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impossible to know with absolute certainty the path taken by electric information. Does it go from the muscle to the brain, or vice versa? At light speed, it will take a corporeal electric signal one three hundred millionth of a second to traverse one meter of nerve fiber (electric resistance disregarded). It is simply impossible to measure this dura- tion for at least two reasons. The first is that there is no such thing as an adapted measuring instrument. The second is that it is impossible to exactly isolate the electric signal in question in the brain. That is why the animated is different from the inert. In addition, the fact that our waking consciousness is apparently oblivious to an event that happens to our body does not mean that part of us does not already know of its occurrence in advance, or may even create it! The logical shortcut of the information route is in itself a tautology” of causality. This is an exam- ple where the epistemology applicable to fundamental physics has to find a response in the physical-chemical interpretation of the function- ing of the brain. Where do we draw the line between imagination and electric image? What is imagination? Is it the realm of the unreal or the real of someplace else? Unless there is no reality in the time of a variable stro- boscope? So many questions that the progress of the cognitive sciences has pretended to ignore. After all, what is at stake is not the least of the wagers of our understanding: what is the experience of reality? If we want to know whether or not UFOs are real, then let us start by defin- ing reality! Just like the words of this book are trying to make us see things differently, apple is a word. But the reference-object (another word) is not one of them. In the same way, the equation is a represen- tation. But the object-concept is not one of them, even though the con- cept itself can be questioned, but this will be addressed in the next part. Thus, the distinction between “signified” and “signifier” must be per- manent in our mind to avoid that it literally falls right through the non- sense. We now know that what we call a particle in quantum 1 : ta a 2 1tia a we mechanics is neither exactly a punctual body, nor exactly a wave. It is neither! This is a violation of a logical principle: the exclusion of a third possibility. The particle shows only corpuscular or wave patterns of behavior. When you imitate someone, do you actually become that person? That is why it is important to remember that in an equation this is what happens if... In fact, this debate refers to the objective and the subjective. Hence the rational and the irrational. Which one describes reality best? Both at the same time? Are they then compatible? How and to what extent? Representation and Reality 71