How Much Do We Know As Humans (dedicated To Anastrophe)

[polycarp]

Hello Gardeners, this is just a write-up I put together the other day and found it worthwhile to dedicate it to a man (Anastrophe) whose depth of intelligence has always intrigued me, since i joined the Garden.



Throughout history, man has always dared to explain the origin of the universe as well the earth in which we live in. From the ancient men who looked at the night skies and imagined it to be the home of supernatural beings to men of thought like Willem de Sitter, Alexander Friedmann, and Georges Lemaître (Big bang Theory), Immanuel Kant and Laplace (nebular hypothesis), F.R. Moulton and T.C. Chamberlain (Planetesimal hypothesis), Fred L. Wipple (dust-cloud hypothesis) etc who in various submissions hypothesized how our Universe/earth began, we still seem to be in the woods.

In the quest for answers, man has landed on the moon, sent several crafts to probe deep space, dived to the depths of the oceans, dissected and roasted plant and animal parts, purified and synthesized various liquids and gases etc but the multi-million dollar question still stands “how much do we know as humans”. The answer to this question had been given severally by great men of various ages and civilizations. For example, the great William Shakespeare wrote “In nature’s infinite book of secrecy, a little I can read”. While the great Isaac Newton who marveled the people of his generation and beyond had this to say “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in and now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before men”. Also, the most important name in modern advanced physics, Albert Einstein himself said “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible”.

Four main parameters have constituted man’s tools in his search for answers namely; Religion, Philosophy, Arts and Science, all of which seem to be in conflict with one another in many instances. For example in defending philosophy, Bertrand Russell wrote “But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides, this No Man’s Land is philosophy. Furthermore, religion got a bashing from Jiddu Krishnomurti who described it as “the frozen thoughts of men from which they build temples” as well as Ernest Gellner who wrote “A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling, a philosopher who loses his, redefines his subject”. On the other hand, Montesquieu in a rather pacifying presentation wrote, “The scientist must accept all forms as inevitable results of the nature of things, the philosopher sets up an ideal type to which he hopes reality can be made to correspond”.

Various religions are practiced by man in his search for the truth, with most explaining the existence of divine beings or deities which the three largest religions in the world (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) refer to as God. Philosophy on the other hand composes of men who think and put forward ideas explaining all natural phenomena. The works of Greek thinkers like Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle represent philosophical submissions of the how’s and whys of nature. Art speaks through poetry, sculpture painting etc. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Paradise lost and Paradise regained of John Milton all represent epics by great poets to provide answers on how it all began. Science on the other hand, is simply knowledge about the world, especially based on examination and testing of facts. In this case man asks questions and obtains his answers based on convincing facts and empirical evidence. Today, science has become so broad and advanced that’s its so difficult, if not impossible to keep track with the latest developments. From the days of John Dalton who first conceived the atom, Isaac Newton’s theory of Universal Gravitation, Einstein’s theory of relativity to the current search for a unified theory (through superstring theory), that is keeping present day physicists like Edward Witten and Stephen Hawking busy in the lonely outskirts of thought, science has being attempting to provide answers to the workings of all natural phenomena.

Today, man can travel at a speed that’s faster than sound’s, thanks to supersonic and ultrasonic aircrafts and the human lifespan has dramatically increased, following developments in both preventive and curative medicine, but we still seem to be in the doldrums as far as knowledge about ourselves is concerned let more the wider universe as philosopher Immanuel Kant once wrote “Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me” while the mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote “man is a bundle of unknowable contradictions”. Are we as humans, going to continue searching for answers or resign from our age-long quest? The former seems to the order of business, as our world seems to be driven by the words of Oscar Wilde who wrote, “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or nation” as well as, Leo Tolstoy, who wrote, “The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science of explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it”.

However, in all our search, the bottom line is that we may never reach the promise land but to just go as far as our knowledge and abilities warrant as J.W. Goeth cleverly puts it; “Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe but to find out where the problems begin, and then to take his stand within the limits of the intelligible”.





I’ll like to end this article with a poem by Hilfield Dorset, which in a way summarizes my thesis:



At first men try with magic charm

To keep the earth

To keep their flock and herd from harm

And bring new young to birth

Then to capricious gods they turn

To save from fire or flood

Their smoking sacrifices burn

On altars red with blood

Neat philosophers and sage

A settled plan decree

And prove by thought and sacred page

What nature ought to be

But nature smiles-a sphinx-like smile-

Watching their little day

She waits in patience for a while

Their plans dissolve away

Then came those humbler men of heart

With no completed scheme

Content to play a modest past

To test, observe, and dream

Till out chaos come in sight

Clear fragments of a whole

Man learning nature’s ways alright

Obeying can control

The great design now glows afar

But yet its changing scenes

Reveal not what the pieces are

Nor what the puzzle means

And nature smiles-still unconfessed

The secret thought she thinks

Inscrutable she guards unguessed

The riddle of the sphinx

[anastrophe]

gee whiz. not sure how to react to having this 'dedicated' to me. besides thinking that you're daft, as i'm almost a textbook example of a pseudo-intellectual, rather than a gen-u-wine intellectual. i'm a dilettante, with no intellectual rigor, who only learned the rule of "its/it's" a year ago, at the age of 44. a college dropout, very poorly 'read', with only one halfway-decent gift, that of keeping UNIX servers running.



i generally sum up my knowledge as 'knows a little about a whole lot of things, but knows a lot about very little'. see "dilettante", above.



but perhaps i protest too much.

[polycarp]

anastrophe wrote: gee whiz. not sure how to react to having this 'dedicated' to me. besides thinking that you're daft, as i'm almost a textbook example of a pseudo-intellectual, rather than a gen-u-wine intellectual. i'm a dilettante, with no intellectual rigor, who only learned the rule of "its/it's" a year ago, at the age of 44. a college dropout, very poorly 'read', with only one halfway-decent gift, that of keeping UNIX servers running.



i generally sum up my knowledge as 'knows a little about a whole lot of things, but knows a lot about very little'. see "dilettante", above.



but perhaps i protest too much.
He he he! the man himself has spoken. Aristotle once said that "men of substance are not dressed in gold but it's when you scratch them that you know they're made of gold". In the same vein, someone once siad that "knowledge must be respected and those who presnt it". But quotes fit you exactly even though you are too wise and humble to admit it. About college, maybe you dropped out as a result of principles or something best known to you but you and I know that it was not because you coulkdn't cope. Charles Darwin (father of evolution) dropped out of Cambridge, where he was initially enrolled as a medical student. So my learned friend, your claim of not being who I take for for, is but like a writing on sand, which only requires the wind to clear it.

[gmc]

posted by polycarp

Hello Gardeners, this is just a write-up I put together the other day and found it worthwhile to dedicate it to a man (Anastrophe) whose depth of intelligence has always intrigued me, since i joined the Garden.


I've always seen anastrophe as a multi- talented mega-being much like my good self

[polycarp]

gmc wrote: posted by polycarp



I've always seen anastrophe as a multi- talented mega-being much like my good self


It's indeed refreshing to know that you also see him (Anastophe) in that light. A goldfish, they say, has no hiding place.

[kumininexile]

gmc;47460 wrote: posted by polycarp



I've always seen anastrophe as a multi- talented mega-being much like my good self


I'll be happy to second that.

[Galbally]

Yes, good old anastrophe is a clever fella, and nice lad, its obvious, his name alone is a dead giveaway. :-6