Now that I know everything...

There is some part of my mind that likes to see myself as a clever person. It probably stems from school days when a teacher sent me to a psychiatrist to have me evaluated because I was doing very little in class and hardly ever did any homework. The psychiatrists evaluation was that I was actually quite intelligent. In fact, I was bored and didn't do the work because it didn't really stimulate me. For years I didn't really know how to work hard and I still have problems with it to this day.

This has given me an inflated opinion of my own intelligence. I have lots of knowledge stuffed in my head about a wide variety of things, most of it pretty useless. Much of it wouldn't even help me win a pub quiz! But what I have been thinking for some time is that I don't really know anything at all! I can regurgitate knowledge that other people have given me or I have read but I don't really have any way of being absolutely certain that one little bit of it is true!

Of course, it's useful to have such knowledge. I couldn't do my job without it. The thing is it doesn't make me in any way superior to someone who doesn't have such knowledge.

Modern science is built on a tree of knowledge. At the root is a few basic assumptions about the way the universe is. Above that are mathematics and pure sciences like physics and somewhere above those are the less easily defined sciences like psychology. The whole tree is also sprinkled with assumptions.

Most of these assumptions we assume are correct because they make sense. Einsteins theory of special relativity is based on two such assumptions. One of them makes sense, the other has been shown to be true by experiments. But those experiments aren't really absolute proof. You can show that the speed of light is the same in any frame of reference to a limited degree, but you can't really show it for all frames of reference. Do we know for sure that the same holds true on the other side of the universe?

I don't want to get too technical here. I'm just making a general point about the nature of knowledge. Of course, we believe most of these basic assumptions to be true because it is convenient to do so. If we didn't, there would be absolutely nothing to hold on to as basic truth. Would that be such a terrible thing? It would certainly not help us increase our knowledge about the world and universe around us. But is would be a form of letting go. We can assume that the assumptions are correct without believing them. This is a form of letting go.

One of the major criticisms levelled at religion by those of a scientific mind is that it is founded on belief in something that can't be proven. Well, the same is true of the whole of science. It is a belief system like any other. It is fundamental to human nature to believe things without proof. It is quite unsettling to let go of all that belief. There is an alternative and that is not to believe it but to trust it. Maybe that's what many scientists do. They don't believe the speed of light is always constant but they trust that it is.

If I accept that the basic assumptions I make about the world around me may not be true, I can still trust those assumptions to the point where I can see they are not true. It also means I can accept that I really don't know anything at all!