Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Is there a limit to knowledge? If so, What is it?



Is there a limit to knowledge? Can we learn everything about everything?

Let us take the reigning idea. We hold certain things as beyond the mind, thus beyond understanding. The mind, also is conceived as an entity having its limitations. We also consider all infinite and never-ending things to be beyond the mind, and we attribute to everything, something infinite and never-ending. Example: we cannot comprehend how the universe continues forever, but we are to understand that it has to. Something has to keep filling out, including empty spaces. This is expected to be a proof for the existence of infinity. Thus we are in a position to accept that infinity exists without understanding infinity. Outer space is the easiest place to visualize infinity. This also is the nature of everything in one way or another.

The difficulty in comprehending these things is accepted as something associated with life. We feel that, in all probability this could be the truth.
Inner space: space is everywhere, both inside and outside of everything. The presence thus has to be acknowledged of an infinite number of universes inside every atom in the universe. If a piece of a material is cut it in half, and cut the half in half and so on, it can go on limitless. In this case, one will never run out of something to cut.
When you burn something, you are just turning the material into heat, light, ash and smoke etc. Also nothing is lost in this reaction. Even the electric power that runs TV or computer is not lost. One can look at electric power as water flowing through the cord into the screen. This then sprays out into the room and back into the environment again. Nothing can be considered as lost. All that takes place is just a change in form, everything moves in a circle or cycle, back and forth.
Isn’t it, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle says, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’
By using techniques of elimination, extrapolation, or any other method of reasoning, it has been acknowledged that one can learn about life. 

I think we are going on a tangent. That too motivated by our predilection with another dimension of life, the spiritual world.
Think of a group frogs residing in a well. And another group, living outside. The cosmology of those inside may contain ideas of universe, as well as that of a variety of species, limited in its extent. For example, they will be having strong notions of a cosmic background noise, as they will be hearing a lot of noise during their lifetime without actually seeing where the sound comes from. If the owner of the land follows a pattern of cleaning the well yearly, as most villagers do, those frogs may also possess certain ancestral knowledge about the end of universe.  (Even divinity is likely, assuming that some frog, in the past, happened to escape back into the well during the cleaning process)

Now think of the other group. These frogs will be having a totally different cosmology with better grasp about things and, will be free of illusions like cosmic background noise. Questions like the end of universe may not occur at all to them, having never experienced a discontinuity.

How does this story fit in for humans? On all matters except those concerning life, we are like the latter group. (Assuming that reality exists, whether we perceive it or not) And there is no logical necessity for an end, whichever facet of the universe is under consideration. But when it comes to life, I think we are severely handicapped. Like the earlier group of frogs, our idea of life is only what we experience from inside life. Unless we are able to view life from a plane different from life, all the notions we entertain about life cannot describe life in full. (Nobody can say I understand what a globe is, unless one has a look at it, that too, from the outside of it) 
This is where, new ideas are needed the most. But here, our fondness for the spiritual dimension of life is effectively putting a brake in our quest for new ideas.

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