Knowledge

There was a time in Europe when people spoke of polymaths. In Germany, this would be Alexander von Humboldt, or Goethe; in France, an Enlightenment thinker; in Italy, the Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci. In antiquity, Aristotle. Surely there are wise people in many cultures and epochs of whom history tells us that they knew everything one could have known at the time.

Of course, that is nonsense. But this narrative serves a longing. We want to know everything, yet have the feeling—rightly—that we cannot know everything, and have a romantic longing for a time when this was apparently still possible. It does not bother us that knowledge itself was limited—there and then. But it reassures us that it apparently would have been possible to know everything. Olympus could be ascended, the mountain climbed on which the tablets of the law would be received. Yet there is already the story of the building of the Tower of Babel.

The Building of the Tower of Babel

In Babel, people wanted to know everything; they built a tower that was to contain all knowledge. The result was a confusion of languages. Knowledge fell apart into many languages. Nobody speaks them all. In the Bible, this is presented as a punishment from God. Arrogance was supposedly punished as a warning, and humanity shown its limits. But if we had not allegedly been punished by God, might we perhaps still have been able to know everything? This is the central question. Would it have been possible in principle? Or will it become possible in the future through the singularity?

In philosophy, the question of the beginning of knowledge arises. On what foundation can we build knowledge? Logic, ethics, aesthetics? In science, it is about the great unifying theory that brings together the microcosm and macrocosm. When it comes to the question of human nature, things already become rather confusing. Do we want to approach this religiously or spiritually, or perhaps in Darwinian terms or through information technology after all; can history shed light on it for us? We are utterly lost when it comes to our aesthetic thinking. Plurality and media overkill offer sheer sensory overload, which we seem to enjoy. Ignorance is bliss.

Driving Force

It seems so clear that we cannot know everything. Why, then, do we keep trying? What drives us? A longing? Were we really expelled from paradise and are looking for the way back? Or are we wired evolutionarily so that we cannot do otherwise? Does the feeling of knowing much give us satisfaction, power, or calm? How do we get the idea that our small brain, at a little over 1 kilogram and quite modest compared to elephants (4 kilograms) or sperm whales (9 kilograms), can decipher the universe? Are we perhaps actually in a simulation, and reality is not at all what we think? The various forms of skepticism offer beautiful thought experiments here. Perhaps my senses are manipulated from outside, perhaps I am alone in the universe, perhaps I have not yet awakened at all and am waiting in an antechamber for the next level…

We follow a mania for achievement. When someone has brought forth something new, he or she is celebrated by society. That drives us. We are fascinated by outstanding achievements. We worship them, or enter into competition. Only a few are indifferent to them. Perhaps this is what distinguishes us from our intelligent fellow inhabitants of the planet.

We create needs in order to satisfy them: knowledge, culture, enjoyment, sensuality, social life, power… We strive for more. Buddhism sees the root of suffering here. The only way to end this suffering is to bring wanting, striving, desire to rest.

Deleuze sets becoming against this. Instead of further systematizing the world and giving our pathologies free rein, we can attend to all the things we can become, become different, being instead of having. We are flexible, fluid, moist.

I feel that the Upanishads still hold much in store here. Wanting to know everything also contains a longing for unity. In the twentieth century, we experienced that something very totalitarian inheres in this unity. When was this unity broken? When were we expelled from paradise? Can this be located historically? Is this an absurd question? Can the Fall be reversed or dissolved?