Knowledge and the act of knowing.

The first 200 words of this essay...

Knowledge and the act of knowing

Since the dawn of mankind, Man has striven first to understand, and later to control, the World that surrounds him. Patterns have been noticed, connections inferred, questions asked and answers proposed. "Why are the stars always in the same place when the Nile floods?" That's the way our brains work, we are nothing less -and nothing more- than symbolic computers. We see things, we draw conclusions, we build up simplified versions of reality, models, that we can understand. And, more often that we'd like to admit, we get it wrong. Having some form or the other of "failsafe" is, therefore, vital if we are to stay on track...

The distinction between reality and model, between Truth and metaphor, however, is all too often blurred, or ignored entirely. Often we consider Models, mere derivations, and Reality itself, to be one and the same. 'Tis not so: the map is not the territory! All our knowledge amounts to is a simplified, digested, approximate, accessible bastardisation of reality. It is our map, marking out the straight and narrow. Of the "path less trodden" it says nothing.

From the moment we first open