Johnson's Dictionary (1755) Reality (realite Fr. from real):
1. Truth; verity, what is, not what merely seems.
2. Something intrinsically important; not merely a matter of show.
"Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems'.
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good-mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief
That can denote me truly. These indeed 'seem',
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show -
These but the trappings and the suit of woe."
-Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2.76-86.
"Just as digital technologies today produce an electronic reality that we still think of as virtually but not actually real, so back then the technology of writing produced a Physical reality that had to __become __real . . . for them {Newton and Leibniz}, as for Descartes, the real was thoroughly metaphysical - meaning that, from our perspective, the physical had not yet secured its ontological hold on the real" - Clifford Siskin
"The fact that Virtual reality is possible is an important fact about the fabric of reality" - David Deutsch
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