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Why does Knowledge limit us?

Tromps

Tromps

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 7, 2009
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It's true, there might be things we will never know, but why is that?

Is it that humans are not intelligent or as advanced enough to know what 'everything' is? Is it something we could never even understand? Or is it because the mysteries of this universe aren't meant to be known?

I am always asking myself Why? For example, Why is the universe here? Is this a question that can be answered with scientific reasoning or is it a spiritual answer I must fine within myself? This is just one little example, my brain is always asking why to everything. Why am I here? Is there a God? Why don't I know?

My main question though that I would ask to you Bluelighters is, do you think it is possible that our human race could ever know everything? If not, why not? Are the powers and forces of this universe so powerful that perhaps some things just simply can't be known, or that these mysteries of the universe are meant to be unknown by some higher power?

Are we really limited by knowledge? Or is knowledge endless?
 
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You are right that language limits us, but not in the way you think.

You ask if its possible to know everything. The misconception here is that every-"thing" can be known.
Here language misleads us to think that there is a limit on what we can know.

The way I see it, there is no limit on how much information you can draw out from phenomenon.

There is this author mentioned by Karen Armstrong in her latest book. I'm to lazy to look up the name =p
She quotes from one of his books that explains the difference between a mystery and a problem.
A problem presents itself to us as an obstruction toward a goal.
While a mystery envelopes us and brings us to the point where the inside and outside of things lose their meaning.

So we can equate information or knowledge with a problem, and the universe infinite dynamics as a mystery.
We cant solve the mystery because it facilitates the means by which we understand what is solved and unsolved.
 
^
i agree.

and will add from my experience:
knowledge is something that can come when you truly accept nothing as the answer.
though, a balance of knowledge and wisdom is important;
with only learned knowledge and less wisdom from experience,(or visa-versa) an important branch of insight might be lost.
 
i dont see them separated by much --
i see knowledge as what we gain with how we interpret wisdom, and wisdom gained with how we interpret experiences.
sounds one in the same, but one wont function with out the other.
 
In my view, the clear obstacle for assembling some body of knowledge that is complete or final is the fact that the observer is part of the system which she is observing. Consequently, in any act of observation, there will be a new emergent germ of meta-consciousness which fails to completely comprehend itself. As a corollary, this also necessitates that there is indeed an arbitrarily extendable set of truths to draw from a particular situation, as any situation in motion bears the effects of successive acts of observation.

ebola
 
for the sake of discussion

ebola? said:
In my view, the clear obstacle for assembling some body of knowledge that is complete or final is the fact that the observer is part of the system which she is observing. Consequently, in any act of observation, there will be a new emergent germ of meta-consciousness which fails to completely comprehend itself. As a corollary, this also necessitates that there is indeed an arbitrarily extendable set of truths to draw from a particular situation, as any situation in motion bears the effects of successive acts of observation.

ebola
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i agree for the most part with this.

in ''A'' state or act of observation and awareness, the matter of ones consciousness reflects and is viewed as what has been learned through academia, or other outer mediums of communication; felt & weighed as observed material world ethics.
- the same as what Quantum Perception noted; disassembling a "mystery" and a "problem".

there is indeed an arbitrarily extendable set of truths to draw from a particular situation
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~this is the little part i kept pausing on.
:-)
and curiously wish to expand on with what i've been taking one big gulp of the past few days... a crash-course epiphany.

observing & absorbing is a still silent action; which i feel brings forth wisdom to supplement the knowledge needed to understand the myriad's that might appear. these gleams presenting themselves are 'answers', & if this wisdom is on-par with knowledge -- the 'truth' is easier to decipher and thus' know.
______________________

so for me, with only knowledge alone, or knowledge kept with over-zealous abandonment of its power over oneself own self; the very same knowledge which we believe we control -- i imagine a vicious-circle and cycle, only to distract one from ones self, leave ones self, and in a sense devour or implode ones self.
 
knowledge is power.

so does power limit us?

absolute power corrupts absolutely?

having it all is not necessarily having it all at once
 
"Human life is limited, but knowledge is limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless is fatal; and to presume that one really knows is fatal indeed!" Chuang tzu


i know you were asking about the human race instead of an idividual but i believe it still applies. i also believe that their are things that our minds simply cant comprehend, as much as we would like and try to.
 
^That statement seems self-defeating to me. Is it not fatal to presume that one knows of the limits of human life or knowledge?
 
the universe is infinite. so knowledge of it is infinite. therefore, you cannot know it all because infinity literally means never ending. knowing it all means you've reached the end of what there is know.
 
the most important thing is asking...

i like to think that it is not the answer that is important, but the effort made to learn. there may never be answers to some questions that can be known for certain. to some degree, humans are limited in capacity: perhaps the questions arise from topics that may only be explained by subjective experience (e.g. cultural experiences), or perhaps there is only so much humans can understand about this vast universe in our meager three-dimensional terms.

for example, some questions regard moral or ethical circumstances that no two people could ever agree on. one's definition of 'good' or 'right' may not be the same of definition held by another. or as many philosophers, like derrida for example, may say, the answer to some questions may be 'yes' and 'no' at the same time; or, perhaps the answer is something else altogether. however, consider that some information/knowledge, no matter how minimal, is gained in an attempt to understand the nature of the question, whereas nothing is to be gained if no effort were made to find an 'answer'.

yet in an effort to respond to the original post, i would have to say that due to the fact that there are so many variables that limit our understanding, there may never be an answer to many things that is unanimously accepted and confirmed as truth. in that respect, i would have to say the knowledge of humanity is limited. but in response to your query, 'are we really limited by knowledge?', i would have to say that humanity'slack of knowledge is its limiting factor, but i hope the quest for knowledge is limitless.

'The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.'
~Martin Heidegger
 
^Why quote a nazi though? Knowledge is useful to an extent, but the more concepts and words we fill our heads with, the more prejudices and preconceptions fog our vision of direct experiential reality, which can never be articulated or intellectualized.
 
for example, some questions regard moral or ethical circumstances that no two people could ever agree on. one's definition of 'good' or 'right' may not be the same of definition held by another.
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The fact that two people can never agree does not mean that neither of them is right. If people are equivocating, then they are just talking at cross purposes; in this instance, it is entriely possible that, given his unstanding of the terms he uses, each one is correct.

^Why quote a nazi though?
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^Can you not think of a better rebuttal than an ad hominem?
 
Its not that it isn't a good or true quote or anything. I was about to get a Socrates quote tattoo until I remembered he was a pedophile.
 
i think that the endless pursuit and the constant quest for knowledge can be a limitation. i dont see that quote as self defeating but rather a caution against trying to know everything when we hardly know anything at all. Afterall its imposible to know the infinate. human potential is almost infinate and it would be a mistake to think otherwise;although, it still dosent change the fact that its an impossible task. just because we have huge potential its still true that humans have a set amount of time, and set amount of memory.
 
Afterall its imposible to know the infinate
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I'm afraid I'll have to do it again; this statement is also self-contradictory. If it is impossible to know the infinite, how do you have this knowledge about it (that it is impossible to know)?
 
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