Dear Georgina,
You wrote: "I agree that there have been surfaces prior to the existence of humans but that realization doesn't provide a very useful physics model by itself." Reality am not an abstract finite physics model. Nature must have eternally produced only one single unified visible infinite surface. I have a surface. You have a surface. All God's chillum done got surface. One does not have to realize surface. One does not have to visualize surface. One does not even have to idolize me for being brave enough to maintain that there must have only ever been one single unified visible infinite surface eternally occurring in one single infinite dimension that am mostly illuminated by finite non-surface light .
I am baffled by the ease with which the physicists were able to convince scientists of the importance of their being able to supposedly accurately measure and describe the utterly complex finite behavior of invisible finite atoms, compared to the difficulty I am having in my presentation of the obviousness of the simplicity of the common observation of visible infinite surface.
Joe Fisher, Realist