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Recent scientific investigations have made it clear that the world of sense experience and of common sense is only a small part of the world as a whole. It is small for two reasons: first, because we are confined to a particular point in space and have scarcely any knowledge by direct acquaintance and little knowledge even by inference of the conditions prevailing in distant parts of the universe; second, because the organs by means of which we establish direct communication with the outside world are incapable of apprehending the whole of reality. This second limitation is of more significance than the first. Even if we were able to make voyages of exploration through interstellar space, we should still be incapable of seeing electro-magnetic vibrations shorter than those we now perceive as violet or longer than those of which we are conscious as red. We should still be unable actually to see or feel even so large an object as a molecule. The shortest instant of time perceptible to us would still be a large fraction of a second. We should still be stone deaf to all sounds above a certain pitch. We should still be without the faculties that enable migrating birds to find their way. And so on. Every animal species inhabits a home-made universe, hollowed out of the real world by means of its organs of perception and its intellectual faculties. In man’s case the intellectual faculties are so highly developed that he is able, unlike the other animals, to infer the existence of the larger world enclosing his private universe. He cannot see beyond the violet; but he knows by inference that ultra-violet radiations exist and he is even able to make practical use of these radiations which sense and common sense assure him do not exist. The universe in which we do our daily living is the product of our limitations.
— Aldous Huxley - ‘Ends and Means’, 1938.
