The asymptotic One: Reflections on limits of knowledge (přednáška v rámci workshopu The Challenge of Uniqueness)

Venue: CTS, Husova 4, Praha 1, 3. patro

All systematic knowledge (science) requires multiplicity of recurrent or reproducible events, situations, exemplars. Functional or structural unity of things still allows for scientific knowledge, while their “unicity” sets its unattainable limit. From this point of view, science aiming at the “universe as a whole” or an “individual life in its entirety” is highly problematic. Acceptance of the asymptotic character of the unique does not imply a demise of science, but rather helps to distinguish the rational (i.e. relational) aspect of knowledge from the mystical (i.e. aiming at the unconditional or absolute) aspect. This distinction is of critical importance in the frontier areas (“close to the edge”), where many interesting questions arise, as e.g. the problem of “idioversal laws” governing and shaping an individual existence.