Different understanding of the universe if .

[Low-Q]

I have thought about something for a while now, and wondered if we would have a different understanding of the universe, and the smallest known particle, if we humans were smaller or larger.
What if we humans was at the size of a pinhead (And maintained the same brain capacity as normal sized humans). How would we understand the universe, and how would we understand the smallest particles?
What if humans was at the size of the Earth (And maintained the same brain capacity as a normal sized human). What would our understanding of the universe, and the smallest particles be?

The precicion of our instruments would differ a lot I assume. Taking that into account, we would probably have two very different "trouth" about the universe and its origin.

This thread is meant as a think tank, or similar. Just for curiosity.
If it doesn't fit into this section of the forum, or doesn't fit into the forum at all, please let me know.

Vidar

 

[phinds]

That's a bit like asking "if unicorns existed, would we want to pet them?"

Certainly the size/speed of human experience is a factor in our "common sense / intuition / etc" and makes it hard to grasp some of the principles of cosmology and Quantum Mechanics because they are so utterly outside our range of experience and thus are things the knowledge of which has had zero survival value as humans evolved and I believe that's your point.

 

[wabbit]

Hey the question about petting unicorns could turn out to be important if you meet one : )
That aside I suspect that there is a fairly narrow range of size that is compatible with something like human experience, and it can be interesting as a thought experiment to ponder "what would a sentient creature experience if it were the size of a bacterium - or of a solar system ? " though we quicly run into impossibilities - e.g. nothing the size of an atom could have the required complexity, etc - but the nature of such impossibilities is interesting too...

</Random pseudo-philosophical musings>