We Know Nothing, We Know Something

Every action has its reaction in its wake and every reaction must have some action before that. Nothing happens in this world without any cause. Cause precedes effect. Ascertaining this cause and effect duality is what we call science in our common sense and this is also the basic objective of philosophy. And herein merge the concept of science and philosophy and human knowledge is conceptualized holistically. Whereas science explores the natural world, philosophy delves deep into the truism of human world. Both human world and the natural world are the realms to be explored to ascertain the cause-effect duality of knowledge.
It is not that science has discovered everything or it can discover everything. That is science's apparent limitations. What is not known today can be or may be known some day. But we cannot say that what is hitherto unknown cannot be known and that is absolutely in the realm of mysticism or supernaturalism. So much so that supernaturalism or mysticism will dictate terms to what is unknown or what cannot be known in absolute terms. Has the supernaturalism or mysticism has that kind of power to reckon with? In actual reality there is nothing to be called supernatural or mystic. If we carry the burden of supernaturalism or mysticism, we must say that it is superstition. Superstition is nothing but our dark ignorance which leads us to the realm of blind faith. It blinds our vision in such a way that we cannot see reason in exploring truth.

We know many mysteries of the nature and we do not know many mysteries of nature. What we do not know is generally wrapped in mystery and what is wrapped in mystery can be or may be unwrapped to our knowledge with the development of our inquisitive and cognitive prowess. With that power of empirical knowledge at our disposal we have unraveled many mysteries of the universe and with that power only we can still unravel many mysteries. This is a never-ending process and ever-evolving principle of our knowledge system. Not only that, that process is constituted heuristically so as to find out our desired truth by supposition and assumption standing to the test of our past gains of knowledge and experience. Even then we cannot say that we know the truth or we have absolute knowledge.

Actually what we know as truth is nothing but approximate to truth and the knowledge of the absolute is just but relative. In the history of epistemology we have known many truths or knowledge that had later turned hostile to the new challenges posed by the later development. So, knowledge or truth is evolutionary and is always evolving. In that sense, truth is approximate to truth and the knowledge of the absolute is relative. We always know something of everything but not everything of everything. And if that is so, we never know the truth and we cannot know anything as such. The “suchness” of truth remains elusive to us. This mystery drags us on to an unending odyssey into the mystery of the universe.