Among the small percentage of what is known on the vast combination of chemicals surrounding us on this, overwhelmingly piffling in comparison, spinning rock we have claimed as Earth, NASA[1] has brought forth more information about the, “Hubble Bubble:” A nebula that is seven light-years across that is 7,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. “The seething star forming this nebula is 45 times more massive than our sun. Gas on the star gets so hot that it escapes away into space as a “stellar wind” moving at over four million miles per hour. This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble much like a snowplow piles up snow in front of it as it moves forward.” With information of cosmic entities being researched constantly, let a moment to upend the mental-sets[2] of the convenience of present-day phenomena be taken to consider how subjects such as Hubble’s Bubble brings us, “back to Earth” in the wonderment of our existence with questions such as: Why are existential crises so significant to the human psyche? Through topics such as sensation, perception, memory and faulty logic, discussions over the influence of the wonderment of our existence can bring to question if humans are taking the advantage of their higher consciousness to their full potential.

Sensation: Tangible proof of second-by-second awareness of existence. Without the senses like touch, hearing, vision and smell, would human nature be measured the same since it is from these characteristics that we respond to the atmosphere around us? Aspects like Psychophysics[3] help guide one’s understanding in how to respond to such a bilocation of external (all action caused upon oneself) and internal (awareness within oneself) forces by detecting molecules and signifying them to experiences and opinions. These opinions, based on both biology and one’s psychological state of mind, determine a detailed experience in a lifeform. Take vision for example – those squishy, spherical muscles holding the world within – is something humans put much trust in when what is seen is based on light and structure quality of the eye ball, such as eye functions like receptors, rods and cones, for these clomped together pieces of matter have given us validation of their existence by being while biology captured its universal picture. With existential crisis, one begins to question if what is being seen as real is not actually it’s, ‘true’ form of being; since each eye is different, the way it catches light, color and depth is going to differ from person to person causing an upsurge in familiarity with one’s own sight, making them lose sensitivity of attention towards the complexity of perceptions in just one function of the human body. Through these diverse perceptions given through examples of the eye alone, only a base of what is known can be solidified as a ‘truth,’ or something in which strong branches of thought can base their tangents of ideas and questions on. Since any evidence given towards an object or idea is based on facts gained through experiments that use tools for our senses to grasp, the facts discovered are based on human comprehensibility from the start, thus making what is known biologically biased in both social, interpersonal and ‘logically’ based terms. With this concept, responses to the world are also determined by these perceptions making strides in a specific perceived direction harder to divert from if these ‘truths’ are not questioned. This is where existential crisis takes hold of the senses, using the facts given through our sensations to neurologically calculate the existence around us and having the questioning disposition to marvel in what is and to wonder whether if this, “is” actually is, or if it is solely a representation given to and by our biology. Hubble’s Bubble, for example, is seen through the Hubble Telescope made by man, thus how we view this star is based solely on the dependence of the quality of material used to see it. Bio‘logical’ indeed.

One could argue that sensations are not constricted to the five senses, rather the influence of Psychophysics with the consciousness of self-awareness. The article, Balancing the ‘Inner’ and the ‘Outer’ self: Interceptive sensitivity modulates self–other boundaries, gives examples on how the, “brain’s processing of multisensory information underpins self-awareness (Lenggenhager, Tadi, Metzinger, & Blanke, 2007).” For example, “synchronous visuotactile stimulation[4] between the participant’s body and a foreign body results in an illusory sense of ownership of the foreign body (Petkova et al., 2011).” This familiarity to the participant’s face and a foreign face, “results in changes in the mental representation of one’s face identity (Tajadura-Jiménez, Grehl, & Tsakiris, 2012; Tsakiris, 2008).” These results validate the influence that exteroception[5] exerts on two elements of self-awareness: the, “feeling that this body is mine (i.e., body ownership) and the ability to recognize one’s self as distinct from other people.” A reverse representation of the self, “emphasizes the role of interoception[6] as a vital type of information processing necessary for self-awareness (Craig, 2009; Damasio, 2010). The insular cortex, one brain area among an extended self-related brain network, is activated during interoceptive tasks, multisensory-induced changes in body ownership and self-face recognition (Craig, 2009), suggesting that in this brain area, exteroceptive and interoceptive signals converge to globally represent the material self.” This study shows how the use of interoception and exteroception help shape how one views themselves in terms to the perception given by themselves influences their self-awareness. This self-awareness is key to understanding that the self is here, in this moment, using their eyes to read these universally understood structured symbols on a page to peer into another’s thoughts on the subject of self-awareness and the ever-growing Hubble’s Bubble thousands of light-years away from sight of the human eye.

