Our "understanding of reality" is sourced in inductive and deductive conclusions reached from what really amounts to nothing more than a mass of abstraction and arbitrary assignation of meaning to concepts and relationships based on observed reality, which can only be obtained by disturbing the nature of the observed (or sensed). We therefore can confidently conclude that our "understanding of reality" is fundamentally very wrong, even though we may not be able to state exactly how and where it errs.
Well, there goes the baby out with the bath water! :)
You went waaaaay too far in your conclusion.
The way humans extract information from their own senses works magnificently! There is art, music, literature, philosophy, mathematics, engineering, architecture, poetry, physics, etc to prove how splendid the process functions.
We do not DAMAGE reality by looking at it unless we are at such a microscopic level of teeny weeny-ness that we can only observe by bouncing photons or electrons off of it.
No.
Our only___problem__is when we do not FILTER our emotional reaction when processing our senses. The FILTER I speak of is superstition and misinformed expectation.
If you have been told to expect a certain result you can prejudice your perception in the act of filtering it. Placebo pills work this way. You are then not acting on perception but on tampered filtering of perception.
Here is an example. I read a newspaper story about a young man who was trying to join a frat house and was being hazed. He was kidnapped by hooded men who tied his hands behind his back and blindfolded him. He had to kneel and put his head over a bucket. He was then informed his head would be chopped off with an axe. Instead, he was slapped on the back of the neck by a cold, wet towel. He died of a heart-attack.
The actual sensory expectaion created a fear anticipation. The ACTUAL stroke of the towel was filtered by fear and made real enough to end his life.
If our understanding of nature was fundamentally wrong we could not split the atom, send rockets into space, bring astronauts back from the moon, could not cure polio or build suspension bridges or send messeges by satellite, etc.
Sciene is so practical the fruits of its methodology trump mysticism a hundred times a day. What has a mystic ever produced but confusion and argumentation over what was REALLY menat? (i.e. Jesus).
T.