The Threshold of Ignorance

that represent the idea of the object itself. We have no access to the viability of the object itself, only our consciousness of it. Whether the object exists or not outside our comprehension is not at all easy to assess. It can have an existence separate from our consciousness of it. This opens largely the question of whether or not our conception of an object is true or not real or unreal. From this illusionary consciousness emerges to destabilize our comprehension with regard to the object in question. What makes a tree a tree? What makes a planet a planet?

How do we know a tree is a tree? How do we know a planet is a planet? What are the criteria of our judgement? Who decides these criteria?

 If we decide for example to strip off language from the identifiable and return to the primitiveness of its being we realise immediately the weakness of the language itself. This is easily established when we use a term denoting the same object but in a different language that we do not know. The term tree in English refers to a specified object. It is not human, nor animal or mineral, but a plant. Yet, although this is enough to classify it under the flora identity it is far from representing a consensus among all speakers of the English language. If we ask students of art to draw the same tree facing them in the garden we are bound to have as many representations of the tree as there are students in the classroom. No two impressions can be identical in the representation of two artists.

 When science expresses symbolically an atom of water in terms of OH2 then this represents an identical representation accepted by all scientists. Here, there are no impressions but facts representation. Einstein’s formula E= cm2 represents facts

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