The Myth of Perfect Knowledge

The Enlightenment, an 18th-century intellectual movement, inspired the belief that we can comprehend the objective world in full clarity. However, modern science has revealed that reality is far more intricate than initially thought. Within physics, the most objective of sciences, the idea of a complete description of objective reality is questioned.

An electron, for instance, can exist in a "quantum superposition," meaning it doesn't occupy just one location at a time. This does not imply that we could perceive being dislocated between two positions; we are always in one place, according to our perception. The properties of objects can differ depending on the observer or may not be defined at all.

Reality is not a simple collection of features; it's a network of relationships between different elements. The notion of an objective, knowable reality incompatible with the laws of physics is astonishing. Prior to the Enlightenment, the mind was considered external to the world, in an abstract realm of reason. However, quantum phenomena demonstrate that our minds are an integral part of the very nature we study.

Our knowledge is merely a collection of correlations intertwining various parts of nature. The Enlightenment's ideal of an objective reality independent of the observer is incompatible with physics. We are quantum processes interacting with other quantum processes, and our knowledge is a partial set of correlations between ourselves and the rest of the world.

This perspective can be illustrated by the statement "It's raining and Ann does not know it." The sentence makes sense when "Ann" is replaced with a first-person pronoun, highlighting that every proposition can only express the knowledge of the speaker or writer. No proposition is asserted from outside reality, as there is nothing outside reality.

Objective statements independent of any knower are merely fictions. Purely objective reality is a useful myth, but only a myth. All knowledge is inherently uncertain, with unavoidable margins of error. We might be wrong about even the most basic facts of our lives. My father once thought his first name was Franco until he discovered a birth certificate registered him as Giulio.

Humanity has collectively been wrong many times, from believing the sun revolved around the earth to recent discoveries about its orbit. Scientists, too, often turn out to be wrong, but in science, being reasonably sure is sufficient. Modern science provides a vast body of knowledge that is effective, sometimes surpassing all alternatives.

However, it does not offer absolute certainty or a definitive "Truth with a capital T." Within science, there are various ways of describing the same things, each valid in its own terms. A glass of water, for example, can be explained through physics, thermodynamics, chemistry, biology, particle physics, psychology, and economics.

Each account reflects a different aspect of the same object interacting with different parts of reality. No account can exhaustively capture the "ultimate truth" of the glass. Similarly, human beings can be understood as bodies, minds, or souls. These descriptions are not separate entities but different ways of perceiving the same entity, all parts of the same natural world viewed from various perspectives.

There is no metaphysical gap between body and soul, matter and spirit, or the physical world and the world of ideas and norms. In this sense, everything is fundamental from some perspective or another. The concept of "the equality of all things" originates from the second chapter of The Book of Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese philosophy text that embraces a similar perspective of perspectival and anti-foundational naturalism.