The Paradox of Knowledge

Time in its chronological sense doesn’t mean much in this context, the moment/day or whatever one may ascribe it as when one comes to realize the ‘paradox of knowledge’ and trust me understanding something is nowhere the same as realizing something. Understanding something is most of the time a second-hand rational exercise whereas realizing something is utterly first-hand, personal with emotional implications, and may even leave its physical mark. Whereas understanding gives you a perspective obviously wider than what you had earlier, realizing something, on the other hand, frees you of perspectives. Understanding though looks like an incremental process but is negative in its implication as it adds into your knowledge in the sense of increasing your capabilities of discerning right from wrong, facts from fiction, truth from falsehood but realizing, on the other hand, is neither analytical or synthetic it resolves and nullifies the knot of inquiry or question. In understanding, you may have found the answer but the still the question remains (though qualified with an answer) but in realization, the question itself is negated and loses its existence even as an abstraction.

But any way coming back to the point of not just understanding but realizing the paradox of knowledge. What is the Paradox of Knowledge? To explain it in a sentence I would take the help of an underrated but great physicist and philosopher (at least in my subjective opinion) who explained it as “We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” [in Scientific American (1992) vol. 267].

I and many of us thinking people understand this and deeply so. The more we come to know about the world, the universe, existence, self, and everything, the more we also come to understand that there are still more quantitatively and qualitatively greater things to know and to be understood. It is a paradox as more you know comes with the knowledge that you know less relatively speaking.

I’ve rationally understood this for years now, but it was only today something triggered an old rambling which I thought I’ve resolved but as it appears I had not completely. I meticulously held that I’ve acquired enough knowledge to resolve it and in time the realization will follow sooner or later. But I, today realized the rambling (I wouldn’t call it a question) which for me is very pertinent to the question of the meaning of life and how’s is one to live it, had still to be sufficiently resolved or at least made peace with.

The confidence (though not the egoistical kind) that comes with years of conscious study and contemplation which spans for more than a decade and a more than honest endeavour to gain the knowledge in this regard, was instantly shattered. And It was as if I was caught napping red-handed (and believe me I was actually, napping and it got me up).

As it is with me, on realizing this commotion within, I immediately sat to review the decade of study to figure out the gaps, what all might have I missed. While I was sitting almost mindlessly going to go about this a strange feeling took over and I felt like recording the moment and how exactly I was feeling. It felt as if I was carrying the heavy burden of knowledge with all its struggles of endless learning and unlearning; cycles of being and becoming and yet I was blank. The very act of struggle, the understanding, and the knowledge which is its fruit has matured in me, somewhere become a part of me and who I’m but still hasn’t even started to ripen.

And that’s when the realization of the paradox of knowledge dawned upon me. I think I realize what would have moved Socrates to say so eloquently that the only thing he knows for certain is that he doesn’t know anything or when Heraclitus says “you can’t step in the same river twice”. They weren’t fuelling skepticism but were just expounding the existentialist exigency of epistemological questions on acquiring knowledge and the act of acquiring.

So I guess it is going to be the same as Sisyphus again here too. You roll that rock which gradually turns into a boulder as the path gets steeper and it rolls back down yet the act of rolling it up the mountain somehow puts you in solace for the brief moments as the rock rolls down again. And there is a smile playing on your tired face as you walk down the hill to fetch it back up.

What else you be doing if there was no rock to push uphill? Would there be any solace without that rock? At least you have figured out which rock to push uphill, I hope!