Does a large group of people, such as might congregate on the internet, have the capacity for omniscience? No. The large group of people that claims to have the potential for omniscience--that is, to know everything--sounds like a fairly ignorant group of people. Anyone who imagines that a person, or a group of people, no matter how large, can know or apprehend "everything" is thinking of a very small everything. A very small "everything", even if it only includes what is reducible to "facts", without explanation or understanding. An "everything" limited to what humans know, not what we still wonder about.
The grasp of reality of those who believe they can know "everything" is limited by their own ignorance. Everything is a lot larger than it looks--they must have looked at the tip of the iceberg, like the famous captain of the Titanic.
the facts and just the facts about diverse topics--the kind that involve at least a short explanation
Showing posts with label omniscience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label omniscience. Show all posts
Friday, July 27, 2012
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
omniscience
Omniscience, as in being all-knowing, is usually attributed only to God, by people who believe in God. An argument to keep the theologians off the streets, I suppose. If you have been reading something, and the subject of omniscience is introduced, it may refer to omniscience in its literary form. When we say that an author is "omniscient", we mean that the author is privy even to the thoughts and beliefs of his or her characters. We know this because the author tells us when he or she tells us what the character is thinking. Some stories use dialog to tell us what the character thinks--we are privy conversations that happen when we are not there. But omniscience means we hear even the innermost thoughts and feelings--as if the author were a supernatural being or a god. After all, an author can create beings ( in print ), and do away with them mercilessly ( in print ). That matches a lot of notions people have about God or gods.
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