TheThreshold of Ignorance

Article

By

Souran Mardini Ph.D

Despite all modern discoveries and scientific progress knowledge is still unable to provide answers to fundamental questions.Our Living Universe in its presence, form, structure, development and change, its constituent elements, its laws and control, its origin and finality remain totally enigmatic inaccessible to knowledge. Life, in its presence form, structure, development, change, origin and finality is still a total mysterious phenomenon.The role of man is limited to observation. He does not play any role in the presence, change and development of anything. He only observes and concludes, trying to unsolved the dilemma and at best makes use of what is.What is matter and what is time, remain unsolvable queries. The nature of an object remains mysterious. The universe and its billions f galaxies; life and its billions of manifestations are still des enigmas posing great difficulties for knowledge. The nature of things, its presence, its origins and its finalities are still puzzling questions. Our knowledge, at the present time, appertains to superficial observation of what is. The presence, origin and finality are still in the domain of the unknown. We are attaining a descriptive notion of the manifestations of the mysterious. The atom, basic element of matter, is still unknown in its nature, presence, origin and behaviour as well as its finality. How did the Universe come about and what forces control its form, structure and development, are still unexplored.What is life and where does it come from and why should there be life remain unsolvable questions.What force, whether an internal or an external finality, decide the presence, the nature, the origin and the form and structure as well as the finality of the universe and its constituent elements?

Science is still unable to answer these questions. What the scientist deals with is how an object is and can make use of it in one way. The scientist does not apply the why question in his work, although subject to this question in his personal outlook.Every individual asks himself these fundamental questions and awaiting science or philosophy to provide satisfactory answers he recoils about his own survival.Our purpose in this work is to try and establish this very question of why is knowledge of fundamental questions should be limited to the observational-utility dimension and not attain ultimate knowledge of things? In other words we attempt to examine the question of a possible presumption of a ‘threshold of ignorance' that is essentially steadfast.

In our perspective we shall attempt to investigate into the nature of an object in order to see whether or not it has limits. We explore at the same time whether or not there are limits for our comprehension. It can be further argued whether or not an assumed state of mind limits as well as object limits to divulge its enigma that are subject to inaccessible knowledge labelled as ‘ultimate knowledge'.Only, we assume, by examining minutely an object and our consciousness of it we are able to establish such hypothetical limits.

The importance of such approach is to attempt to investigate such probability.

We are not pretending to establish the arguments of one school of thought or another (sceptic, doubtful, nihilism, religion, sophist, metaphysics, spiritualism, mysticism, Gnosticism, agnosticism. Whether knowledge can be attained or not serves, in our perspective, a very precise end, namely that unattainable knowledge has a succinct purpose. This unattainable knowledge leads us to probabilities and conjecture only. The precise purpose is to allow the individual person to choose between probabilities of causes, of which one probability claims a cause-creator or an external finality. Such a probability, for lack of evidence, is open to the free choice that the individual person has to make during his life.

Canalising philosophical thought

The mainstreams of philosophical thought focus is made on identifying an object, the uncertainty of knowing, metaphysical problems and linguistic communication of ideas, illusion and reality.

If philosophy inquires into the nature of things, their origin and their finalities, we try in our effort to give sense to these questions. This sense resides in man's choice between two options namely to believe or disbelieve in an external finality. We are assuming here that all knowledge and its criticism lead to a state of an obligatory choice. The very uncertainty of knowledge, lack of proof, leads in its turn to man's own choice dictated by his own convictions.

The very fact that things in their nature, origin and finality are inaccessible to ultimate knowledge opens the question to denote significance of this inaccessibility. We are assuming that the precise significance is to leave to man the freedom of making up his own mind.

Philosophers throughout the ages, endeavouring to give sense for things, their existence, their nature, their origin and finalities, did not, so far, uncover any solid reality for anything. They simply had to make a choice, reaching a dead end where the wall of ignorance imposes itself on their minds. Every and each one of the known philosophers and thinkers from Buddha to Confucianism, to Protegra, Aristotle and Plato, to St. Paul and St. Augustine, to Laplace, Leibniz and Descartes, to Nietzsche Kant, Hegel, to Heidegger, Sartre and Russell, all had to make a choice between belief and disbelief in an external finality, a God-cause.

Limits for thinking?

Few scientists, neurologists and philosophers, attempt to explore what thinkingis. What are ideas? Where do they come from? What are their processes? What constitute ideas? How are they formed and how are they communicated among people? Why should they incite consciousness in our minds? What are the rules governing there presence, relations and processes? Are they inborn or acquired? And for what purpose do ideas exist? Are ideas limited only to our being?

