Knowing Everything: Is It Possible?

Mike Bodnar ponders why it is that we humans seem destined to discover things incrementally, rather than gaining full knowledge of everything in a blinding flash...

Telephone Bell
(Image: AI)

"Mr. Watson! Come here, I want to see you!" demanded Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Watson, in another room of the Boston house, clearly heard Bell's command at the receiving end of the 'liquid transmitter' and did as he was bid, hastening to his side. Thus was born the telephone, along with - some time later - scam callers from Mumbai telling you that your PC is faulty.

Fun fact: one of three brothers, Alexander Bell was the only one of them who hadn't been given a middle name at birth by his parents. So he lobbied for one, and guess what his eleventh birthday present was? Yup: a 'Graham.' "Here darling, happy birthday!"

Happy 11th Birthday Alex! (Image: AI)

Frivolity aside, the road to inventing - and then further developing - the telephone was one of step-by-step achievement, until finally, at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we all carry one around with us in our pockets. It took just over a hundred years for the phone to go from crude liquid transmitter to mobile, but why didn't it happen much sooner?

Science Is To Blame. Partly.

Because science. Because brain power. Because someone, something, somewhere, has decreed that we are not allowed to know everything too soon. How's that for a conspiracy theory?

If you believe in creationism, you'll believe that the world was created by God somewhere between six thousand and ten thousand years ago, in which case you and I will never be friends. To trust that premise, you have to ignore scientific discoveries showing the evolution of humans over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years - ignoring dinosaurs completely - and put your faith in an omnipresent supernatural being. And, in the interests of inclusivity, that's okay. I guess.

A confusion of beliefs drowning
under a sea of conflict...

But - and it's a big but - if God did actually create the world in six days, with a day off for R&R - why didn't he just give us all the knowledge of everything at the same time? Why did we have to learn that when we're naughty it would piss him off to the extent that he would initiate major climate change and flood the whole world? Answers on a postcard please, to anywhere but me.

Why, also, did it take a further few thousand years to be able to see the moon, planets and stars through a telescope? Why was it almost three centuries between Sir John Harington inventing a flushing water cistern and Thomas Crapper popularising the flushing toilet? How come it took almost two thousand years to go from simple fireworks to rockets that could take us to the moon? And why do we still not know if there are aliens somewhere in the universe?

You get my drift. Cancer, male pattern baldness, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, Donald Trump - there is a multitude of problems in the world that still need solving. Or maybe eliminating is a better word, given how that short list concludes.

Yay! Cancer cells under attack. Image: science.org

There are, of course, encouraging signs in many areas; cancer survival rates have improved, there are ongoing trials with disease-modifying drugs for Alzheimer's patients. Even baldies have some hope with recent advances in treatment, but in all these cases there is still some distance to go before they're solved. 

That's not to say there haven't been some game-changers in the past; X-rays, lasers, and microchips are all examples of 'ah-ha!' moments, and who could forget Alexander Fleming and his grotty petri dishes resulting in penicillin? (Fun fact: Alexander Fleming never received a middle name either, and was never given one as a birthday or Christmas pressie). But even penicillin didn't cure everything. Nothing has, and probably nothing will. It's unlikely there is such a thing as a universal panacea. Which leads us to...

Big Words and Deep Thoughts

So, stand by for some big words to explain why we don't know more than we already do, and why Big G didn't endow us with universal knowledge from Day One. In short (spoiler alert), we don't have the smarts to cope with such revelation.

Let's start with epistemological barriers, a phrase which you can drop into the conversation at your next dinner party and amaze your friends. Or lose them. In a nutshell, epistemological barriers

Cerebral overload.
Image: Posters.cz

are modes of thinking that resist new direction of thought. This could be summed up as: if you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you always got. That is, no progress. Sometimes our own ignorance, or stubbornness of thought, gets in the way.

