By Tecola W. Hagos (panelist)

The subject of �ethical limit� to our search for knowledge and what type of knowledge is ethically acceptable to society and the individual are the two most important questions of our time. I think such questions have always raised serious issues throughout human civilization in some form, whether as a subject of inquisition or as an item of political infighting. In this regard, we may think of the limits of knowledge as being forked, constituting of internal and external limitations. The internal limit to knowledge has to do with the capacity of our brain. It is Immanuel Kant who asked the first critical question that connected our knowledge of the world with the active participation of our brain in ordering and imposing time and space in our knowing of the world. Before Kant philosophers were merely interested with the question of what was the nature of reality, and not on the question of how the human brain knew what it knows. The second important limit on our knowledge is externally set by society, the law, powerful individuals, or by God(s) as claimed by religious people and leaders.

It is this second limit on knowledge that I am focusing on as my part of the discussion. Thus, I may articulate some of the current and most pressing issues dealing with scientific subject matter in this short paper as part of our thesis on the limit of knowledge in general. Is genetic engineering (cloning) or gender selection acceptable research subject? How about experiment and research to discover the deadliest and most efficient weapons? Is there forbidden knowledge that must be placed beyond the reach of human beings? The question of the scope of our search for knowledge has been a controversial question through out the history of civilization as far as I can tell from my readings. One legitimate enquiry, for example, is the question of the form of scientific research that is ethically acceptable. With the Nazi horrible experiments on human victims barely fifty years old, the memory of such voodoo science cannot be so easily overlooked in setting limit to forms of research. However, the decisions against the Nazi experiments by the International Tribunal at Nuremberg may only help us address the essential issues of scientific experimental methodology and not the subject matters of knowledge per se that may not be pursued under any condition.

Nit, the Goddess of wisdom, in Pharonic mythology, originally was a helpful Goddess to pregnant women teaching them the art of the safe delivery of babies. Overtime Nit evolved into a helpful Goddess to weavers, farmers, and artisans sharing her wisdom with human beings. The Hindu Goddess of learning and the arts is Sarasvati (who is alive and well beloved by millions of followers to date) who played similar role as Nit did in Pharonic Egypt. Ea was the Sumerian God of wisdom with similar helpful disposition as all the gods and goddesses of ancient mythologies from that ancient land that saw the coming and going of very many civilizations. If we search the archives of history about other civilizations, we will be finding similar stories. Nevertheless, one outstanding civilization that is still affecting world civilization to this day is that of the mythology of the Greek people and their Hellenistic followers. I found two profound stories that are relevant to the question of knowledge and its ethical limits worth repeating here.

In Greek mythology, in a story that probably predates organized religion (the ones we are practicing to date) by thousands of years, we have Prometheus, a Titan, and a truly sympathetic god to the human condition, who stole fire (knowledge) from Zeus in order to give that fire to mankind. Some variations of the Promethean story allege that man was molded into existence by Prometheus, and mankind was living under severely reduced circumstances suffering from the cold and darkness that prevailed at that primordial stage of life on earth, for light, warmth, et cetera were all controlled by Zeus and his fellow gods. Prometheus was punished for giving fire (knowledge) to mankind, for his act was perceived by Zeus as an opening that would empower human beings and free them to challenge the gods.

If we consider the biblical approach to knowledge, we see that knowledge was forbidden to human beings completely. �[15] And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. [16]And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: [17]But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.� [See Genesis 2: 15-17] Later interpretations and reveled truth have softened Gods admonishment in the Genesis story of the fall of mankind from Grace. The story of the coming of the Christ can be understood as a process of restoration of man to his former place of dignity and blissful existence. The biblical story of the �Fall� of man and other related stories in the Bible seem to be metaphorical rather than literal, thus their value to us is not as matter of fact evidence but rather as a series of lessons on practical ethical conduct.

Taking into account the Genesis story of the Bible and that of Greek mythology, what is of interest to me is that knowledge in Greek mythology is not forbidden but considered as a point of competition between man and gods. Furthermore, Athena representing the mediated concept of knowledge, seems to be willing to share with some men her wisdom. Thus, Greek gods in general, compared to the God of the Bible, seem to be involved on far more intimate level with mankind not just as masters but as partners in love, war, the pursuit of knowledge et cetera. However, the most metaphorically illuminating story on the issue of the role of knowledge in human life is the story of Icarus and Daedalus from Greek mythology.

Daedalus and his son Icarus were imprisoned on the Island of Crete with no chance of escape. Daedalus built wings for himself and his son using wax and other material too hold in place feathers, in order for them to fly away from their imprisonment. On the day of their departure, Daedalus advised his son not to fly too low in order to avoid from falling into the sea pulled down by the moisture of the sea nor to fly too high close to the sun in order to avoid the heat from the Sun from melting the wax that held the wings together. However, the exhilaration of the flight spurred young Icarus to fly higher and higher whereby the Sun melted the wax and he plunged to his death in the sea. However, Daedalus by flying within the range of safety succeeded in reaching the island of Sicily. [Hesiod, The Theogony, trans Hugh G. Evelyn-White, (1914)] The metaphor in this interesting story is that ignorance would isolate and imprison us from the rest of the world, but knowledge is our liberator. However, if knowledge is not properly handled, it could prematurely end our soaring spirit and plunge us down back to mundane reality with disastrous results as was the case with Icarus.

