True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all. - Socrates;
We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children. The real nature of things we shall never know. - Albert Einstein
As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious. - Albert Schweitzer
I had no idea they believed that too. I suppose you'd say they also had a "peculiar mental tick."
When you boil it all down, it seems kosta doubts everything in the world except what he can directly observe. In this sense, he is the measure of his own reality.
Or, to put it another way, kosta takes everything with a grain of salt, especially statements of people who claim the invisible, unprovable, pink-unicorn-like "facts" of their own inner reality, as the only measure of truth. You are right, kosta is skeptical of such Gnostic fabrications.
Good grief, dear kosta; but you must be dreaming. Either that, or grossly (and grotesquely) misrepresenting what these men were saying.
Let's have a look:
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all. — SocratesIn the first place, in this passage, the correct word isn't "exists," it's "consists". The prefix "con" stipulates a relation to something outside the cognitive self. Socrates — the great gadfly of Athens (who stung so many "worthy ones" that they ended up conspiring to kill him, which conspiracy was successful) — did say something to the effect that "I know that I know nothing; and because of this knowledge, I am wiser than other men."
You leave out the context of this remark. Socrates, in modesty before the God whose oracle was at Delphi, was trying to mitigate, distance himself, from the oracular words the Pythia had spoken, in response to Socrates' friend's question. The answer was: Socrates is the wisest of men.
In his response, indeed Socrates was the wisest of men. He knew that wisdom was of divine Source. He knelt to this Source.
This hardly constitutes a repudiation of God! Socrates doesn't even complain that there are limits to human knowledge that cannot be overcome in principle, on categorical grounds....
We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children. The real nature of things we shall never know. — Albert EinsteinAgain, the great-souled Einstein (IMHO) is not expunging the universe of "metaphysical" reality. He is simply acknowledging the category problem already alluded to: I.e., that God, being outside of dimensionality altogether, is not entirely reducible to human terms.
Of all the persons you cite, kosta, Einstein is probably the most profoundly religious in spirit. Alamo-Girl and I have been posting excerpts of his comments along these lines forever it seems, and to you directly. But it's as if you never heard of them....
As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious. — Albert SchweitzerAnd thus, for the third time, your "source" is acknowledging a mysterious "beyond" the Limit of human reason....
Thinking it over, it seems you want the world to be so "flat" that questions involving context [which would seem to involve the presence of at least one additional temporal dimension] can never come up. It's all dominoes, from first to last. Simply take the man at his word — and then explain his words in ways he would never have intended.
What do you really hope to accomplish by such methods?
Just wondering....
Thank you so much for writing, dear kosta!