快猫短视频

SCIENCE is the culmination of humanity鈥檚 attempts to reason about the world. It produces knowledge in a reliable way, and it has done so with great success. It has revealed many of nature鈥檚 secrets, from the molecular machinery inside cells to the grand scheme of how the universe began and evolved to what we see today. But for all their undoubted achievements, science and reason have their constraints.

Our species is unique (as far as we know) in its ability to know what we don鈥檛 know. That alone might make us duty bound to explore the limits of knowledge and understanding. More than that, however, these limits represent the hinterlands of what is knowable and what isn鈥檛. Exploring them, as we do in our cover feature, can not only shed light on what knowledge really is, but should also lead us to knowing more.

It is helpful, for instance, to distinguish between things we can never know, owing to the fundamental constraints of the physical world, and things we don鈥檛 know but could find out in the future. Hypotheses are sometimes criticised for being 鈥渦ntestable鈥� 鈥� string theory is perhaps the most notorious example 鈥� but we can have smarter discussions about what counts as useful if we grasp the distinction between what is physically impossible to measure and what is practically impossible with current technology.

We also find that some deep limitations to knowledge spring from our magnificent brains. Mathematics and logic are the most fundamental of the tools we have invented to accrue insight and, though they might seem unimpeachable, they have their own pitfalls. No one would suggest they should be abandoned, but perhaps we ought to devote more energy to considering if they could be improved.

Ultimately, the main reason to explore the outer limits of knowledge might simply be because it is exhilarating. This magazine has the pleasure of reporting on fresh discoveries every day. But, arguably, it is what we don鈥檛 know that really intrigues us 鈥� and what we cannot know might be more intriguing still.