The reality of an object and our perception of it:

Mathematics, as a perfect science that symbolises the how but does not explain the why, is considered, by some scientists, to have an ‘external reality' and is limited only to reason. Meanwhile; both terms ‘external' and ‘reality' remain to be defined, or at least identified superficially. It is an intelligible abstract conceptualisation of what is perceived as sensible and ultimately its intelligible, representation. The sensible is removed from what it is to the domain or representation. It is displaced twice; first from its presence on its own and apart from the observer and second from its conceptualisation in its sensible form to a symbolic representation on a different level. The essence of this logic assumes that the object itself has an existence of its own. This existence has its dimensions and characteristics to be what it is on its own. Our perception of it depends totally on our capacities of perception itself subject to our faculties of understanding and perceiving. We perceive the object through our filter of perception and cannot assess whether or not the object itself can exist on its own outside our perception. There are no criteria for measuring the exactitude of our perception. In this way whatever is perceived may or may not represent the reality of an object. How do we know an apple is an apple? What makes an apple an apple? What makes us sure that our perception is real? Means of identification of an object do not exist. Thus; we remain suspended on the threshold of ignorance. First, we do not know what an object is, and second we have no access to identify its validity.

The object itself, during this operation, loses its reality of its own being and becomes a subject to the interpretation of our mind. Likewise; both the ‘sensible' and the ‘intelligible' remain to be identified (an impossibility, view the unknown nature of substance or matter; the illusionary and uncertainty of the character of symbolic representation as means of communication). Humans communicate with sounds or symbolic utterances, voiced or unvoiced (representation), but these means are themselves enigmatic in presence, in origin and in finality of its representation-communication utility. What is the purpose of communicating with others? What are sounds symbols that represent communication? Does not communication of thought indicate purpose?

In our perspective we do not allude to an illusionary existence, but we inquire into things, its presence, its origin and possible finalities. By questioning the nature of things and the purpose of its being we are assuming that we can obtain better insight into knowledge. It is this very realisation that we want to discover, and perhaps confirm! If terms such as ‘nature' and ‘essence' do not identify a ‘thing' as it is, then either that these terms are useless (or approximate of meaning) or that the nature or essence of a thing is inaccessible to thinking (in its multifaceted dimensions as reasoning, imagining, being conscious) and ultimate knowledge becomes unattainable, at least up to the moment. Assuming that thought leads to knowledge which is not at all a certainty, for both thinking and knowledge remain enigmas. The terms ‘enigma' and ‘mystery' refer to a state of inaccessibility of the ‘human mind' to ‘ultimate knowledge', where the meaning of presence, origin as well as finality, of an object, is not established. Lack of such a solid meaning is produced not only by the enigma of matter and time, but also by the origin and evolution of our living universe. No one can explain, until this moment, what is this universe that we live in, neither its origin nor its cause. Life itself, manifested by multiple dimensions like appearance, development, evolution, movement, change, energy and disappearance, is a complete enigma. Furthermore, how did life appear, what is life, why should it appear and why should there be life? All these queries are still in the domain of total mystery.

We claim that man does not invent knowledge but discovers it and makes use of it, at a superficial exploiting level only. At best, man remains an observer-user. There are all requirements to think and interact and finally make a decision: objects to observe, mind to think, communicating symbols and will and freedom to decide.

A given example of the inaccessibility to the mysterious presence of languages linguists at present, accept the hypothesis of twelve families of languages but as to their origin, development and nature, they are still unknown. How a language is born and how does it develop is still unknown. Is the respiratory system is able to bring about a sound that denotes the name of a tree when observing an object such as the tree?

When mind confronts matter (represented in a form and a structure of an object), limits of the subject itself, in the ultimate analysis, become enfranchised.

Whatis matter?Whatis time?What isenergy? What islife? What ismovement? What ischange? These are unknown term-references of unknown objects. Should we reduce the constituting substance of matter to atoms, we are come closer to a dead end of the mystery, but in terms of scientific exigency. If we do accept scientific discoveries related to the characteristics of the atom itself and its potentialities, we are bound to enquire into what the atom is, and how did it come about, how do its laws maintain its presence in its varied forms, structures, and manifestations (e.g. energy, gravitation, radiation) ? Further questioning leads to enquire into the how question and also into the why question.

