Sunday, December 11, 2016

What is Unknowable


"Science of nature has one goal:
To find both manyness and whole.
Nothing 'inside' or 'Out There,'
The 'outer' world is all 'In Here.'
This mystery grasp without delay,
This secret always on display.
The true illusion celebrate,
Be joyful in the serious game!
No living thing lives separate:
One and Many are the same."
...
We can never directly see
what is true, that is, identical with
what is divine: we look at it
only in reflection, in example,
in the symbol, in individual
and related phenomena.
We perceive it as a life
beyond our grasp,
yet we cannot deny
our need to grasp it.
...
The highest achievement
of the human being
as a thinking being is to
have probed what is
knowable and quietly to
revere what is unknowable."

- Johann Wolgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

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