Real shirts and jeans, find them anywhere and a nexus forms. It has two properties.

An objective one created by the scientific process, where we agree on what can be independently observed and verified. Here knowledge grows with consilient additions. New worlds are discovered. Constructive or destructive entities and relationships arise. With electromagnetic sensors attached to my skull, subjective processes within can be detected, measured and quantified.

The subjective one is less restrictive, a battleground or playground, repository of objective knowledge, the birthplace of deeds, fantastic worlds coming to life in symbiotic science-fiction consortiums. Psychosomatic illnesses and cures originate here, and nuclear weapons. Scientific wonders are celebrated here, and more. Now that dark matter and energy have been detected, a force that cannot be directly sensed is beyond electromagnetic reach, challenging the foundations of science. The extrasensory realm, though classically unprovable, seems more likely.

Now let's take this shirt. I'll describe it in every detail and ask every reader to accept that. A big order but everyone can do it, and as an experiment let's grant the order is filled. Now, without need for an independent sensory input, no one argues. The texture, whether or not it's flammable and so on – all verified.

I rip the shirt, here in the nexus, and share all of this.

What is the ripped shirt?

This can be tested. Consider --

Einstein ran a thought experiment to generate his theory of relativity.

Anyone can Google for his details. The theory posits a gravitational space-time warp. This was evidenced during a solar eclipse. Stars in close proximity to the sun apparently moved, showing that light from those stars had been bent in the sun's gravitational field.

His experiment was his. But everyone can repeat it. And anyone with the right equipment, following his theory with the same observations, will get the same results. His subjective experiment, before obtaining sensory data from observations made afterward, was processed in his mind, and in others. A nexus was formed.

A similar test --

Our theory, grounded in factual observations, suggests that water does not flow uphill. Can we disprove it? Let's hypothesize that water does flow uphill. We go to a lake at the bottom of a hill. We climb to the top, bringing a bucket, and try to fill it. The water remains in the lake. The theory, thus far, remains.

We tried the theory, the observations, and the test. Whose they are became a matter of conjecture, illustrating the nexus. Of course it can be argued that all of this was just a thought experiment. But that you just ran it, a subjective thought experiment, is an objective fact. For you. And I cannot ignore that it was also shirts and jeans. For both of us.

Jeans are . . .