure that we form in our mind’s eye and display on our computer screen.

Human beings...[who have seen only] the shadows...of all sorts of artifacts...cast by the fire on the side of the cave.

Plato, The Republic, Book VII (translated by Bloom, 1968)