Learning Limits—Part 2

So, returning to the field of science—which is a case of collective knowledge, rather than individual belief: Are we able to describe boundaries to our scientific knowledge that may never be crossed? It may help first to address the difference between knowledge and understanding. My dictionary defines knowledge as “facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education.” Understanding, however, goes deeper; it involves a person's perception or judgment of a situation. Understanding implies that we perceive the significance of something. There are many scientists who acquire facts and information about a topic, but fail to comprehend their significance. For example, one may collect data on the geological characteristics of some location, without understanding how or why they came about, or what the future may bring.

So if we confine our attention to science, we may ask ourselves if Nature imposes some fundamental limit to what we can know about something. Before the invention of scientific tools such as telescopes and microscopes, we faced an impenetrable barrier to seeing the nature of stars or microorganisms. There seemed to be an absolute boundary to what we could learn. Those barriers were eventually largely surmounted. Today, science seems stumped about what dark matter and dark energy are—yet most scientists do not regard our ignorance in this area as an impenetrable barrier. More experiments and new or improved instruments may solve these quandaries. Better theories and models may point the way.

Cosmologists are posing some of the thorniest questions about the nature of the universe. Some of the questions seem to imply that there might be an outer limit to our knowledge. Does life exist elsewhere? The universe may be so vast and empty that we may never know. Our universe—according to current models—began, as it burst forth from an infinitesimal point, nearly 14 billion years ago. Was there a time before the Big Bang? Our universe—again, according to current theories—has been expanding ever since. Will it continue to expand? Is there anything “beyond” the universe that we inhabit? Some of these queries appear to some cosmologists as to be so fundamental and profound, that they may forever remain beyond the island of our knowledge.

Many of these questions are unanswerable from the perspective of today's knowledge, yet they are definitely worth setting forth. Should we frustratingly and doggedly pursue complex conundrums that are unsolvable? Should we step back, pause, and ask if we are even asking the right questions? Should we grasp at speculative explanations and refuse to acknowledge that we may be in over our heads? Or should we relax, live with the mystery, and let time and accrued wisdom point the way?

Learning Limits—Part 1 (7/5/21

The limits of human knowledge have ceaselessly been expanding, ever since our species came into existence. A major factor allowing that expansion is the fact that we discovered language and writing along the way. These unique human capabilities have taken us far beyond any other earthly creature, because they allow us to communicate and cooperate, so that our cultural accomplishments have escalated at an astounding rate. Each generation passes on its accumulated knowledge to the next.

Our accrued knowledge has been compared to the size of an island in a vast ocean of unknowing. As our erudition has grown, the island has expanded. What we've come to know today, in fact, is more like a continent than an island; yet the immense ocean of ignorance still surrounds us and still appears unlimited. The more we know—measured by the size of our continent and the length of its shoreline—the more we aware of all that we don't know.

This situation raises an interesting question: Is there a limit to the size of our island of knowledge? Will our shoreline some day bump up against a formidable ocean barrier that brings a halt to what we can know? Are there some fundamental limits to our learning?

Questions like these are often asked in the context of science, rather than theology, philosophy, or history. In theology, for example, many people have wrestled with the question of whether or not God exists. Some (theists) are convinced God is real, others (atheists) “know” there is no God, and yet others (agnostics) stake out a position that we can't know, or will never know; so they clearly feel that there is a limit to our knowledge in this realm of theology.

Some of the more thorny questions of philosophy seem to be beyond our capability to ever answer. We have struggled with them for millennia, without making much headway. There seem—so far—to be no final answers to questions such as, What is the good life? What is beauty? What is truth?

And what about history? Short of time travel, will we ever know why some events happened, but not others? Why did Alexander the Great decide to engage in some battles, but not others? What would have happened, had he made another decision? How would events have turned out differently, had Jack Kennedy chosen not to take the route that his procession took that fateful day in Dallas, November 1963? These kinds of questions can go on indefinitely, and their answers—as is often expressed—are “lost to history.” So there does seem to be a limit to our knowledge, in the context of history. There are some things we'll never know.

The limits to our knowledge in the arenas of theology and philosophy are not necessarily the same for each of us. It's more a case of relative or individual knowing. What one person knows—or believes they know—may be quite different from another person. We often are in the realm of opinion, rather than knowledge. It can be difficult—if not impossible—to characterize what the collective knowledge may be. In fact, when we ask questions about the limits of human knowledge in these fields, we even often find ourselves asking the wrong question. It may be more a matter of exploring ways to ask better questions, than struggling with the limits of the wrong question.

Next time” returning to science…