Man’s 5 senses and their processor, the brain, have great limitations in terms of accessing the knowledge required to explain almost everything of significance to us. At minimum, this includes the universe or a multi-verse Cosmos, as well as our place in it, and how we came to be where we are.
We have scholars who reach what seem to be sensible, but are often speculative, conclusions. Then, instead of holding onto such conclusions on a tentative basis (as required by the methodology of science), some of these conclusions tend to be upheld, in many areas of relevance to us all, as if they had been conclusively verified. The guilty parties may be more the writers, including the media. But are we not smothered by some tentative conclusions which seem to be set in stone? Why this false certainty? Who gains by it?
For example, key Egyptologists are alleged to continue to insist that the pyramids are royal tombs, and built only with stone tools; and that the Egyptian civilisation goes back only about 5,000 years. When this and other ‘set-in-stone’ but more probably tentative conclusion are challenged, the challengers are apparently required to provide undeniable and conclusive evidence to prove their case. Why does not this requirement apply also to the prevailing belief? Such stances are to be found in assessments of pre-history, where one might expect to find less certainty than otherwise.
Recently, an eminent professor in physics claimed that the Greeks were the first to have discovered maths. What about the earlier Chaldeans? Or the other cultures which are known to have studied the heavens carefully, and for a long time, and calculated events of significance to them? Increasingly, clever people everywhere in the world discover more of the maths which exists. I am curious; Where is it hidden? Is this an unknown unknown?
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 