Aporia

David Deutsch, quantum physicist and philosopher, in The Beginning of Infinity. Deutsch is obliged, in the course of arguing his theses about the nature of knowledge, progress, and human purpose, to rebut reductive notions like instrumentalism and our parochial cultural pessimisms. To do so he often leans on Karl Popper, who described scientific knowledge as being conjectural, ever-improving in its isomorphic fidelity to reality yet always tentative in a strict sense.

It is striking what an effect this clever little substitution has: we know, of course, that all scientific theories are later to be subsumed by better, deeper theories with more explanatory and predictive power; we know earlier theories are now in fact considered erroneous or incomplete for this very reason; but referring to “Einstein’s Misconception” reminds us of just how provisional our knowledge is, how far from any conceivable bedrock we remain. As a matter of philosophical principle, our knowledge is asymptotic: it may increase infinitely, draw nearer and nearer to the foundation, but it will never touch it.

(Perhaps this is so due to something elementally important that Deutsch observes in an unrelated discussion: “All scientific measurements use chains of proxies.” So long as language itself, perception —or more precisely, the inventive synthesis of perceptual data and mental interpretation that creates the world we know—, and measurement tools abstract us from the subject of our study, we can draw infinitely closer to it, but we cannot reach it, so to speak).

Our two deepest theories about the universe, Deutsch notes elsewhere, are in conflict: quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity do not accord with one another and are, therefore, misconceptions, incomplete or incorrect. In this, we are precisely like ancient humankind, and like our forebears we struggle to conceive of our own ignorance; we tend to believe that we know quite a lot, and with impressive accuracy.

So we do. Deutsch demonstrates that although we will, barring extinction, continue to refine and improve our knowledge infinitely, we will also never stop being able to improve it. Thus we will always live with fallible scientific understanding (and fallible moral theories, fallible aesthetic ideas, fallible philosophical notions, etc.); it is the nature of the relationship between knowledge, mind, and universe.

But it remains odd to say: everything I know is a misconception.