A poem for skeptics
No word can depict the manifold
In a single living being
No names can imagine Gold
Nor the phenomena of seeing
No sentence could ever grasp
One's inkling of eternity
No language could describe
The meaning of infinity
Our logic renders us static
When we speak of one we love
We may seek refuge within mathematics
But then threatened by philosophy
All our dreams explained away
By the force of the enlightenment
But our science remains a foetus
In the belly of epistemology
A note on the poem:
Epistemology is the section of philosophy dedicated to thinking about knowledge: What it is and how do we obtain it. Episteme was a type of knowledge which was said to be divine or of the Gods and which only the gods could possess, however Protagorus (a pre-socratic philosopher (before Socrates)) pointed out that we can't know what the Gods know because we cannot know anything about the gods. Since then there has been much debate about what we can know for certain. Many philosophers have concluded we can always play the skeptic. To doubt everything including scientific claims as they rest upon a fallacious logic; for example, just because I observe something 'X' amount of times does not therefore mean it is now a golden rule. This form of reason is called induction and was said to have been founded by Aristotle, Plato's student over 2000 years ago. Even now Philosophers debate what we can know for sure and little has changed. The debate continues and will probably continue for some years to come.
By Ellese Elliott
