I wonder whether it is possible to appreciate something without truly understanding the nature of it. Hypothetically, if someone with no knowledge of astrophysics said that he was fascinated by the appearance of a constellation, nebulae, comets and whatnot in the night sky, and called the universe a beautiful, majestic creation of God, does he understand what he is saying? Would he still say the same if he knew what it was like to be near a
black hole? Or that you would likely be vaporized if you came within 100 million km of any living sun without protection? Or that outside the planet, without a multi-million dollar suit, your lungs would almost instantaneously collapse, and at the same time you would turn to ice due to the nearly 300 degrees of
temperature difference? These are the not-so-heavenly characteristics of the place in the universe that some of us may refer to as "the heavens".
My question is: Is it actually possible for anyone to truly appreciate anything, considering that by "backward extension", it is unlikely that we fully understand anything? History has shown that the second part is quite true: we have had evolution, or advancements in knowledge, but a more humble way to say it is, "Oops; looks like the previous school of thought was wrong". Examples are abundant: mercury was proven to be deadly to life--a few thousand years after some ancient civilizations treated it like a freaking fountain of youth. Earth was believed to be flat; it was also believed to be the center of the universe; but again, centuries later, it was shown that Earth is just another planet in the vast universe. Newton's laws of physics, which completely revolutionized the world of physics, were proven to be inaccurate only almost 300 years after their introduction. There are very few, if any, "permanent postulates". Even today, there exist branches of mathematics where -1 is not considered to be less than 0.
It even shows up in chess; look at the classical, romantic schools--and then the hyper-modern school, both of which are polar opposites of the other. The ultra-ultramodern in the future might even show that the best opening does exist, and it's called 1.d3; in an even more distant future, if humans still exist, and somehow miraculously figure out a way to
solve chess, the conclusion might be that a forced win exists for white if he plays 1.a3 on the first move, while black wins in other cases.
To say that this is not possible only demonstrates ignorance. What is so special about us, that our theories and ideology are exempt from being corrected in the future? Our technological advancements are about as good as the introduction of electricity: a big milestone of the century, but that doesn't bring absolute perfection to human knowledge.
However, one thing is that old, outdated knowledge, logically, has almost never prevailed over its modern, updated counterpart. That means, our knowledge does advance. It is still far from absolute accuracy, but it is closer than what we had previously thought to be true.
So I wonder, if all this is true (and to me, it does look so), it would imply that nobody can say that they truly understand what they are talking about; in fact, they can only claim to understand something better than others, but to say that they truly understand something is impossible. The sad thing is that it is so often that I see people talking as if they are in the latter case. The manifestation of pride and ego...
Just a thought. Not trying to polarize your thinking(not directly at least), but just propagating a thought that I(and maybe some others too) have had for as long as I can remember.
It's slightly quiet in the Malaysian chess scene right now, at least as far as I know, so I'm sorry if I disappointed you with another not-so-chess-relevant article. Just kidding, I'm not. If you didn't like this article, let me know what you think in the comments section.
