Implications of particulate knowledge

So, what’s the big deal? What impact does this have on the scientific process? It has a dramatic impact: we can only ask scientific questions about that which we have the capacity to observe. What we have the capacity to observe – what particulate knowledge we then go on to form – is a direct and explicit result of the mechanisms of the mind: programming, intent, and knowledge we’ve already formed. These all contribute to where we’ll look, how we will investigate, and what conclusions we will draw.

Our working paradigm for what is – our expectation of what can be known – is shaped entirely by our input. We have 5 sensory input pathways. That’s all. And yet, people will become violent in defense of the purity and totality of what can be known through scientific process, which only works with particulate knowledge. We do not know what lies beyond the veil of our 5 input pathways. We cannot even conceive of another sense that we could then search for it or test it.

I’ll restate it because it’s so important: we can only ask scientific questions about that which we have the capacity to observe, and what particulate knowledge we then go on to form, is a direct and explicit result of the mechanisms of the mind.

Make no mistake: we create knowledge – it is not independent of the processing of the mind and so will always bear the mind’s footprint. The senses and the mind colour data as it is transformed into particulate knowledge. Our principals, our endeavours, our initiatives, our goals, are entirely derived from the mind, its functioning, and its weakness.

What guarantee do we have that we are not simply creating our own meaning? What assurance is there that we are not simply refracting misinformation back through the same dull and feeble lens that we used to ingest the Universe as it presented itself to us?

The critical point is that science does not exist apart from the mind of man. The methods in question are human methods. Humans invented and devised them. Realistically, nothing in nature comes with a label that says “physics” or “biology” or “scientifically appropriate.” In fact, nothing has a label at all. Every label we use has been assigned by us. This means, since humans are imperfect and laughably incapable of apprehending all, every label and principal is open to re-consideration.

So, as you continue on, please keep this fundamental principal at the fore: particulate knowledge is inherently incomplete, is created by the mind, and so is subject to its limitations. This, again, is not to say that all knowledge is always unreliable and undependable – what I am advocating is skepticism. What I am suggesting is that perhaps we have placed too much confidence in one way of knowing at the expense of others. Perhaps we have ceased to be skeptical of a method that proclaims skepticism, and have not adequately asked ourselves the question, “Is this working as well as it could be – have we assumed too much.” Perhaps we have become too arrogant about and too deeply invested in one kind of knowledge, to the point where even the scientific process is suffering on account of it.

I believe we most certainly have. Why? Please stay tuned.

Cheers.

tags: particulate knowledge, philosophy, science