Distance and perspective

I will not be writing long (hopefully), but I will surely elaborate on the theme that got me started with this blog, an astronomer's perspective, and what does it add to the understanding of a down to earth practical world.

Perspective is a complicated issue, mainly because you can never remove your personal bias. In fact it has everything to do with personal bias, but a good analysis tries to wedge in different perspectives to get a more or less complete picture. The idea is that one can never really remove bias, as all students of the 'theory of relativity' learns that observation depends on observer (rather the observer's frame of reference), but a good observer will be able to transform from one frame of reference to another and foretell what the other observer is seeing. So, in effect you can never really remove bias, but you can surely try to see things from others' bias and (hopefully) after seeing things from a few different perspectives you will get a general idea of the real picture.

The most important factor that affects the perspective of any observation is the distance. Then comes the orientation and, of course, the fourth dimension of our spacetime, i.e. time. A physicist will immediately recognise these concepts, but I guess even a sociologist or an artist will understand that this scientific mode of thinking doesn't just confine to the modellling of the physical universe. These general principles are the corner stone of all logical reasoning, without which mankind ('humankind'? to be politically correct?!) wouldn't have reached the level of abstract as well as material understanding which we claim to do so now today.

So maybe, I feel, being brought up to think from a third person's perspective, by looking at systems from a long distance, and trying to infer the macroscopic as well as microscopic details from the long distance observations, my understanding of the human, social, political, material, emotional, mental, physical issues will render some extra understanding of the general principles that underlie our world, that includes its people and their more often than not strange bahavioural patterns.

Having written all these, I am really wondering if these musings are meant for others to read and understand and appreciate? Although I would love if people do understand and appreciate what I have written so far, I guess all I have achieved is that I have set up my mind as to what direction I need to move, ultimately it is for me to formulate where I am moving, and justify my existance by deciding that particular direction is the purpose why I have come to exist. At a more philosophical level, I guess we all write and do things to understand oursleves and explain oursleves to oursleves, at least that is what in introvert does, who learns to focus inside rather than outside.