Lessons from a Goldfish

I read an interesting article about Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist suffering from ALS, several days ago.  The question was posed to him about what we could learn from a goldfish. His answer gave me pause:

“Because a goldfish lives in a round bowl of water, it sees a distorted picture of the outside world. It has a different picture of reality than we do. How do we know we have the right picture? We might also be in some giant goldfish bowl. There is no unique picture of reality. Perhaps the goldfish’s view is as valid as our own.”

It makes one go … hmmm.