The Frontiers of Knowledge

As suggested by reference to Thales above, the story of humankind’s efforts to ‘know what’ in addition to ‘how’, but without relying on imagination and traditional beliefs, first comes fully into view with the philosophers of Greek classical antiquity from the sixth century BCE onwards.

‘Knowledge how’ almost certainly came to be accompanied, at some perhaps quite early point, by efforts to achieve knowledge what – that is, theoretical knowledge, explanations of why the how works.

the paradox of knowledge, which is that the more we know, the more we realize the extent of our ignorance, not least in these three crucial areas of enquiry about the world, the past and the mind

These are questions that lie at the heart of philosophy – understood in its broadest sense as reflection on what we know, how we know it, and why it matters – because they lie at the heart of human endeavour itself.

This book seeks to answer these questions in three crucial areas at the frontiers of knowledge, these being science, history, and psychology – more particularly: fundamental physics and cosmology, the discovery of the pre-classical past and human evolution, and the new neurosciences of brain and mind.

And what do we now know that we do not know?

whereas it was once believed that every advance in knowledge diminishes our ignorance, these recent giant strides have shown us just how little we know.

We occupy a different and much richer universe than our forebears living as recently as the nineteenth century.

In very recent times humanity has learned a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself.