"To understand anything -- another person's experience of reality, another
fundamental law of physics -- is to restructure our existing knowledge, shifting
and broadening our prior frames of reference to accommodate a new awareness. And
yet we have a habit of confusing our knowledge -- which is always limited and
incomplete: a model of the cathedral of reality, built from primary-colored
blocks of fact -- with the actuality of things; we have a habit of mistaking the
model for the thing itself, mistaking our partial awareness for a totality of
understanding.
Thoreau recognized this when he contemplated our blinding preconceptions and
lamented that "we hear and apprehend only what we already half know."
Generations after Thoreau and generations before neuroscience began
illuminating the blind spots of consciousness, Aldous Huxley (July, 26 1894 -
November 22, 1963) explored this eternal confusion of concepts in 'Knowledge
and Understanding'..."
Maria Popova shares more.
