The Mountain

Two and a half miles from Rhayader, in Wales, is a 1,558 foot hill called Gamallt. It can also be thought of as a mountain. Using the author's encounter with Gamallt, this story, written in the form of a meditation, explores some of the ways in which philosophical and scientific ideas about perception and reality have led to thought-provoking ideas about what can be said to be real. It also seeks to loosen the apparent incompatibility of fantasy and the logical preoccupations of philosophers and scientists. It uses, in part, the parallels between "to exist is to be perceived" and the suggestion, often found in writers dealing with quantum mechanics, that human consciousness is somehow involved in descriptions of what, at least in the sub-atomic world, occurs when observations are made. The assumption that there is an objective world independent of any observers, and the possible rejection of such a view, might be said to find expression in both philosophy and science. The mountain becomes a backdrop for the suggestion that both disciplines, for all their justifiable preoccupation with logic, can also be embraced by way of imagination.