WHY SHOULD IT SEEM?

PERSON 1: If we trust our senses, and just use our basic intelligence, we can tell that we live in a big, big world. Like, if I climb a cliff or a tall, tall tree, all around that big, big world is seen as rolling hills, jutting mountain peaks, glassy lakes, and vast stretches of sea. Everywhere there are rough bumpy bits and soft smooth bits, crumbly bits and rigid bits, dry bits and moist bits, too. So, if I think to myself "What is the world like?", all of my experience tells me the world is a lot like a leaf.

PERSON 3: But a leaf can fall and blow away in the wind.

PERSON 1: Well, maybe the world is more like a sturdy rock, with raw, exposed bits and others covered in mosses and lichens. With cracks and pits catching water and others bits crumbling and flaking away.

PERSON 3: But what about storms and floods, earthquakes and tsunamis?

PERSON 1: Well, maybe the world is more like a great big log, covered and uncovered by bark; home to algaes, seaweeds, and barnacles; bobbing and rolling in the waves, occasionally crashing into something or settling on a shoreline. Maybe.

PERSON 3: Or what if the world is nothing like a leaf or rock or log? What if the world’s ridges, cracks, and crumbly bits only seem that way when so very up-close, as we are? What if the world just seems like that because we are so, so small? What I mean is what if the highest of jagged mountains and the deepest canyons and valleys, that seem so big to us, are very, very small and so very shallow, too? What if we could shrink the world way, way down so it could fit in your palm? Or what if we pushed the world far, far away? What if then the world seemed smoother than your skin, smoother than glass even?

PERSON 1: Like a window?

PERSON 3: Yeah, but what if the-world-as-smooth-as-glass is also shaped very differently than it seems? What if it was not shaped like a leaf or a felled tree? What if it was not just perfectly smooth but also rounder than any pebble found on any beach?

PERSON 1: As smooth as glass and round? Like a marble?

PERSON 3: Maybe. But what if it behaved nothing like a marble?

PERSON 1: Okay.

PERSON 3: What if the whole world was spinning? And not just spinning but going round and round, faster than any marble you've ever seen?

PERSON 1: Smoother than glass, round, and spinning?

PERSON 3: Yeah. And what if this smooth and round and spinning marble was not just spinning in place but also travelling very, very fast, zooming across the sky? I mean, what if the world is going somewhere, and in a hurry?

PERSON 1: Like, how fast?

PERSON 3: Maybe faster than the fastest bird or horse.

PERSON 1: Faster than a darting trout?

PERSON 3: Yeah.

PERSON 1: Well.

PERSON 3: And what if this zooming, spinning, round, and smooth-as-glass world wasn't alone? What if it’s living with a bunch of other spinning, zooming balls of all sorts and sizes?

PERSON 1: Like a family? Or like friends at a party?

PERSON 3: Perhaps. What if there weren’t only a few zooming world-marbles, like people in a family or a party of friends? What if there were so, so many?

PERSON 1: How many? One hundred?

PERSON 3: Maybe. Or what if there were so many spinning marble-worlds that you couldn’t even count them? What if there were more than anyone could count?

PERSON 1: Or what if these round and spinning worlds were so, so many that there are more than everyone could count? What if there were more speck-like worlds in all of the cosmos than there have been seconds in the age of the cosmos?

PERSON 3: What if there are so many worlds?! What if all the people, counting all the time, couldn’t count all the worlds? And what if these worlds (that seem to me as big as can be) were so, so many and so, so tiny that, together, spinning and zooming, these specks flowed and spiralled and danced like a million million billowing, twisting plumes of smoke?

PERSON 1: Sure. But that wouldn't be anything like what my senses tell me. It doesn’t look like I’m on a glassy round world. I don’t feel like I’m zooming or spinning or in a giant, giant cloud of tiny, tiny worlds.

PERSON 3: Yeah. The world looks and feels and seems nothing like that to me, either. But that’s what I mean: what if "seems" has no bearing at all? My senses don’t tell me, or even imply, anything like what I’m offering. My intuition really gives me nothing of value here. If the great big, big world was a zooming, spinning speck, a tiny, tiny mist-borne mote, well, that would be nothing like how it seems to me.

PERSON 2: Right. And why should it seem?

PERSON 1: “Why should it seem?”