Limits to knowledge

What lies beyond the limits to human knowledge? Many realities can only be imagined, because they still await us, or they didn’t in fact happen – what might have been1 – or they are now lost to time. Other realities we can’t imagine, because they exist beyond our awareness2 or capacities3, or we prefer not to face them. Certain realities are fundamentally unknowable, such as the physical nature of atomic phenomena4, the energy state of an electron5, and the set of all mathematical truths6. Luckily, we are only the wiser for recognising limits to our knowledge7.

Even intelligible reality, being a product of knowledge, tells us nothing about truths that exist independently of the mind’s activities. Indeed, it is our very thoughts that fear the unknown: what might be true8. So let’s loosen our ties to the layers of conditioning in learning and experience, the worn pathways and accumulated conceits. What then unfurls itself in perception and engagement is subjective and universal, new yet familiar, a prelude. Here is spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti on his way to a meeting with a troubled soul9:

“It had rained during the night, and the perfumed earth was still damp. The path led away from the river among ancient trees and mango groves. It was a path of pilgrimage trodden by thousands, for it had been the tradition for over twenty centuries that all good pilgrims must tread that path. But it was not the right time of the year for pilgrims, and on this particular morning only the villagers were walking there. In their gaily-coloured clothes, with the sun behind them, and with loads of hay, vegetables and firewood on their heads, they were a beautiful sight; they walked with grace and dignity, laughing and talking over village affairs. On both sides of the path, stretching as far as the eye could see, there were green, cultivated fields of winter wheat, with wide patches of peas and other vegetables for the market. It was a lovely morning, with clear blue skies, and there was a blessing on the land. The earth was a living thing, bountiful, rich and sacred. It was not the sacredness of man-made things, of temples, priests and books; it was the beauty of complete peace and complete silence. One was bathed in it; the trees, the grass, and the big bull, were part of it; the children playing in the dust were aware of it, though they knew it not. It was not a passing thing; it was there without beginning, without ending.”

Milestones in history

• The first recorded use of counterfactuals is in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, c. 400 BCE.
• The allegory of the cave, in Plato’s Republic, early 4ᵗʰ century BCE.
• The observable edge of the ever-expanding Universe lies some 46.5 billion light-years from Earth.
• Every quantum entity has wave-particle duality, 1923.
• Quantum mechanics was born from the principle of fundamentally unknowable quantum states, 1925.
• Kurt Gödel proved that some mathematical statements are fundamentally undecidable, 1931.
• According to Socrates, as reported in Plato’s Apology, early 4th century BCE.
• Krishnamurti, J. (1958) The Fear Of Inner Solitude. Chapter 3 in Commentaries on Living, 2nd Series.
• Krishnamurti, J. (1958) A Politician Who Wanted To Do Good. Chapter 37 in Commentaries on Living, 2nd Series.

C.P. Doncaster, Timeline of the Human Condition