S K-B: HomSap is a remarkable species (i) driven by "pure" curiosity; able to enhance its own sensory perceptions BEYOND the minimum "animal-survival" needs (ii) able, magically, to CALCULATE exactly the LIMITS of what can be observed and measured (Heisenberg's Uncertainty and Planck's constant) (iii) able to SUSPEND both belief and dis-belief, i.e., happy to shun dogma; free to consider conflicting theories as equally plausible until further evidence. ( Summary)
JM: Gregory, in The Intelligent Eye, and Eye and Brain stressed that humans were sensorially poorly equipped and significantly inferior to all the other animals. But he also pointed out that our human freedom to think and to entertain revolutionary ideas is a direct consequence of this inferiority of ours: instead of seeing objective things as they "really"are, our deficiencies force us to interpret, hallucinate, invent them.He argues that, from the adaptative stand-point, our diminished perceptual capacity is an asset for survival.
S K-B detailed how we can "view the world through our instrumentally enhanced sense organs, aiding and aided by astute analytical brains. Jumping slow evolution, we now have better eyes than a house-fly, faster flutters than a butterfly: our spectrometers, electron-microscopes and atomic clocks boost the natural scale of our perceptions a trillion-trillion-fold[...]  whereas Gregory argued that we are adaptable to alien environments only because our deficiencies force us to exercise our imagination and inventiveness - in alliance with our intelligence, of course -   whereas other animals, with their extremely ready-adapted eyes, ears, noses (or scientifically excessively atuned brains?) die, due to the lack of any coherent input their programs demand.
Nabokov's writings, besides everything else, help me to envision verbal objects and their strange logic to reach towards realities which my senses only dimly apprehend.  I think here S K-B would agree with me: "Nabokovians can, I suggest, more readily than most, imagine the vastly different world-views of mice, men and E Coli arising from having these widely different sensory acuities. Yet all these world-views are valid unto themselves, reflecting different aspects of what we loosely call an under-pinning "reality."
He also noted that "NOBODY (oft mis-read by VN as "Nabokov," you may recall!) yet understands how these new observations FIT together."  Is it fundamental to make these often contradictory "new observations FITt together"? Do we need to become more "evolved" animals in a struggle of a "survival of the FITtest" - or should we make allowances for this "vagueness" ( the risks are madness) which is such a part of artistic sensibility, generosity, tolerance... We may always consider that this "inaccuracy", at least, is fundamental for our "survival" as "simple humans".  
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Jansy: my reply to JA, I hope, clarified the view that Science (capital S) addresses the properties/relations of those objects that can be observed/measured using the Scientific method! Some circularity seems unavoidable when using Natural Language. One should not expect a finite Dictionary definition of Science to nail down, once and for all, every facet of a complex, changing set of human activities and modes of debate. The statement "Science is what Scientists do" isn't as daft as it sounds. Even for those not knowingly "engaged" in Science, it's possible to form some idea of what's involved. First off, let's agree as a starting point that Science confines its range of study and pronouncements to those observable/measurable type-A objects having a certain level of shared reality. Other type-B objects, at different "reality levels," can be plausibly said to exist but we need not expect them to follow the same logic or laws of type-As. Your term "verbal objects" requires caution because we apply useful, often overlapping, names to both type-As and Bs. For example, compare the type-B "stiff vane"  formerly on Shade's roof with the type-A "stiff vane" on my neighbour's roof. We can both "envision" Shade's vane, imagine its properties and write theses on its role in Pale Fire. Had JS (via VN) told us that one day his vane sprouted wings and flew off to Zembla, our thesis would have reflected on the symbolic significance. Type-B vanes can do whatever their creators like -- exceed the speed of light -- violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Or, they can try hard to behave exactly like my neighbour's type-A vane! We particularly admire VN's Type-B descriptions because he has carefully observed the corresponding Type-As and reports properties/relationships we may have overlooked.

But the more interesting Type-Bs include (i) Unicorns and gods! (ii) Square-triangles; members of the empty set (iii) Hilbert spaces (iv) thoughts, beauty, love ...

James Studdard wrote:

Planck time is the time that it would take a photon travelling at light speed, in a vacuum, to cross a distance of Planck's length. Since this would represent crossing the shortest possible distance at the fastest possible speed, this gives us the smallest meaningful unit of time.
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This is a useful 'first-pass' view, James. You can equally start with the Planck time and use it to define the Planck length (the distance travelled by a photon in vacuo in one Planck time!) Modern ISO length standards (meter etc) are moving away from clumsy bars of metal stored in controlled rooms. It's the TIME unit that's more "fundamental" and covenient, based on the extremely steady oscillations of certain atoms (freqency is sortof 1/t). The formulae for Planck length & time both involve Planck's constant, h, the gravitational constant G,  and the velocity of light, c, which explains why the units, length & time, are so closely related, and why they are equally "fundamental." There are other approaches to Planck length involving the Planck mass and the radii of minimal black holes! To give you a gist: the proton measures 1, 000 [20 zeroes] Planck units in diameter (give or take a parsec, as we say with a chuckle). On a more Human Scale (think John Donne) the Planck mass is the mass of an average FLEA.
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     The concept of a lesser Planck time has been explored and scientists working in the atomic clock field think they can create a model which would be diminutive of the classical "planck time."  
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James: I think it's doubtful we can ever actually measure anywhere near Planck time -- we are now at the yacto-second some 1, 000 [22 zeroes] times larger than a Planck! What you mean, I think, is that some theorists (not atomic-clock makers) doubt that the Planck units really represent an ultimate minimum in "reality."
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The universe, is speculated to have come into existence with an age of 5.39 x 10-44  That's a mighty quick creation, but still does not confirm nor validate the "big bang" theory.  Thank God!
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That "age" you cite is indeed the unit Planck time in seconds. Here the brain muscles do ache because one thinks of TIME and SPACE themselves starting with this mooted BB (Big Bang). Those who accept the Planck unit time as minimum can imagine the BB at time 0, initiating our universe, which then starts expanding, and aging in increments of Planck units. There's no measurable  moment between 0 and 5.39 x 10^ -44 secs. Our cosmic stopwatch sortof clicks by these increments. That doesn't quite mean that there's "nothing happening" between these ticks!  Merely that we are allowed discrete "snap shots." Furher, it's by no means clear that 5.39 x 10^ -44 represents a MIGHTY QUICK CREATION. Lacking a QG GUT (Quantum Gravity Grand Unified Theory) for these bizarre initial conditions, we have no idea which Laws apply. There are no PRECEDENTS, hee-hee. It's widely thought that our present 4 fundamental forces start off unified, so recalling that "clocks slow down under gravitational force," for all we know, that first Planck time could be the equivalent of untold billions of years by our current clocks. Some scenarios have the universe expanding from a Big Bang then eventually shrinking to a Big Crunch, from whence another Big Bang is triggered. As James Joyce says in FW: Ordovico or vericordo. Teems of times and happy returns. Oops, wrong List!

skb

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.