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.

Other research suggests 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!"

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?