The Unknown

There Will Be Time, X.

Jack Havig says:

"'...we'd better take care to stay within the area of unknownness, which is where our freedom lies.'" (p. 114)

Fortunately, there is a lot of unknown. I have read that Godel demonstrated that omniscience is impossible. My argument to this conclusion is as follows:

if everything were known, then nothing would be unknown;

 

if nothing were unknown, then nothing would be future;

 

if nothing were future, then everything would be either past or present;

 

if everything were either past or present, then, at the next moment, everything would be past;

 

if everything were past, then we would be dead;

 

if we were dead, then nothing would be known;

 

therefore, if everything were known, then nothing would be known;

 

reductio ad absurdum;

 

therefore, it is impossible that everything is known.

 

This represents the reasoning of someone who has studied philosophy but has not worked with it professionally: a combination of subtlety and blunt instrument.

 

Consciousness is a continual interaction between known and unknown. The unknown becomes known but as a continual process. When that stops, we are dead. James Blish's Service knows what is in the messages that it receives from the future but that is only a very small part of what is. Prescience is not omniscience. They, and we, act in the unknown.