Horvath, Fernandes & Idiart, in a 2023 research paper, address the issue of why we can't understand the entire universe, and point to barriers such as the cosmological horizon, and event horizons; we just don't have the smarts or the technology to look beyond these limits, and potentially never will.

Human brains evolved for survival, not cosmic comprehension, claim Boudry, Vlerick & Edis (2020). However, on the plus side they also suggest that mathematics, certain instruments, and distributed cognition (many minds make light work) can leverage greater understanding, so all is not lost.

David Sameen says, in his article here, that evolution itself would want to limit our reality. It's an excellent article and well worth a read. Other research support the notion that human brains just don't have the capacity to solve all problems or understand everything, and that science is open-ended and can never be complete.

I believe that's probably true, and maybe God understood that from Day One, which is why Adam and Eve didn't just sit in the Garden of Eden and go, "Ah, so that's what it's all about! And by the way Eve, d'you realise we're naked?"

Gödel, and his Theorem of Incompleteness
Image: Instagram

If you really want to impress your friends, ask their opinions on Gödelian limits, then go and pour yourself another wine while they get on their phones, or start thumping each other.

In a nutshell again: Gödelian limits prove that any consistent mathematical system capable of basic arithmetic is inherently limited, because it will always contain true statements that it cannot prove using its own rules.

Which means, basically, that answering a question only raises more questions, and so ad infinitum. 

So We Will Never Know Everything?

Ah, good question! Can we just agree on: No, we can't? Nah, let's not, because that's no fun.

What if - and this is a big if - but think outside the square for a moment and leap over that epistemological barrier like an Olympic hurdler - what if mankind transcends its own physical and cerebral limitations, and ultimately becomes a different type of being altogether? What if, for example, we became pure thought?

Image: New York Times

No wait, come back! A couple of years ago my wife gave me the book Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari, which delves into a potential future for mankind where we integrate with AI, biotech and genetic engineering to become something more 'super.' It made for interesting reading, but didn't quite go far enough, IMHO.

My theory is that yes, everything Harari predicts will happen, and that we will embrace and integrate with data, but I suggest we will evolve further, to the extent that we have no need of corporeal flesh at all, and that ultimately we will all connect (Borgs, take note) as a mind-hive, as pure thought. At that point, we can leave earth and think our way around the universe, discovering everything, comprehending everything, without hinderance or limit. 

The only thing we won't have discarded, however, is the question that we've always faced, from when we first crawled out of the primordial slime or swung down from the trees, and that is: what's next? 

We, as humans, are built to be inquisitive, to improve, to explore, to understand. If we become pure thought, and we know everything, what's left? What would our next challenge be?

Well, here's a thought: maybe we could create a new race for example, in our own image. Wait, where have I heard that before?

Nail-Biting Novel

Mike Bodnar is in a state of nervousness as he awaits feedback from a group of pre-readers about his next novel...

Lucien Treadwell, Influencer

I am on tenterhooks about my next novel. It's written but not yet published, and I am in the Unknown Zone where time stands still, there is hushed silence (can there be any other?), and if the silence is broken at all it will be by the ping of the email inbox, which could herald either triumph or terror. I am a bag of nerves.

I did this with my last novel, Unity: Peace for All, Freedom for None, when I asked a 'focus group' of people I knew to read the first draft and send me feedback. It proved to be very useful, as readers picked up on things that had been staring me in the face for a long time, but which I never saw. An author is too close to their own work to see the bleeding obvious sometimes. 

And I expect it to be the same with this new novel, but likely more complex. My previous book was a fairly standard Cold War spy thriller, but Settlement is very different, and could open the proverbial can of worms on all sorts of different fronts, not least those of political correctness, historical accuracy, and cultural appropriation. There could well be an element of 'how dare you?' to this, because I have written a story that inevitably involves Māori, and as someone who is pale, male and (arguably) stale, I could be accused of literary trespass.

