Perhaps out of the infinite's nostalgia for its own finite past, if it ever had one? In order to see how the poor old finite is still faring against overwhelming odds? How close the finite may come to comprehending, with its microscopes, telescopes, and all, with its observatories' and churches' domes, those odds' enormity?
And what would the infinite's response be, should the finite prove itself capable of revealing the infinite's secrets? What course of action might the infinite take, given that its repertoire is limited to the choice between being punitive or benevolent? And since benevolence is something we are less familiar with, what form might it assume?
If it is, let's say, some version oflife eternal, a paradise, a utopia where nothing ever ends, what should be done, for instance, about those who never make it there? And if it were possible for us to resurrect them, what would happen to our notion of causality, not to mention chance? Or maybe the opportunity to resurrect them, an opportunity for the living to meet the dead, is what chance is all about? And isn't the finite's chance to become infinite synonymous with the animate becoming inanimate? Is that a promotion?
Or perhaps the inanimate appears to be so only to the eye of the finite? And if there is indeed no difference, save a few secrets thus far not revealed, where, once they get revealed, are we all to dwell? Would we be able to shift from the infinite to the finite and back, if we had a choice? What would the means of transportation between the two be? An injection, perhaps? And once we lose the distinction between the finite and the infinite, would we care where we are? Wouldn't that be, to say the least, the end of science, not to mention religion?
Have you been influenced by Wittgenstein? asks the reader.
Acknowledging the solipsistic nature of human inquiry shouldn't, of course, result in prohibitive legislation limiting that inquiry's scope. It won't work: no law based on the recognition of human shortcomings does. Furthermore, every legislator, especially an unacknowledged one, should be, in turn, aware all the time of the equally solipsistic nature of the very law he is trying to push.
Still, it would be both prudent and fruitful to admit that all our conclusions about the world outside, including those about its provenance, are but reflections, or better yet articulations, of our physical selves.
For what constitutes a discovery or, more broadly, truth as such, is our recognition of it. Presented with an observation or a conclusion backed by evidence, we exclaim, "Yes, that's true!" In other words, we recognize something that has been offered to our scrutiny as our own. Recognition, after all, is an identification of the reality within with the reality without: an admission of the latter into the former. However, in order to be admitted into the inner sanctum (say, the mind), the guest should possess at least some structural characteristics similar to those of the host.
This, ofcourse, is what explains the considerable success of all manner of microcosmic research, with all those cells and particles echoing nicely our own self-esteem. Yet, humility aside, when a grateful guest eventually reciprocates by inviting his gracious host over to his place, the latteroften finds himself quite comfortable in those theoretically strange quarters and occasionally even benefits from a sojourn in the village of Applied Sciences, emerging from it now with a jar of penicillin, now with a tankful of gravity-spurning fuel.
In other words, in order to recognize anything, you've got to have something to recognize it with, something that will do the recognizing. The faculty that we believe does the recognizing job on our behalf is our brain. Yet the brain is not an autonomous entity: it functions only in concert with the rest of our physiological system. What's more, we are quite cognizant of our brain's ability not only to absorb concepts as regards the outside world but to generate them as well; we are also cognizant of that ability's relative dependence on, say, our motor or metabolic functions.
This is enough to suspect a certain parity between the inquirer and the subject of the inquiry, and suspicion is often the mother of truth. That, at any rate, is enough to suggest a perceptible resemblance between what's getting discovered and the discoverer's own cellular makeup. Now that, of course, stands to reason, if only because we are very much of this world—at least according to the admission of our own evolutionary theory.
Small wonder, then, that we are capable of discovering or discerning certain truths about it. This wonder is so small that it occurs to one that "discovery" is quite possibly a misnomer, and so are "recognition," "admission," "identification," etc.
It occurs to one that what we habitually bill as our discoveries are but the projections ofwhat we contain within upon the outside. That the physical reality of the world/ nature/you-name-it is but a screen—or, if you like, a wall— with our own structural imperatives and irregularities writ large or small upon it. That the outside is a blackboard or a sounding board for our ideas and inklings about our own largely incomprehensible tissue.
That, in the final analysis, a human being doesn't so much obtain knowledge from the outside as secrete it from within. That human inquiry is a closed-circuit system, where no Supreme Being or alternative system of intelligence can break in. Were they to, they wouldn't be welcome, if only because He, or it, would become one of us, and we have had enough of our kind.
They had better stay in the realm of probability, in the province of chance. Besides, as one of them said, "My kingdom is not of this world." No matter how scandalous probability's reputation is, it won't thrust either one of them into our midst, because probability is not suicidal. Inhabiting our minds for want of a better seat, it surely won't try to destroy its only habitat. And if infinity indeed has us for its audience, probability will certainly try its best to present infinity as a moral perspective, especially with a view to our eventually entering it.
To that end, it may even send in a messiah, since left to our own devices we have a pretty rough time with the ethics of even our manifestly limited existence. As chance might have it, this messiah may assume any guise, and not necessarily the guise of human likeness. He may, for instance, appear in the form of some scientific idea, in the shape of some microbiological breakthrough predicating individual salvation on a universal chain reaction that would require safety for all in order to achieve eternity for one, and vice versa.
Stranger things have happened. In any case, whatever it is that makes life safer or gives it hope of extension should be regarded as being of supernatural origin, because nature is neither friendly nor hope-inspiring. On the other hand, between science and creeds, one is perhaps better off with science, because creeds have proven too divisive.
All I am trying to suggest is that, chances are, a new messiah, should he really emerge, is likely to know a bit more about nuclear physics or microbiology—and about virology in particular—than we do today. That knowledge, of course, is bound to be of greater use for us here than in the life everlasting, but for the moment, we may still settle for less.
Actually, this could be a good test for probability, for chance in particular, since the linear system ofcausality takes us straight into extinction. Let's see whether chance is indeed an independent notion. Let's see whether it is something more than just bumping into a movie star in a suburban bar or winning the lottery. Of course, this depends on how much one wins: a big win may come close to personal salvation.
But have you been influenced by Wittgenstein, perseveres the reader.
No, not by Wittgenstein, I reply. Just by Frankenstein.