A very wise person once observed that “One of the most astonishing effects of the human brain is the fact that so often I fail to realize I even have one.” As we each wake up every single day and go about our daily lives, it’s so easy to forget that our perception of the world is merely that — a perception. Not only do we fail to realize most of the time that this perception is controlled by our senses and our brain, but also that this perception is highly distorted and only touches the tip of something impossibly complex and multi-dimensional that 99.999% of all human brains can’t even begin to fathom. As for the remaining 0.0001 of the population, some major headway towards this understanding is definitely being made, thanks in large part to the master himself, Mr. Stephen Hawking. Hawking’s 1988 classic A Brief History of Time is one of the greatest works of theoretical physics of all time, and in 1991 director Errol Morris put together a brilliant documentary on Hawking’s life, with music created by a genius of a different kind — composer Philip Glass. You can watch the documentary in full below, and for more information be sure to visit BrainPickings.org.
