(Note: I use AI to help me translate my stories from Japanese to English.)
There is a book called 唯脳論 (Yui Nōron, “The Brain-Only Theory”), written in Japanese by Takeshi Yoro, a Japanese scholar. When I read this book, I was deeply shocked.
The following is my own interpretation, so any mistakes are entirely my responsibility.
Why do time and space exist?
It is because human beings have the senses of hearing and sight.
Time appears because humans have ears, and space appears because humans have eyes.
Time and space are originally the same thing, but because humans have ears and eyes, we perceive them as separate.
This idea can be applied to other things as well.
Goethe studied living things from two perspectives: form and force. Aren’t these, too, two different ways of seeing the same thing? Form corresponds more to the visual way of seeing, while force corresponds more to the auditory way.
Newton and Einstein both studied light. They wondered whether light was a particle or a wave. Today, we understand that light is both a particle and a wave. This, too, can be seen as: particle = visual perspective, wave = auditory perspective.
Because humans have eyes and ears, such dualities appear.
The brain and the mind are two different perspectives on the same “something.”
Form and force are two perspectives on the same “something.”
Space and time are two perspectives on the same “something.”
Particle and wave are two perspectives on the same “something.”
Result and process are two perspectives on the same “something.”
All of these deal with structure and function.
The brain is structure, and the mind is function.
Form is structure, and force is function.
Space is structure, and time is function.
Structure is the way of understanding things visually, while function is the way of understanding things auditorily or kinesthetically.
Why are structure and function separated?
Because our brain has the tendency to divide them.
And why does the brain divide structure and function?
Because we humans have both eyes and ears.
When something is processed visually, it becomes structure.
When something is processed auditorily, it becomes function.
What humanity has long been searching for — the relationship between body and mind, time and space, form and force, particle and wave — according to this theory, all come down to the same thing being perceived differently.
Because humans have the senses of hearing and sight, the same “something” appears to us as time and space. Originally, they are the same.
The brain and the mind are also the same, but we perceive them as separate.
If Einstein, Goethe, or Heidegger had known about this theory, they might have been so surprised that they’d fall off their chairs.
Usually, when people think about problems like time and space, or brain and mind, they assume the cause lies in the external world — an objective reality outside of us. But perhaps the limitation lies within the human brain itself.
Because humans have ears and eyes, the same “something” appears to us as either time or space.
There is a saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Perhaps we could also say, “Time and space are in the brain of the beholder.”
If there were a being without eyes and ears, but with completely different sensory organs, perhaps for that being, neither time nor space would exist.