Delving into the depths of the unknown. Going into the mysterious beyond. Dreaming of an impossible conception. All of these phrases have to do with what a person does not know or understand. The “mysterious beyond” is only mysterious because we lack the knowledge of what is out there. A certain “impossible conception” is only impossible because we do not know of how to attain it. Phrases such as these only show the limits of a person’s knowledge.
Maybe a question that should be asked is this: “What is the known?” What is the known? That varies tremendously from person to person. Everyone is different in what he or she has knowledge of, knows to exist, or understands. For example, literate people have the ability to read and write, the secrets of pen and paper are not hidden from them. Illiterate people, however, may find the written language almost magical in its complexity. It is utterly unknown to them. This idea of what is known might be better expressed as being all of what is within one individual’s unique perception.
Now, with a basic idea of what is known, let us step into the unknown. What is the unknown? This may be considered everything outside of a certain person’s ken. It is anything that he or she does not currently understand, knows to exist (such as something’s physical presence), or has knowledge of (such as the concept of advanced math). For humankind, a common unknown is what lies at the very depths of our oceans. No machine has ever traveled there, let alone a person, so this, undoubtedly, is classified as unknown. If there is any life down there, it is beyond us, and could be classified as non-existent because it is not within our collective knowledge base.
Many things, before they are known, are thought to be “impossible,” “mysterious,” or “impractical.” Think back to before the first man was sent to the moon. Space travel was thought of to be impossible, even ludicrous. But with the first successful launch, landing, and return, travel by spaceship was deleted from the world of the unknown and added to the realm of the known. Our perception of the known is continually expanding as we discover previously “unknown” ideas, things, or knowledge. Twenty years ago cloning was a myth because it was a supposedly impossible, unknown process. Now it is no longer classified as something unattainable, but a wonder of modern medicine and is now very much classified as possible. New unknowns also keep arising. Take deep space travel, for example. Currently, traveling light years away is something “impossible” for humans to do, simply because the way to achieve it is unknown. However, maybe fifty years from now it will be known, and its fiction will become fact.
Humans cannot help but move forward. There will never be a day when there will not be someone willing to step into the “depths of the unknown,” try an “impossible conception,” and pave a way for new knowledge to be gained and the mysterious to become as plain to us as our own hand. And as long as people keep pressing forward, taking that next step, we shall continue to add to what we know, perpetually shrinking and expanding the area of the unknown. But no matter how much we learn or presume to know, we shall never be able to have knowledge of everything. Though new, previously undiscovered (and thus unknown) items keep being “found,” there will never be an end to the mysteries ahead. The more knowledge we (as the human race) gain, the more doors are opened into a broader and broader range of questions about things that we don’t understand. There will always be another question at the end of every answer, and another unknown waiting at the end of every discovery.
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