Kant 3/4: Into the Deep End
The old man, the boy and the dog dive further into Kant’s Categorical Framework
It was starting to make sense. By now, the old man and the boy had grown excited about the possibilities unfolding in front of them. Step by step, they were using nature to navigate Immanuel Kant’s 300-year old model for knowledge.
Weeks back, while walking in the woods, they’d explored 3 levels of abstraction. Not long after, a campfire and piles of sticks provided fuel to discuss 3 rule systems.
Today brought them to a mountain river, the perfect setting for their next encounter. The boy was early. The dog, as always, was glad to tag along. The old man emerged from the woods full of energy.
“Hello, my friends,” he said with a smile, “Glad you could join me today.”
“Gonna do some fishing?” asked the boy. The dog’s ears perked up at the idea.
“No,” the man said, “today this river is our classroom. It’s time to put Kant’s knowledge model to work.”
Early on, the boy had been a bit leery of the old man’s riddles and tricky ideas about learning. But lately, this new model — the man kept calling it a framework — well, it was just plain interesting. The boy took a seat on a rock leaning out from the shoreline. The coursing mountain stream darted over rocks below.
“Okay,” said the man, “To understand the nature and sheer scale of knowledge, Kant has us thinking in 3 tiers: exploring one factor gives us philosophy; many factors we call science; and the interplay of all factors takes us into the realm of complexity. Still with me?”
“I think so,” the boy nodded slowly. “Kant says all knowledge falls into one of 3 levels of thinking — one, many or all.”
The dog looked up with a tail wag.
“Excellent. Today, we’ll see the kinds of knowledge available at each level, and how each kind of knowledge works.” With that, the man reached down into the coursing current, and splashed some water up into the boy’s face.
“Hey!” the boy yelled out, more than a little surprised. “That’s cold!”
“Yes it is,” said the old man. “What else?”
“You got me wet, I know that.”
“Just part of the learning process, my dear boy” said the man, with a wink. The boy looked befuddled, and not completely convinced. The man continued, undeterred. “You’ve got this. This river water is cold, and wet — what else?
“Well far away it looks blue, but if I hold some up close,” as he took a scoop in his cupped hands to inspect, “it’s clear — here, have a look!” and the boy tossed the river water in the old man’s direction.
“Ah! Yes,” exclaimed the man, with a shudder, “It is very cold! But I had that coming.” As he dried his face on his sleeve, he chuckled a bit, and continued. “So now we’ve experienced water on its own merits, the philosophy of water. We focus on the characteristics of its nature, or literally, what water is. Cold. Wet. Clear.”
The boy was good on this one, and nodded.
“Next let’s see what we can do with water. As we just learned, it can be splashed!” At that, the boy reached down, threatening a fresh reprisal, but the man raised a hand, to discourage the idea.
“This time,” the man said, “let’s see what happens when it flows.” He tossed a stick into the river, and they watched it bobble briefly, before turnIng into the current and floating away. “Many forces are at work out in that flow, including gravity, mass, and buoyancy, causing the water and other objects to move with the current. This is the science of water. It’s about forces, the causes of things .. so we can predict what’s likely to happen.”
This took a little more reflection, but the old man was still making sense. The boy summed it up. “So philosophy is sorting out the idea of water, and science is about what water can do.”
“Yes!” the man replied, elated. “And last but not least, there’s complexity.” He paused, to find the right words. “At this level, we must think about all the elements and dynamics in the landscape — the river’s current, the rocks, the fall of the land — and we start to imagine more scenarios. Now, follow me.” The old man, the boy and the dog gathered themselves for a short hike down the trail, edging the bank, until they came onto a stretch of rapids. The river now tumbled and churned, almost frantic as the water splashed against the worn surface of the rocks. A cold mist hovered all around them.
“Here we have turbulence.”
The boy and the dog took it all in.
“Many interacting factors make the future of this stick hard to predict,” the man said, holding it up for inspection. “Will we see this stick again? Any takers?” The boy looked on, in calm non-commitment. The dog, less ambivalent in the stick department, was deeply attentive, ears raised. So the old man threw the stick into the current and it completely disappeared in the spray. He threw another, this one a bit larger, but the result was the same. The boy was weighing scenarios. Were the sticks trapped in the undertow? Hidden on the bank? Or maybe they’d slipped downstream, out of sight.
Suddenly, the first stick shot out of the current a ways downstream. In the same moment, the dog lunged into the river with a raucous splash, seemingly intent on rescuing it.
The man and the boy laughed hard.
“Smart of you not to make a prediction,” the man said.
“C’mere, crazy dog.” said the boy, as the canine bounded up the bank with his prize. In moments, the dog shook hard, drenching her humans yet again, nearly at point blank range.
“I should have brought a towel,” the boy quipped.
“Ah yes, yes.,” said the man, again making use of his sleeve to dry off, “But its sunny today, you would never have predicted the need. Am I right?”
The boy was soaking up every word. Quite literally.
“In complex scenarios,” the man continued, “All we can do is guess the outcomes. We can watch for patterns. We can devise rules. But the certainty we prefer is gone.” The old man paused, then said, “This is how the world works, and nature is a fabulous model. But there are simply too many factors at work to isolate cause and effect.”
The boy thought long and hard. “So the world is messy,” he said. “Unpredictable. What happens in the end .. well, it just depends.”
“Absolutely!” said the man. “You’re learning Kant’s Framework.”
“We are?” the boy replied. “I thought we were down by the river getting wet.”
“Indeed.”
A comfortable silence settled over the group. “Let’s head back,” the man advised, “These ideas need to sink in.”
The old man, the boy, and the dog returned to the trail. The dog now led the pack, wagging hard, proudly holding the rescued stick in her mouth. The boy, perhaps for the first time, was weighing the magnitude of the world’s possibilities.
You’re reading a post on Thinking in our new Medium Publication, Just Curious. This is the 3rd of 4 installments in my series on Kant’s 1781 Categorical Framework. Stay tuned as we continue to weave together the implications. Meantime, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or here on Medium .. I love this place.
