THE WORLD IS AS YOU SEE IT

The old saying “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder” can be rephrased by saying that truth lies in the mind of the knower. The fact is that our preconceived notions of reality color strongly what we see as beauty and know as truth.

Our preconceived notions about reality serve as standards by which we judge things as real or unreal, true or untrue, beautiful or ugly, normal or abnormal—and these notions are largely conventional. They are shared by the majority of the people in a given culture. Here we are talking about general paradigms of thought or ways of thinking that largely determine how a given culture conceives the nature of life, the universe, and everything. Such paradigms tend to underlie the specific theories about reality developed within a given culture. This applies not only to modern scientific theories, but also to ancient religious theories.