"A few years ago the city council of Monza Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have out vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish's picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?"
To illustrate this I depicted the goldfish in question swimming within the lens of an old fashioned pare of bifocals, in order to compare our view of reality with that of the goldfish. By placing the glasses at a distorted angle I illustrated our own possible distortion of reality and by leaving the fare left lens unfinished and shattered I illustrated our both unfinished and fragmented understanding of the universe.
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