Knowledge is the supreme currency of progress, and today we have more of it than ever. All of what we currently know, must be knowable. Some of what we don’t know, will in principle forever be impervious to our probing, and resides in the domain of the unknowable a la Kurt and Werner. But it stands to reason that there is plenty of knowledge out there that IS knowable, but as yet unknown. If we could enhance our senses boundlessly, we shall one day know everything knowable. If not, not. Either way, the day will come [when we shall have]* learnt as much as we possibly can. No liberal research grants will help at all. So what will be the limiting factor? The speed of light? Calculating capacity? Poor quality coffee in the staff room?
I don’t think we can ever know it all…we’ll find new, radical ways to compress/classify/recall information; convert knowledge and develop systems that will filter what an individual requires and reject the rest. The limiting factor will be your preparedness and capacity to learn. Evolution will enhance our brains to absorb more; store what is needed etc. and develop new capacities we are not even able to comprehend now. Imagine what the Neanderthals (with their big brains) were able to process compared to what is the norm today for a 12-year old child. I think we’re only at the brink now of an exponential learning curve…that is if a new Dark Age is not forced down on us by woo-woos…only in my opinion (wtf!!)
When we compare the extent of our knowledge to that of our closest cousins, the chimps and gorillas, we see a major difference. Perhaps that should be an indication of how much more we would have been able to comprehend if we were a little more intelligent. I think our own limited intellect, rather than natural phenomena, sets the limit for our current level of evolution.
shall have learnt is future perfect tense, if I recall my school grammar correctly.
**should have learnt is present resentment tense.
It makes one wonder whether a quantum leap in our capacity to learn will place us on a totally different level some point in the future. For example, if we as humans are suddenly confronted with a massive new challenge (alien invasion >:D, massive disaster/epidemic, Snowball earth, etc) that requires an adaptation to survive, will this not trigger/accelerate evolutionary processes while those unable to do so perish?
Is the opposite not also applicable, i.e. if life holds no challenges will we regress?
Even if human preparedness and capacity increase over time, don't you think there are other, external factors that will remain an obstacle?
Maybe, but human ingenuity will be tested and this in itself will stimulate further development, surely. Maybe I’m just an optimist.
I would postulate you could go around the universe for a very, very long time before you’ve exhausted the search for new, different, and unique lifeforms. You could even use paleantology on foreign planets that show signs of maybe previously harboring life (ala Mars). Perhaps that wouldn’t be a change in the fundemental way we view the world. But surely the number of possible permutations of life out there is beyond staggering…
But OK, say we can travel all of the universe (not just the bit that is within our current “13b light-years” horizon), and we exhaust every possible avenue for persuing knowledge. Could our minds deal with it? Well, I’m actually of the belief that evolution is way too slow in that regard. We’ve long since started to out-pace evolutionary changes with technological ones. Hence, I believe the answer is, we’ll augment our minds technologically, perhaps up to the point that all of human knowledge is instantly accessible directly to our mind at any time. (I would postulate that this will resolve many problems in the world). So no, I do not think our minds would be a barrier since our new knowledge may lead to ways to further increase our capacity.
BUT (coming back to travelling the universe) that assumes faster than light traveling speeds, since the universe is expanding, and we don’t have an indefinite amount of time to travel it, since, as scientists currently believe, we may come to a point in time where all galaxies are so far from the others that we would appear to be entirely alone in the universe. And thus, humankind is lucky to exist in an early period of the universe where it’s possible to observe other galaxies, at least, up until our ~13b year horizon (and who knows what’s beyond that…). PERHAPS we could visit a fair number of them before they start floating out of view, but not without faster-than-light travel could we ever visit all of them.
If they drift out of view, we may still travel there, but it’ll be a kinda hit-or-miss affair. Which leads me to…
Entropy may erase the universe as we know it long before we could acquire all knowable knowledge about it. (and entropy will erase us too).
… Which is why I’m so glad cyghost linked the most awesome story that Asimov ever wrote… good stuff.
I with the “We will never know everything” camp. Take the Internet. Before, what knowledge we had, was difficult to get hold of but now it’s easy. Problem is that for every good piece of info, there is a vast amount of misinformation. There is an overload of info.
Maybe I’m just an optimist.