I"m still reading and very much enjoying this article - I've got to this bit "If we never fully know what we are talking about, then the knowledge we produce cannot be an “expression” of our inner states. It exceeds us. " Everything before reminds me of an event a few years ago. NEC Research Institute in Princeton created an experiment in which a light beam raced through a gas-filled chamber so quickly, it exceeded the speed of light by a factor of 300.

What’s more, the light pulse appeared to have left the confines of the chamber before it even entered – a seemingly impossible occurrence according to theories of causality, which predict that causes must always precede their effects. I read somewhere that Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity holds that no object or information can move faster than the speed of light: 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second. At light speed, it would take us many generations to reach even the closest galaxies. The significance of anything moving faster is exciting because it would make intergalactic space travel possible. The experiment was discounted I think or is highly controversial, I don’t know. I think they’re still arguing about it.

Around the same time, I remember an obscure experiment in which they were able to record a faster speed of light by a new method and technology in measurement. Which gave me this thought. If we measured something that by its nature was infinite, of an infinite number of properties, any standard or limit we discovered would not measure that thing. But only measure our progress in our understanding that thing, in relation to what we knew before.

Isn't that part of the issue now?

I don't have a problem with that in terms of knowledge - that there's more than we know or could know - that there is stuff that will come out of inventions or discoveries - that are unknowable or exceed our current capacity. Because when I've navigated knowledge for training kids - cause I'm Maori/Polynesian - rather than fixed maps - we made imaginary points to head towards - using fixed time or distance spans - or heuristics from patterns we notice - from islands we know to probable places we don't know. An issue for those who want fixed maps.

A huge world on an ocean of unknown, has always been - why is it an issue now?