The other day, I had a "vigorous" discussion with a hard core physical scientist friend of mine about my general assertion that we "create our own reality". He suggested that there was something fundamentally inconsistent about this view and my role as a research scientist. It got me thinking about what I really meant. What about the physical world? I accept (and generally rely upon) the fact that gravity exists independent of me. The chemical structure of a the minerals in the pebble sitting on the ground in front of me is known (not by me, but someone probably knows). A complex process like evolution occurs over times scales that make my lifetime, and therefore my perceptions and experiences, insignficant. All of these observations are "facts" that a large number of people (if not everyone) agree upon. Starting with a minimal set of real things, most people would agree that if something can be measured, its real. (Note that this doesn't imply the rev