Limited Knowledge

Jan Zwicky, elliptical and provocative Canadian philosopher, is one of my favorite thinkers. The following quotations are from her book, Wisdom & Metaphor.

“Coming to experience the fit of human thought to the world is a way of finding ourselves at home.”

A major reason most of us find ourselves somewhat less than comfortable, less than “at home” in the world is that we mistake our ideas of things as the sum total of what they are. We get married, having in our mind a clear idea of who this other person is and what they are like.

Disappointment, frustration, disillusionment, and anger follow when our spouse insists on, at some points, being quite different from our idea of who they are. Much of the friction in marriage comes from our efforts to remake the other into who we have thought them to be. “Coming to experience the fit of [our] thought to [the actuality of our mate] is a way of finding ourselves [and making themselves] at home.”

The cook bakes an apple pie, but it does not come out as she thought it should. Yet all who taste it smile broadly and say, “Now that is what an apple pie is all about. That is the real thing.” The cook, however is disappointed and modifies the recipe, the oven temperature, and the cooking time. Never, however, is it quite what she had in her mind, yet always she is praised as the best at baking apple pies. “Coming to experience the fit of [her apple pie] thought to [the actual pies and guests] is a way of finding [herself] at home.”

Zwicky quotes Rudolf Arnheim: “The function of language is essentially conservative and stabilizing, and therefore it also tends, negatively, to make cognition static and immobile.” Coming to a recognition of the limits of language is a way of finding ourselves at home. Our words, sentences, and paragraphs are always somewhat inadequate in what they seek to communicate. We are never wrong when we say, “I don’t know how to put it into words.”

She quotes Konrad Lorenz who, on the one hand says: “I am unshakeably convinced that all the information conveyed to us by our cognitive apparatus corresponds to actual realities,” then, later modifies and clarifies what he means. “What we experience is indeed a real image of reality–albeit an extremely simple one, only just sufficing for our own practical purposes; we have developed ‘organs’ only for those aspects of reality of which, in the interest of survival, it was imperative for our species to take account.”

He continues with, “. . . what little our sense organs and nervous system have permitted us to learn has proved its value over endless years of experience, and we may trust it–as far as it goes [italics mine]. Much of the time our mental, rational understanding of things is adequate for immediate and practical purposes, but if we are to be wise, we will realize that, always, our “image of reality [whatever ‘reality’ we may be dealing with’] is “an extremely simple one.”

Always there is much more, and if we realize this, our thought will have a much closer fit to the complexities and mystery of actuality, and we are more likely to find “ourselves at home” [in the world, in our lives].

I turn finally, to Tom Lilburn, whom she quotes: “Everything exceeds its name.” As Paul of Tarsus wrote, “Now we know in part.” Everything we know, everything we name, every idea and all our use of language (or painting or any other re-presentation of reality) is a limited realization of that which always exceeds our representation.

Lilburn calls all this human thought, “reason’s caricatures.” Always a degree of distortion, a degree of overemphasis on certain aspects, and, inescapably, the neglect of much that is beyond the reach of thought and language.

We are to be grateful that [Roark says, ‘God has created us such that’] we can somehow, to some degree, “participate in what is beyond us, enjoy a brief contiguity with that uncontainability.” Lilburn concludes: “There is praise and then there is sorrow.”

We are graced.