Here's my draft blurb for the novel: 

It is 1839, and a private, clandestine expedition to New Zealand, involving astounding new imaging technology, is under threat from the start. The principal of the venture mysteriously disappears en route, leaving his protégé to undertake the mission alone.

His name is Lucien Treadwell, but he too becomes a target. His endeavours ashore in the nascent colony of Port Nicholson are closely watched from the shadows, and danger is never far away. But what he sets out to achieve also ignites tension and subterfuge almost two centuries later, on the other side of the world.

Fabienne, one of the characters in Settlement

Okay, that might change, but in essence that's what it's about, and with half the book set in New Zealand of 1839, to ignore the presence and roles of Māori would be a sin in itself. But to include them - even any reference to them - also today invites argument, ridicule, contempt, and accusations of everything from ignorance to outright racism. Controversy looms.

And yet it's a 'history-mystery,' so how does an author safely navigate the historical truths of a period - even though they're writing fiction - and avoid accusations of interference or manipulation? Or should they even worry? Is it not a novelist's calling to tell a story, one fabricated from their imagination? Sure, it may well draw upon historical facts, but should that in itself require the novelist to 'play it safe'? I suspect in safety lies boredom. (Which sounds like it should become a Latin motto: In securitate taedium inest)

However, I am getting ahead of myself. As I write this I have yet to receive any feedback from the PRFG - the Pre-Reader Focus Group - so I am crossing bridges before they're even built. But yes, I am nervous.

The author maintaining composure...

The PRFG comprises eight people of mixed genders, ages, and reading interests. It is also international, in that three of the participants live in England. This is important because I need to know whether the story has international appeal, or whether it will remain firmly on Kiwi bookshelves.

The feedback on the first draft of Settlement will decide how much of a rewrite it needs (possibly total), whether the concept is viable, whether the story arc works, whether the characters are credible/relatable, and so on, before I approach a publisher. Having a high New Zealand content I aim initially to approach Kiwi publishers, but to be honest I don't hold out much hope.

Poor overworked publisher
(Image: Copilot)

Why? Because publishers are today inundated with manuscripts. During Covid, suddenly
everyone found themselves with extra time on their hands, and guess what? They wrote the book that had been fermenting in the back of their minds for years. I was living in England at the time and I researched what the impact of Covid had been on publishers; it was dramatic, and many of them were completely snowed under with submissions. What used to be dozens of manuscripts per week suddenly became hundreds. 

Self-publishing also went through the roof, and that's not changed. It remains my backstop position for when every publisher in New Zealand has turned me down, or more likely just not responded at all. That's okay; I am thick-skinned, but this time I would dearly love a publisher to take me on.

I am, however, my own problem. Forgive me for elaborating on something I mentioned earlier, but I am a prime candidate for the pale, male and stale category of writer. I am also seventy-two years of age, and am likely to be perceived as being beyond my use-by date, particularly as I have never been successfully published before, and therefore have no track record.

Quantum physics: what you observe
changes what you observe
(Image: Caltech Science Exchange)

Also, as with quantum physics, the act of observing or measuring a system fundamentally alters it, so to ask a group of people I know to evaluate the story could mean that they tell me what they think I want to hear rather than what I should hear. It is likely to be a flawed experiment, so perhaps this time I will take into account what they say, edit the manuscript based on their feedback, and then send it out to a group of people I don't know for a more robust second opinion. If you'd like to be one of them, please email me at mgbodnar@gmail.com.

In the meantime, and while I endure this twilight zone of the unknown, I am avoiding reading the draft novel again, deliberately not editing anything, and trying basically to forget all about Settlement. It's not easy, but to take my mind off it I've started to cobble together the next next novel. It doesn't have a name yet, but it is post-apocalyptic in nature, and yes it's set in New Zealand, one of the few countries that could survive a global nuclear conflict. Does that mean we're safe here? No, not at all. The characters live by their wits, taking each day as it comes, always ready for the unexpected and to fight for their survival.

Pretty much how I'm living right now.