ABSTRACT
Ultimately, the world is unknown. Familiar things hang suspended within the matrix of the unknown. We believe that the unknown is merely the absence of knowledge, that the unknown consists of knowable things. But the unknown is not the same as the known. The unknown is indeterminate, laden with possibilities.
The unknown flows into the gaps in our knowledge—all of the disconnections, divergences, errors, deceit, and overconfidence to which rational minds fall prey. Each area of knowledge rests upon assumptions that it cannot verify within its own discipline. Seemingly harmless assumptions lead to bizarre consequences. At bottom, nothing is ever proven, so the world always remains strange, mythic.
Tiny flashes of intuition are generated by the friction of a text passing through an attentive mind. A good reader knows enough to foster such insight like sparks in tinder. We turn it this way and that in our mind to get a better view. In that moment, something has come to the threshold of knowledge without yet losing the energy and sense of possibility that generated it. It’s the closest we can ever come to seeing the unknown, which surrounds us and qualifies all of our lives.
