"We need a transcendental tool"

In fact, the biological sensory apparatus that perceives and interprets information for us actually reveals only a tiny fraction of what's before our eyes. That's because perceiving things like cosmic background radiation and "dark matter" -- the mysterious stuff that holds the universe together, according to modern astrophysics -- isn't essential for distinctly human tasks like making tools, walking upright, and navigating the morning commute.

"There is a reality," said Phat Vu, "but what we are experiencing as real is vastly different from what is truly there. For us to know what is truly there, we need a transcendental tool."

The conscious realists hope that mathematics will turn out to be the tool that allows them to create technology to establish a direct connection between our humble brains and the unseen universe around us. They see their work as a natural extension of the impulse that guided the earliest human scientists to try to relate empirical observations of the physical world with mystical insights.

~ from Consciousness Gets Real ~