Little Shop of Knowledge

I must be thankful with Kitty Fergusson and her work in The Fire in the Equations, for I can’t remember when the last time that I encountered a work that gave me both the pain and pleasure of dealing with so many deeply rooted “truths” in such an unbiased way. At points she sounds like a hardcore atheist while at others it could very well be the priest in my local parish speaking.

 

It is no secret that I’ve been raised in a Catholic home; I was baptized, I did my First Communion, My Confirmation, and we try to go to church almost every Sunday just to give some examples of the traditional sacraments that I’ve participated in. Like every quest upon ultimate truth, I’ve had my ups and downs, and I’ve been through moments of devoted belief, no belief at all, and just constant questioning. Of course, it is uncomfortable to go through these processes of questioning, when you finally think you have a decent answer one impression can shift your world upside down. This happened to me at one point in the book. I felt a deep sorrow because I made the mistake of believing that “I knew” but the reading proved me wrong one more time. I started lamenting my beliefs the way a child laments the truth about Santa Claus. After some time of feeling this sadness I realized I’d learned a lesson so I took my booklet and wrote:

 

“My faith in God is too weak. I’ve questioned very little and I’ve based what I believe in mere feelings. I know that sometimes “it all makes sense”, but “sometimes” is not enough. If God is there I want to understand him as much as possible, talk to him, create my life with his help and example.

 

At first I was sad when I saw a representation of God as a man of white skin, beard and long hair. “He’s too disgustingly human” I thought, “So he can’t be God…or maybe he can.” Either way, seeing him depicted in such a human way made me think that perhaps He’s just a human invention. Also, if he does exist why are there people that can’t get to know about him, therefore they can’t ask him to intervene in their lives and they may be suffering (or maybe they’re happy…) I don’t knooow! God, answer me please!!!

 

However, there’s no reason to be sad, I just gave a step forward in having a more sincere faith, more real.”

 

Yeah, and that’s just one of the things that sort of make sense outside of my head. Whatever this book made me question became such a labyrinth that writing it down would’ve been even more confusing, so I won’t get into too much details of the whole journey that my head has been going through. I  also haven’t read ALL of the book, which is why I feel like this whole thing has not been concluded and I’m once again “stuck” at a point of comfort I do have the feeling though that I’ll advance, but yet feel it’s not concluded yet, I wonder how deep I can go during my lifetime into this quest, but I must keep exploring. Then, from what I did read, I fell in love with Kitty’s approach. She tumbled down many of my paradigms I had regarding scientists and their beliefs, and the claims of many atheists I’ve met, and even claims of very religious people. Just because we regard scientists, priests, and what not as “experts” we let them do the fun job of exploring and reasoning it all out. This quest, though it applies to everyone, must be undertaken personally and most importantly, with full honesty. The problem is that many times we fall into thinking that “we know” as it happened to me, or the other side of that, “we can never know” so we stop learning. I believe there must be a point of negotiation, like with everthing, where we are sure of certain beliefs, we know we might not reach others, but we must take the leap of faith Kitty mentions in the first chapter ( “that we can know anything at all”) and move forward with that. If we didn’t take that leap of faith we wouldn’t be alive.

 

Really, I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who doesn’t think they can KNOW at least one thing, even “crazy” people that question if they are thinking for themselves or a machine is controlling them, if they exist or not, if they are the messiah or whatever, everyone needs to have a basic level of certainty, though this certainty is based in faith.

 

Getting back to the topic, I like the style that Kitty uses because she’s not just “wandering” and “philosophizing”  but she’s actually working with real proof and real claims. Take, for example chapter 2. “Seeing Things”. Kitty questions how we can know that our universe exists.

 

“There is a further element of risk for anyone on a search for truth. You cannot start in a vacuum… you have to assume that you exist and that you are sane.”

 

She uses a list of arguments to support her claims:

 

1.The universe is rational.

2.The universe is accessible.

3.The universe has contingency.

4.There is such a thing as objective reality.

5.There is unity to the universe.

 

Every claim is explained from arguments on both sides. What I find interesting is that she’s not just throwing stuff in the air but she has a point. Her whole writing is really getting at the heart of what science is, how we can use such a thing as “the scientific method” to provide evidence for our claims. Many times we fall into dangerous territory when we speak of private experiences. “But I saw it!” “It can’t be another way” “I swear this happened to me”, if we rely merely on people’s claims we would lose much of the knowledge we’ve been able to construct as humans so far. When explaining, say, gravity. We can take an object and see how it falls to the floor, we can reproduce experiments and show other people where our claims come from and what evidence supports it. Such a way of inquiry I believe is one of the most honest, for when we can’t prove something we should just be honest about it. Yes, I might have had a private experience that I want to share, but we should not expect people to believe us just because it was real to us. We might share what we saw or what we believe but we must also set limits as to what can be regarded as knowledge and what must be taken in by faith.

 

I’ve enjoyed this book tremendously so far. If I have not continued to read it is because I’m just not good with time management and perhaps that has seriously damaged my curiosity. Also, at times I might be just lazy, not lazy to read, but lazy to question the ground I stand on. It’s actually emotionally and mentally exhausting, to take what you finally regard as true and shift it without leaving anywhere to stand on. Kant was right in that one must not be lazy and be brave in order to achieve enlightenment. I hope to return to this journey with diligence, and courage, because I know that if I don’t I’ll keep building fantasies in my head or ignoring unseen truths that can make my journey through my earthly life completely different. Ferguson concludes her book by saying “Perhaps the most significant difference between science and religion is that science thinks that on this quest we are entirely on our own. Religion tells us that although we who seek the truth may ride imaginary horses, Truth also seeks us.” Maybe I’m on my way to meet Truth halfway.