Knowing the unknowable

Probably one of the most excruciating results of the human condition comes from the conflict between our insatiable curiosity, which push us to try to know everything, and the tenuous grasp that we have on reality. The French philosopher René Descartes described it very clear in his 1637 book "Discourse on the Method" when he wrote the famous statement cogito ergo sum (I think and therefore I exist): since there is no doubt that I am thinking (regardless of how we defined the concept of thinking) and the thoughts cannot come out of nowhere, there must be a source for the thoughts, which is me. But beyond this basic statement there is very little more that can be said with certainty.

One big part of the problem is our difficulty to tell apart the things we know from the things we believe, even if we accept a fairly loose definition of knowledge of just "standing to logic". I know that the Earth is curved because I have seen it every time I have taken a plane, but I do not actually know if it is approximately a sphere. The latter is a (rather reasonable) believe derived from satellite imagery and many other sources, but it is not a piece of information I can vouch for: these images could all have been forged to make us believe that the world is spherical. In fact, this kind of discussion has been going on for more than 50 years about the Apollo landings on the Moon. However, I choose to believe that they happened based on the evidence of the multiple reflectors of the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment which were deposited on the surface of the Moon in successive expeditions. It would be impossible to get such sharp reflections from the Moon precisely in those locations and nowhere else unless those devices truly are there. There is a quite detailed explanation of how to repeat the experiment on episode 23 of the third season of The Big Bang Theory, aptly called "The Lunar Excitation". But otherwise we all navigate in dangerous balance between the things that we reasonably know and the ones that we just believe we know.

Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

The second problem of knowledge is that, like in the case of native speakers explaining their language to a foreigner, we often do not know how we know the things we know. In the case of languages, as with many other physical phenomena, it is just a matter of statistical inference: if we always here a certain expression, if we always see objects falling to the ground under the effect of gravity we eventually infer that it is the way things are, even if we do not know why they are that way. This is the "curse of expertise" that we have mentioned before, which make the transfer of knowledge even harder.

But if the difficulties above were not enough, when trying to know other people they get compounded with our own volatility. We all tend to think of ourselves as a single entity with well defined properties the persist over time, pretty much as we were a adjustable wrench, with its metal, its weight and perhaps a bit of variation in the position of the jaw to fit nuts of different sizes, but nothing could be farther from the truth: we are barely able to predict our own reactions (even if we believe so), our ideas and opinions can undergo significant changes over time and, what is even more intriguing, they are so heavily influenced by the environment that we can effectively be one person in the morning in the office and a completely different one in the evening chatting with friends.

If we now address the task of getting to know another person, we have to be aware of this volatility: knowing just one version of them can leave a lot of room for nasty surprises. Some years ago I had a business trip with a colleague of mine with whom I had never traveled before even if we had worked together for more than five years. The task extended over several working days, so we, not wanting to be a burden on our hosts, decide to spend the evening on our own rather than "forcing" them to organize some social activity together. When I asked my colleague what he would like to do (I implicitly assumed it would be the two of us together) he asked to drop him of at a shopping mall where he wanted to buy a few things. I, valuing the company much more than any activity I could undertake on my own, waived it away and stated that I had no better plans, so I could stay with him and just browse around while he was shopping, but instead he insisted on actually been dropped (and left alone). Of course, I did not insist any further and took good note for future occasions that he was very private when shopping. And this facet had nothing to do with the friendly face he always showed in the office.

However, the best example of the unknowable is, by far, your life partner. In my case, I have shared my life with Karen for more than 24 years and, over time, I have discovered in her different personas based on the situations we faced together. Some facets appear out of the blue while others just ceased to exist. The rest have been constantly evolving and I have learned to love most of them, and just to deal with the few that do not fully agree with me. This afternoon we suddenly found ourselves discussing about our differences in debating styles, how one might be slower to present the argument for the sake of precision, while the other would go straight to the point even if it later requires additional clarification. And all the time, as we were exchanging ideas, I could only wonder about how it was possible that, after such a long time, we were still redefining our relationship, like moving the boundary stones of adjacent fields, getting to know one another better. Because we might be unknowable in the end, but that is not going to stop me from trying. Have a nice weekend.