Originally Posted by AlericB

As well as with his optical illusion post, JeffreyAK gave a good example of this earlier:



We see matter as something solid located in three-dimensional space but physics tells us that it is not like that it all and talks about, for example, electrons as being probability-waves in 11-dimensional Hilbert space only collapsing into particles under specific conditions of measurement. And even then, only the probability of finding them at a specific location can be predicted according to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which says that particles can't be assigned both a determinate position and momentum at the same time.

Whatever all this means, the world has a deep and complex mathematical structure and is nothing like the world we see and touch and feel. It is certainly not made of matter in the sense of solid bits of stuff, precisely located in 3-dimensional space.

Another example would be that we see each other as solid bodies however the reality is that we are made up of atoms with swirling electrons. Our perception, the way that things appear to us, is clearly not an accurate guide of the way things really are.