T(r)oy's Marbles

What I mean to get at by this is a struggle that’s hinted at in the question you posed; specifically, the struggle we all have of “knowing a thing for certain.” I find this interesting because this serves to illustrate that the postmodern critique of modernity’s obsession with “certainty of knowledge” (and claim that we can obtain certainty of knowledge) is valid--at least in partial respects.

So, let’s explore this just a little bit now. Forgive me if it seems like we’re off on some “rabbit trail”, but I think you’ll find that an exploration of the larger issue at-hand (that of the possibility of knowing things for certain) is a valuable one. And, as I said, this is really a question of postmodernity as it relates to modernity, so to address this issue we need to look at that a little bit. Here goes:

Let it be remembered that, in modernity, humanity became consumed with a relentless quest for knowledge (like never before). What was, perhaps, unique about this quest was that it was a quest of individual autonomy (that is: “nobody is going to tell me what to believe. I’m going to find out for myself.”) Add to this the fact that it was a quest for certainty regarding such knowledge, and you have a unique mixture. And, even further, add to this the subject matter regarding such a quest for certain knowledge and you have a time like no other. What I’m hinting at here is the uniqueness of modernity’s scientific revolution (a prime example of “the principle of autonomy”, a quest for certainty, and a wholly “fresh” subject matter). Follow the path, and one could justifiably say that modernity’s quest for certain knowledge ends with the creation of The Periodic Table of the Elements (constructed around the turn of the 20th century).

Philosophically speaking, by the time the world had gotten to this point, humans had already moved beyond confidence in our ability to know intangible reality with certainty. In the late 1800’s, Friedrich Nietzsche expressed this in the terms of nihilism. But his philosophy was merely a deduction, let us not forget, from the philosophy of Kant in the 1700’s, who constructed a dualistic world in his system. That is to say, Kant divided reality into two categories: the invisible world and the tangible, empirical world. Then, Kant observed that our knowledge of the intangible world was limited. That, of course, was correct, but what proved so devastating to our theory of knowledge (our epistemology) was the observation that you can’t establish principles concerning the nature of the invisible world solely through observation of the visible world. We can, perhaps, glean insights concerning the invisible world through empirical means, but these are only “glimpses” and the empirical methodology proves, in the end, insufficient. So, Kant, being a Christian (and not wanting to throw out the possibility that there are objective, universal, invisible truths), asserted that one needed to rely on “pure reason” to establish such truths. (And he defined “pure reason” in part as “that which is untainted by dependence upon empirical methodologies.”).

Though Kant was well-meaning, and sought to defend the idea of “absolute, universal, objective truth”, there was at least one problem with his methodology: there is no such thing as “pure” reason. It is always being clouded by something else.

I believe this is why science became so important. It was the only thing we could know for certain. Maybe that’s because science is sometimes thought of as a quest towards a summary of certainties concerning all that is tangible, quantifiable and “real”. If we can’t attain certainty of knowledge about the intangible, we may as well spend our time on what we can know.

We can know, for example (so the “materialistic” worldview goes), that all matter is composed of atoms. And we can know that atoms have sub-components that we call “sub-atomic particles”. And we can know that these particles are varied, so we can give them names to express this variance: protons, neutrons, and electrons. We can know that the mass of atoms varies according to the number of each atom’s protons, neutrons and electrons.

Now, if we can just figure out how all this works together…

And, so we enter a key stage in our theory of knowledge: The establishment of The Uncertainty Principle by a scientist named Heisenberg. Among other things, The Uncertainty Principle tells us that, scientifically speaking, there will always be limits to our knowledge of a thing. One reason for this is the fact that the act of observing something changes the object that is being observed. So, now we can’t even really know the true nature of material reality (other than the fact that all reality shifts when we put ourselves into the equation)! Scientifically speaking, our apprehension of truth is relative.

Let that fact soak in: Scientists are now adrift on a sea of uncertainty. It took about three centuries to construct their little “reality chart” that can be memorized by any 14-year-old in about six months (three centuries to construct a graph that contains “things we know for certain”), yet now it is generally acknowledged by the scientific community that all those carefully measured numbers may be mere “guesses” at “what really lies beneath.”

If this is what is being said now about material reality, is it any wonder, then, that, regarding questions of “knowing God’s will” (something so “intangible” and “spiritual” and “inaccessible”) one is left with a sense of “despair”? “It’s hopeless!” one may say. “I have the sense that God has some desires and wishes concerning the trajectory my life should take, but how on earth am I supposed to tap into God’s heart when folks in this world can’t even tap into the secrets of a rock, a tree, a blade of grass, the wind or a cloud? God seems as inaccessible as the sun!”

How, indeed, are we to know?

Let’s stop there for the day and ruminate on what we’ve established thus far. Then, tomorrow, I’ll propose an ancient foundation for a new theory of knowledge, in light of the fact that modernity’s foundation seems to be crumbling from underneath us.

Until then,
Troy

Click here to read part 2 of Discerning God's Will.