Alas, one’s perception in the moment is merely one factor in coming to terms with the existential. History, as we know it to be, is also a determinant in self-awareness as it is a reference to how life is now; but history is subjective to the documenters throughout time so even their perceptions, differing even down to choice in diction, effects the future in how human nature is understood to be, thus causing a mirrored confrontation on who one is now. Take Hubble’s Bubble for instance: it wasn’t discovered until 1787 making any prior knowledge of this gaseous celestial body irrelevant to the human psyche, since no information was taken in to consider this entity floating around them the whole time. Because of this concept, memory of prior knowledge would all have to be reconsidered in order to further calculate these cosmic chemicals into self-awareness. With this memory of the fashioned illustration of our past reflecting onto the current self, the contrast in behavior, realms of thought, and general perception of that period’s cultural phenomena raises questions like: How does current-day consciousness differ from the past, since new and altered information is in circulation that was not available before? How does this change in consciousness effect the mental-sets already placed and do these form a filter on our biological senses? How different are the realms of existential crisis between unalike types of memory? These filtered conclusions of past and current time create something called Faulty Logic which places a circular logic on mental sets fixed and the new facts given, making uncorrelated conclusions weaker in contemplation on what it means to be alive now, in contrast with before one knew specific knowledge. With these boundaries of human understanding, one can find wonderment in the existential through articles such as NASA’s Hubble Sees a Star ‘Inflating’ a Giant Bubble in how aspects such as sensation, perception, memory and faulty logic take their position in the inspection of existential thought. Through these conceptions, one can better use their consciousness to further explore the mysterious abyss of their mind to better understand the universe, just like the Hubble Telescope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat, 5 – 40127 Bologna, Italy. Tel.: +39-051-209-1347; fax: +39-051-243-086, Copyright © 2004 Elsevier Ltd.

 

Gleitman, Henry, Daniel Reisberg, and James J. Gross. Psychology. Eighth ed. New York: Norton, 2011. Print.

 

Hubble Sees a Star ‘Inflating’ a Giant Bubble, NASA.gov, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), 21 April 2016

 

Tajadura-Jiménez, Ana, Tsakiris, Manos. Balancing the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ self: Interoceptive sensitivity modulates self–other boundaries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 00963445, 20140401, Vol. 143, Issue 2

[1] Hubble Sees a Star ‘Inflating’ a Giant Bubble, NASA.gov, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), 21 April 2016.

[2] Mental-set: “The perspective that a person takes and the assumption made in approaching a problem.” (Gleitman, Henry, Daniel Reisberg, and James J. Gross. Psychology. Eighth ed. New York: Norton, 2011. Print. Pg. G11.)

[3] Psychophysics “allows us to specify the correspondence between physical stimuli and psychological experiences.” (Gleitman, Henry, Daniel Reisberg, and James J. Gross. Psychology. Eighth ed. New York: Norton, 2011. Print. Pg. 142.)

[4] Visuotactile stimulation is as showing the existence, in humans, of intersensory integrative systems representing space through the multisensory coding of visual and tactile events. (Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat).

[5] The perception of the body from the outside.

[6] The perception of the body from within.