Science and mystery

The common illusion of an "absolutely real" within relativity breeds philosophical sophistries and in particular an empiricist and experimental science wishing to unveil the metaphysical mystery of Existence (1); those who seek to enclose the Universe within their shortsighted logic fail to be aware, at least in principle, that the sum of possible phenomenal knowledge is inexhaustible and that, consequently, present "scientific" information represents a naught beside our ignorance - in short that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Shakespeare) and that in order to extend our means of investigation to fit the scale of the total cosmos, we would have to begin by multiplying our human senses in mathematical progression, which brings us back to the unlimited, therefore to the inaccessible and the unknowable. [Treasures of Buddhism, p. 41-42].

(1) With the aid of giant telescopes and electronic microscopes, if need be. Goethe, when he refuses to look through a microscope because he did not wish to wrench from Nature what she is unwilling to offer to our human senses, displayed a most just intuition of the limits of all natural science, and at the same time the limits of what is human.

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