Models and the limits of knowledge
The Question We Cannot Imagine
The frightening limit may not be distance, energy, or time. It may be imagination.
UnknownWhat we actually know
Science assumes that better observations reveal the next question. That assumption has held for four centuries. It also has never been tested against a phenomenon designed by something smarter than us.
Where the extrapolation begins
Human cognition is a specific, evolved instrument with a working range, like any other. There is no principle guaranteeing that every true feature of reality can be represented in a primate brain, or in the mathematics that brain can invent. A dog can be shown a printed equation. Nothing further happens.
What the novel invents
This is the novel's quietest threat. Not that the answer is hidden, but that the question requires a concept no unaided human mind can form — and that the object has been patiently asking it for ninety-three years while humanity measures its diameter.
Questions to think about
- — How would we know if we were failing to understand something rather than simply lacking data?
- — If a concept cannot be held in one human mind, can it be held by a group? By a machine?
- — What should a civilisation do when it suspects it has reached the edge of its own imagination?
Where to read next
- — Cognitive closure debates in philosophy of mind (McGinn, Chomsky)
- — History of conceptual revolutions in physics
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