Science, Mind, and Limits of Understanding : Information Clearing House - ICH
Honesty should lead us to
concede, I think, that we understand little
more today about these matters than the
Spanish physician-philosopher Juan Huarte
did 500 years ago when he distinguished the
kind of intelligence humans shared with
animals from the higher grade that humans
alone possess and is illustrated in the
creative use of language, and proceeding
beyond that, from the still higher grade
illustrated in true artistic and scientific
creativity. Nor do we even know whether
these are questions that lie within the
scope of human understanding, or whether
they fall among what Hume took to be
Nature’s ultimate secrets, consigned to
“that obscurity in which they ever did and
ever will remain.”
Honesty should lead us to
concede, I think, that we understand little
more today about these matters than the
Spanish physician-philosopher Juan Huarte
did 500 years ago when he distinguished the
kind of intelligence humans shared with
animals from the higher grade that humans
alone possess and is illustrated in the
creative use of language, and proceeding
beyond that, from the still higher grade
illustrated in true artistic and scientific
creativity. Nor do we even know whether
these are questions that lie within the
scope of human understanding, or whether
they fall among what Hume took to be
Nature’s ultimate secrets, consigned to
“that obscurity in which they ever did and
ever will remain.”
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