Pie in the Sky? You'll Never Know!

  Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned  

Most of us spend the bulk of our time just trying to define, catalog and understand what we know, and then what little time we have remaining trying to figure out what we don't know but should or would like to know.

But what about the truly unknowable? Is it worth any effort at all to try and figure out if there are just some things in our unique little universes that are completely unknowable?

I'm not talking about the unknowable in the sense of trying to predict the future, like what new products your competitors are going to roll out, or what the hot new business or consumer fad is going to be, or better yet, what next week's winning lottery numbers are going to be. No, I'm talking about the truly unknowable (e.g., why does bread always fall with the butter side down?).

The 20th century saw the greatest-ever explosion of scientific knowledge. It saw the deciphering of the genetic code, the inferring of how the universe began and how it has evolved, and the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics.

But is also showed us concretely that there are some real inherent limits on our knowledge of our universe. …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.