Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

In such great philosophical questions, Kant believed that reason operates beyond the limits of what we humans can comprehend. At the same time, there is in our nature a basic desire to pose these same questions. But when, for example, we ask whether the universe is finite or infinite, we are asking about a totality of which we ourselves are a tiny part. We can therefore never completely know this totality.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘When you put the red glasses on, we demonstrated that according to Kant there are two elements that contribute to our knowledge of the world.’ ‘Sensory perception and reason.’ ‘Yes, the material of our knowledge comes to us through the senses, but this material must conform to the attributes of reason. For example, one of the attributes of reason is to seek the cause of an event.’ ‘Like the ball rolling across the floor.’ ‘If you like. But when we wonder where the world came from – and then discuss possible answers – reason is in a sense “on hold.” For it has no sensory material to process, no experience to make use of, because we have never experienced the whole of the great reality that we are a tiny part of.’ ‘We are – in a way – a tiny part of the ball that comes rolling across the floor. So we can’t know where it came from.’ ‘But it will always be an attribute of human reason to ask where the ball comes from. That’s why we ask and ask, we exert ourselves to the fullest to find answers to all the deepest questions. But we never get anything firm to bite ...