A thought about biology and the unknowable

Is there a valid distinction between how we think and what we think? Does the biology that underpins thought constrain it in the way that our eyes see only certain frequencies of radiation and therefore constrain what is visible to us? If so, could it be useful to ask not only what don’t I know about the world but what might I be incapable of knowing?

If we assume that our consciousness is based in the biological machinery of our brains, then it follows that this machinery has limitations and that no matter how advanced our research methods and technologies are, what we can know has a hard limit. And if we assume that there are phenomena at work in the universe that fall outside of these limitations, then we will never apprehend these.

I have a few reactions to this thought. First, it confirms my growing skepticism about the store we seem to set in human rationality and capacity in our modern world. My second reaction is one of relief. I wonder if our extreme faith in our ability to eventually figure everything out means that at a cultural level, we all are burdened by some subliminal sense that we are supposed to be able to understand and control the world and our lives when we are subject to processes that we cannot know.

The third reaction is curiosity and interest. The notion of the ineffable is intriguing. I find myself looking at the world around me and wondering about what placeholders for this acknowledgement of what we can never know we have in our modern world?

What mechanisms does my cultural context offer me for acknowledging the presence of “that which surpasses all understanding” in my life?

Currently I am pondering this.