I often hear or read about people seeking the ultimate
truth. They speak with a sort of fantasy in their eyes.
To be one with the universe or to be in sync with the
universe, to experience that deep sense of unity with
the universe where there is no subject or the object,
just the one.
I do not want to speak about what that state might
bring about. I have a question about the ultimate
truth. Does it exist? And I want to present a
different point of view on this.
Human beings need to make sense of what they see.
They need to make abstractions in order to store
information and use. They need to make abstractions
of abstractions to simplify things. They tend to
seek invariant patterns in everything they see,
everything they do. It is perhaps necessitated
by how our brains work, tending to remember
patterns and attributes.
So humans are compelled to make a ladder of abstraction
chain. Perhaps the notion of the ultimate truth
which is the highest abstraction originates from
this tendency. It is the way we think, the way we
hypothesize that has created this hypothesis and
so it does not guarantee that such a concept exists.
It may be just a by-product thought generated
because of the way our brains work.
It does sound crazy but who cares !
- Onkar
3 comments:
this can be partially explained by mind theories of Freud n many great workers after him..He says ego always tries to make harmony with external reality n id n super-ego.id is what ur basic instincts are.n in the process of filtering the information human brain goes from 'general' to individual[deductive reasoning] initially; n then from individual to general[inductive reasoning].these are stages of our cognitive development given by Piaget...
may be after al knowing itself is greatest achievement human brain can have...
The Ultimate Truth is a concept, like mathematical infinity, like the square-root of -1. Does the square root of -1 exist? Do complex numbers exist? A perfect circle, as studied in coordinate geometry lessons, can never exist in the real world! The real world is probably too imperfect for such idealisms to be real. Or probably, it is too simplistic and naive to expect such idealisms to be real. I don't know. But the Ultimate Truth is likely to be an idealism of this class.
@Gayatri : I need to read to understand more about what you are saying..
@Suneel : At least mathematicians do not say a perfect circle, sqrt(-1) exist. They are aware that these are only useful to model reality and get insights.
But when people try to seek the ultimate truth as if it exists and is the only "real" thing, there I find myself raising question mark.
Perhaps what they are seeking is the explanation of the reality, like mathematicians, without the awareness that this concept is too ideal..
-Onkar
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