Palsis, J. (2008). Limitations in Knowledge

1. Man by nature is curious. It is natural for men to try to know almost everything. Man has used what he knows to make his life comfortable. However, man's actions have put nature in an uncomfortable situation, which is the isolation of man from nature. The way man views phenomena has changed throughout time because of the different changes in the way man interprets causes and effects. The way man views nature now is partly the reason for this uncomfortable situation.

2. Objectivization and fragmentation of knowledge are putting man in this uncomfortable situation. Objectivization means that nature is seen as having nothing to do with humans. Objectivization removes the responsibility man has for nature; when something is objectivized it will mean nothing to men. Fragmentation is the closure of the different fields of knowledge to each other. A biologist can think that biology has all the answers to every question. However, an economist can also think the same and ignore the ideas of the biologist, therefore creating a gap between the two. Objectivization and fragmentation result in the isolation of man from nature, as well as the isolation of men from each other.

3. According to Miller (2003), up to around the time of Bacon, events in the natural world had a cosmic significance that tended to unite all these events, giving them a kind of unified meaning. In the time of Egypt, the unifying meaning was religious: men took changes in nature as omens from the gods.

Around the time of Aristotle until the Middle Ages, the unifying element was the metaphysical act of being. The interpretation of the act of being ranged from the Platonic concept of the visible world's participation as reflections of ideal concepts that had real existence in an ideal world, to the Thomistic idea of the participation of all beings in the act of being that had its perfection in the Ultimate Cause, God. In contrast to the ancient world, the Aristotelian world allowed for natural causes explaining natural effects, but looked further into an ultimate cause such as God.

Knowledge in the ancient and in the Aristotelian worlds had deep ethical consequences. Not necessarily with the Baconian world. With Bacon came the idea that the visible natural world was sufficient for knowing cause and effect; metaphysical ultimate causes and ethics may be valid ideas on the personal level, but they serve little or no purpose in understanding nature. Nature should be known objectively. In the Baconian view, we should close all our connections and relations to nature to know it without bias.

Miller (2003) discussed this evolution of "how we know" using the the famous case of an "epidemic" of deformed frogs that occurred in Minnesota in 1995. When the outbreak started, environmentalists jumped to the conclusion that commercial pesticides caused the deformations. Environmentalists may have said this partly because they wanted to influence the government's decision about pollution. Other researchers came and proposed other causes for the deformities, such as radiation from the sun and parasites called trematodes. Other researchers blamed the trematode outbreak as resulting from eutrophication.

In essence, everyone was trying to blame everybody except themselves. Miller blames this on objectivization and fragmentation. Aside from the isolation of man from nature, men have also isolated themselves from each other, ignoring the ideas of each other.

4. Objectivization and fragmentation have, in a sense, demonstrated their use as powerful tools to know and control nature. After all, a biologist concentrating on a biological problem long enough can discover an indefinite series of causal chains extending from the atomic to the ecological level. The string of scientific achievements in all modern sciences including biology is proof of the power of objectivization and fragmentation.

Inherent to objectivization and fragmentation, however, is the idea of bounded knowledge, which means that knowledge is limited. The first boundary put up by Bacon was that between the physical and the metaphysical sciences; more boundaries were set up between fields within the physical sciences themselves. But even these boundaries ignore another boundary set up from the time of the ancients and respected by many even today: the boundary between what man can know and what are beyond his ability to discover: the supernatural truths.

Man certainly must not stop from exploring because there are truths he can not discover by the methods of the physical or even the metaphysical sciences. But, to remain confined within the boundaries of a field of knowledge presents the temptation to see the world through filtered glasses and to deny the contribution of other fields.

Going further, the supernatural truths allow men to transcend the boundaries of the measurably and observable, allowing them not only to see a bigger picture of the world, but also to see the ethical implications of their role. The ethical implication is not only a bigger picture; it is also a lasting picture, as the supernatural is essentially beyond time.

5. Man can be good in having knowledge. However, man is not able to acquire perfect knowledge. Instead, man can choose a specific field of knowledge and specialize in it. But we should always remember to integrate what we know to other fields of knowledge. As for the supernatural realities, we have to recognize their importance. Since such realities are beyond the immediate verification of measurement and are highly conditioned by personal experiences and culture (as well as objective realities), the first step in understanding them is through dialogue.

Dialogue, in the end, is an essential step in avoiding the narrow-minded views, while enabling us to enjoy the usefulness of treating nature objectively and specializing in our favored fields of knowledge.

References:
Miller, G.L. (2003). "Dimensions of deformity". In Keeping Things Whole: Readings in Environmental Science. The Great Books Foundation, Chicago, IL, USA, pp. 275-288.

(Julius Palsis is a student at the University of Asia and the Pacific. julius_palsis@yahoo.com)