When scientific speculation reduces the atom further to its constituent known components (such as protons, neutrons, neurons, neufrons, electrons), and by some scientists to particle-substances such as quarks (substances estimated at three hundred thousand times smaller than the proton or neutron-whether super or normal), and strings (active substances estimated at 2-3 million times smaller than quarks- whether straight or in a lock), we are at the threshold of the unknown. What is beyond the Wall of Max Planck remains conjectural imaginary hypotheses. If an M-Theory or an All-Theory, e.g. Theory of Strings (that claims to explain everything) prescribes the elemental constituents of the universe from micro to macro dimensions, we are faced here with uncertainty since there is no evidence but merely acceptance or rejection, as in the Big Bang or Black holes and multiple or parallel universe hypotheses. The enigmatic presence and origin of the atom itself as well as the first carbon particle (dated back to 4.2-3.7 billion years) remains a mystery pending solution.

Symbolism

We consider in this study that the term symbolism refers to the representation of our minds of a thing in sign. A sign can be a sound as well as a line or a colour a letter or a character, a term or a number, or any other denotative representative indicator that can refer to an object, a thing or a phenomenon.

Scientific language uses letters and numbers to denote the sensible world as well as the intelligible. A mathematician uses numbers and signs to communicate his ideas. A painter uses line and colour and a musician uses music notes and sounds.

Our consciousness of the sensible is presented through ideas which are in turn expressed into terms or numbers and letters and can be expressed in line and colour and sounds.

Our conception of an object can be represented in linguistic terms that represent the idea of the object itself. We have no access to the viability of the object itself, only our consciousness of it. Whether the object exists or not outside our comprehension is not at all easy to assess. It can have an existence separate from our consciousness of it. This opens largely the question of whether or not our conception of an object is true or not real or unreal. From this illusionary consciousness emerges to destabilize our comprehension with regard to the object in question. What makes a tree a tree? What makes a planet a planet?

How do we know a tree is a tree? How do we know a planet is a planet? What are the criteria of our judgement? Who decides these criteria?

If we decide for example to strip off language from the identifiable and return to the primitiveness of its being we realise immediately the weakness of the language itself. This is easily established when we use a term denoting the same object but in a different language that we do not know. The term tree in English refers to a specified object. It is not human, nor animal or mineral, but a plant. Yet, although this is enough to classify it under the flora identity it is far from representing a consensus among all speakers of the English language. If we ask students of art to draw the same tree facing them in the garden we are bound to have as many representations of the tree as there are students in the classroom. No two impressions can be identical in the representation of two artists.

When science expresses symbolically an atom of water in terms of OH2 then this represents an identical representation accepted by all scientists. Here, there are no impressions but facts representation. Einstein's formula E= cm2 represents facts that can be measured and assessed concretely.

But in the example of the tree, the water molecule or the relationship between matter and energy remain in the realm of the unknown if we inquire after its presence, its origin and its governing laws and the material that makes these substances what they are. These component facts can reach its illusionary status should we inquire into the why questions. It can even attain its absurdity level if its presence is put to question.

A pine tree represents a certain category of trees, itself representative of the tree symbol and floras; ultimately the life-cycle. Should we reduce it to its constituent elements of roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, we are analysing its symbolic structure. For at every level of its development we are faced with symbolic systems that can be compared and contrasted with other types of trees.

At the level of its cellular structure and processes of survival (means of nutritional-soil-air-light-sun) that keep it alive and developing in a specific manner (stemming in earth and flourishing into the atmosphere), we are always facing a representative of a tree. Our image of this tree represents our symbolic representation needed for identification and communication. There is nothing in the pine tree that tells us it is a tree of pine. It is simply our agreement to identify it as such. It is a form, a shape that impinges its presence on our perception in line and colour.

Problematic of identification

Our problem is to identify an object. How do we identify an object? What are the criteria necessary to identify an object? How do we know an object is an object? What are the characteristics necessary for identification?

The real problem is that neither the means of identification, whether the mind or the life-sign are identifiable. The object itself, whether an apple a rose, a planet or a galaxy in terms of its presence, constituent-components, form, structure, origin and finality remain totality enigmatic, so far.

In this perspective the observed is unidentifiable. In other words unknown objects are inaccessible to knowledge.Matter remains an enigmatic unidentifiable element and unknown in its presence, its development, its form, its structure and its origin. It is inaccessible to this ‘ultimate knowledge'. Sometimes it is reduced to atoms, and recently to quarks and strings, but it remains an obscure object, inaccessible to our knowledge.