Not Meant To Know?

The Avatar, VIII.

Discovery of the T machine with its robotic messenger in the Solar System is not First Contact with the Others but is the next best thing. Poul Anderson correctly lists the effects that such an event would have on Earth:

excitement

speeches

crowds

demonstrations

sermons

prayer meetings

press conferences

interviews with experts

tumult

parades

ceremonies

parties

extravagant predictions

occasional forebodings

claims that the Others caused the Troubles -

"...it was too disturbing, too provocative of heresy; there were things man was never meant to know." (p. 74)

Never meant by whom? I had heard that phrase and believed it to be true in my early teens. James Blish wrote a Trilogy, After Such Knowledge, its title derived from a poem by TS Eliot:

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"