Explorer's Mission

One explorer said he was exploring to put his footprints in places that humans have never set foot on. Another explorer said that the charm of exploration is to fill in the gaps in the map. None of them explained why appearing in a place that humans have not been to has such a huge attraction that people are willing to experience all kinds of hardships and even sacrifice their lives?

Once, in a cave in Fangshan District, Beijing, we went down to the seventh basement floor. There was nothing peculiar about the cave hall in front of us, but on the sixth floor that had just left, the cave hall was full of peculiar stalactites and stalagmites. Sediments, like a palace in a fairy tale. But the guide said, "No one has ever been here." Everything that was plain in front of me suddenly became radiant.

Some people may say: When you don't see it, it's been there for thousands of years. Yes, I'm not a believer in Berkeley, the solipsist in the history of philosophy, who believed that when one doesn't perceive a thing, that thing doesn't exist. But I'm fascinated by the question: Was the cavern like this before I saw it?

Someone said, "It's the same as when we saw it later." This view does not stand up to scrutiny, because he assumes that the sun does not change, the air does not change, people do not change, etc. If these premises do not exist, such as you Change, your eye structure has changed, and Xuefeng's appearance will definitely change. Therefore, it is a mystery what Xuefeng looked like before humans saw her.

In the story of the Seven Fairies, the fairy who took a bath put on her clothes after being seen by the cow herding baby. Most of the worlds we see are fairies with clothes on, and only explorers go to the place closest to the fairies. This is the inner driving force for explorers to rush to hardships and dangers without fear of sacrifice.

One

When talking about ecological protection, people oppose anthropocentrism, but when talking about "what the world is", anthropocentrism is rarely questioned. When philosophers in the past discussed this issue, most of them referred to the world that people see. The question was actually "what is the world for human beings".

Once, I was resting by the glacier under Mount Shishapangma. An eagle, soaring through the clouds and fog, soars on the top of a diamond-like snow-capped mountain. Suddenly, it stopped, and then swooped down almost vertically, and I guess it found its prey. In the eyes of an eagle, what does the snow peak look like? What is the world like? What is the prey like? The eagle's eyes are very magical. When diving to catch prey, it can always focus accurately, otherwise it will not catch the prey. The eagle has a whole set of ways to deal with the world, moving freely in its world.

The world in the eagle eye is completely different from the world in the eyes of man, but in terms of authenticity, the world in the eagle eye is equivalent to the world in the eyes of man. There are as many worlds as there are living sentient beings; the patterns of the world are infinite, and no one can say that the real world is the world in his eyes. The question of "what is the world" can only be discussed in a group of creatures with the same physiological structure and the same cultural background.

In recent years, scientists have begun to pay attention to the world in the eyes of animals, and many interesting discoveries have been made. The eyes of fish are like wide-angle lenses. In the eyes of fish, the world becomes a sphere, and the distance between various things becomes closer. The eyes of pigeons can distinguish millions of different colors. Birds have far more cone cells in their eyes than humans, and are the best animals on earth at distinguishing colors. Horses have an extremely wide field of vision, but because their eyes are distributed on both sides of the head, they cannot see the area between the eyes, which is directly in front, so horses always walk with their heads bowed.

A colleague likes to observe the world with a microscope. He has seen sand all over the world. Not only is the sand different in each place, but every grain of sand is also different. Some are coral remains, some are tiny shells, some are mica, some are glass... It is truly "one sand, one world".

Thanks to the invention of the electric light, nights in cities are as bright as days. Astronomers first came up with the concept of light pollution because the flood of artificial light prevented them from seeing the stars. So why not consider sunlight as light pollution?

First of all, from the beginning of human development to the present, all human beings have seen is the world presented under the illumination of the sun. An important reason why our understanding of the world can be exchanged and consensus can be reached is that we have a common sun, which is the common standard for human beings to measure all things. Artificial light is varied, and the world presented under illumination is naturally disorganized. If it is allowed to flood, it will destroy our common understanding of the world. Furthermore, human eyes evolved under sunlight, and it is unknown how artificial light will affect the eyes.

Air is the basic medium for spreading sunlight. We are in the troposphere, and the propagation of sunlight in it is scattered by air, water vapor, dust, etc., resulting in such a world as we see. Go to the upper stratosphere tens of kilometers away, where the air is thin, and the appearance of all things will change. Higher in the ionosphere, there are smaller ions distributed in space, and the space for astronauts to move is there. The earth they see is blue and the sky is black. What will everything look like out of the atmosphere, I haven't looked up the relevant information, for sure, it must be different from what I see on Earth.

"What is the world" depends at least on the following elements: Who is the knower? What is the light source? What is the medium? As long as one of these elements changes, the world will take on a different appearance.

Therefore, we should face the world humbly and admit that there is a world in the eyes of other creatures besides the world in our eyes. The mission of explorers is to make the world as we see it complete and real.