There is No ‘I’ without the ‘Not I’
World Science Fair, On-Stage Conversation:
Theoretical Physicist Brian Greene:
How do you know that math is the language of the universe?
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:
(sarcastically) The universe told me.
Theoretical Physicist Brian Greene:
I have a question about this. Could you imagine that one day far in the future we encounter some alien civilization, and they say, “Show us what you’ve done to understand the universe” and we bring out our math books with all of our theorems and physics, and they turn to us and say, “Math … We tried that. It takes you just so far.”
When one really takes a step back and asks the question, “What is the foundation of a human being’s knowledge?”, it becomes clear that the answer lies in what we think we perceive as a subjectively formed understanding of what we ‘know’. But to intently ask ourselves what can be known is to recognize that the foundations of all human knowledge began as a series of defining one unknown by means of…
