Editor –
We are continuously finding out more about the universe, but it seems there is always more to discover. It may be that there is really no limit to what there is to know.
Some philosophers have asked if we are capable of knowing everything there is to know or if there are some things we can never know. With the major advances in scientific discovery after medieval times, it seemed that we could go on finding out about the universe until we knew everything there was to know – that the only limit to our knowledge is the limit of what exists in reality.
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I challenge this assumption and I can show you that we are not capable of knowing some things.
As a born philosopher by nature, I believe that our minds are a “blank slate” – we know nothing and acquire all our knowledge from experience through our five senses. And because our only way of getting information about the world outside us is through our senses, there may be parts of reality that are forever hidden from us.
For example, a blind person can smell the flowers, feel the warmth of the sun and hear the rain, but can’t see the moon or stars and so can’t have any direct first-hand knowledge of their existence.
Our knowledge of reality is limited to what we can directly perceive (such as unobserved galaxies or electrons), but there may be much more to reality than we are capable of knowing in this way.
Our knowledge is limited to the phenomenal world; the world of space and time that we can experience, and there are some things we won’t know. What we are able to experience is never reality as it is in itself. There are things we never know and can’t even have an idea of, as these things are literally beyond our understanding.
Surprise Elvin Basson (Vision Man)
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