Beginning in 2002 three scholars, one from the School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the second one from the Department of Dermatology, Brown University Medical School, Providence; and the third from the Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, undertook a research project to find out if there is some form of censor on the pursuit of knowledge in research institutions. They did their research on forty one highly qualified individuals from the top ten universities in the United States. They gave their reason for such important research to be the absence of empirical data in regard to actual cases of censorship of certain areas of knowledge. �There are no empirical data on forbidden knowledge in science. To begin to fill this gap, we performed this interview study to examine why and in what ways scientists constrain and censor their work. This supplement describes our methods and sample.� The findings of the three scholars was reported in 2005 in Science magazine under the title of �Forbidden Knowledge.�

The Report of the scholars succinctly defined what is meant by �forbidden knowledge� in the context of scientific research. �Forbidden knowledge embodies the idea that there are things that we should not know. Knowledge may be forbidden because it can only be obtained through unacceptable means, such as human experiments conducted by the Nazis; knowledge may be considered too dangerous, as with weapons of mass destruction or research on sexual practices that undermine social norms; and knowledge may be prohibited by religious, moral, or secular authority, exemplified by human cloning.� [Joanna Kempner, Clifford S. Perlis, and Jon F. Merz, �Forbidden Knowledge� Science, Vol. 307, Issue 5711, 854 , 11 February 2005, (Footnote omitted).]

It may be of interest to include here briefly the Darwinian evolution theory of life to round out the theme of this discussion properly. Darwin never once associated knowledge with evolution in the sense later Darwinians, such as Galton, did with measurements of the cranium sizes of different individuals from different races to establish natural differences between the races in hierarchical order that is allegedly backed by natural selection preferring one race over the other races. Brain size on its own does not prove ethical superiority or superior capacity for knowledge. The whale, with a brain mass almost equal to a Volkswagen Beetle, would have been the most advanced life form on Earth followed by the elephant, if brain size alone was a determining factor of superiority.

At a 1932 lecture at Harvard University, Professor Lovejoy introduced the nomenclature of �plenitude� augmenting or constructing the concept into a coherent whole principle by taking and using pieces on the perfectibility of reality as propounded through out the history of philosophy by different philosophers from the time of Plato down to the Twentieth Century. Lovejoy identified such process as the �principle of plenitude� and saw it as a principle with growing significance, a �pregnant theorem of the �fullness� of the realization of conceptual possibility in actuality.� And Lovejoy discussed this deceptively simple idea, in its right perspective with a long history of a number of great philosophers� pronouncements as the background. Lovejoy stated the most well focused exposition of the concept in the rest of his lecture. To wit, a single illustrative quotation from that published lecture exemplifies the expansive and profundity of his thoughts.

�I shall call it the principle of plenitude, but shall use the term to cover a wider range of inferences from premised identical with Plato�s than he himself draws; i.e., not only the thesis that the universe is a plenum formarum in which the range of conceivable diversity of kinds of living things is exhaustively exemplified, but also any other deductions from the assumption that no genuine potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled, that the extent and abundant of the creation must be as great as the possibility of existence and commensurate with the productive capacity of a �perfect� and inexhaustible Source, and that the world is better, the more things it contains.� (Lovejoy, The Great Chain Of Being, Harvard University Press, 1936, page 32)

In its simplest form the principle of plenitude means that we create a cup not for the purpose of keeping it empty but as container either filled or to be filled to the full, for a full cup is better than an empty one.

If we translate this concept in the area of knowledge, what it seems to suggest is that the more knowledge we have the better it is for all of us. This of course brings the ideas of Aristotle on the concepts of the potential and the actual. The principle of continuity is associated with Aristotle, as the principle of plenitude is identified with Plato. The cosmos is both full and in creative processes. It is a mistake to think that what is to be known is already here completely and that it is a matter of time before we, human beings, will be able to realize the full extent of reality. We may be able to argue at this point the fact that we are no where close to achieving such vast knowledge, and as a consequence of our relative ignorance the ethical principles we are developing must be wanting also reflecting our tremendous limitations. The principle of plenitude allows us to present a good case for laxity and relative freedom to expand our knowledge.

Our human knowledge system necessarily is an expanding system like a great river basin, where one finds tiny brooks joining up into ever growing and expanding tributary river systems that eventually would cover great expanse of land and water�a river basin system. Knowledge challenges conformity, and it is a process of incremental magnitude. Thus, any effort to limit such development would be against the very nature of the knowledge-process human beings are wired into. However, from the point of view of the individual and also considering the ethos of particular societies, one can surmise that not all knowledge is beneficial. There has been over the years censorships and prosecutions of people with knowledge that allegedly threatened the social order. A good example would be the many religious persecutions and prosecutions of the Inquisition period and after on alleged heresy of individuals like Bruno, Galileo et cetera. In our own time we have individuals persecuted for their ideas considered to be dangerous to the existing social order. The 1925 Scopes case is one good example to remember. The issue was revived in the new Millennium as conservative thinkers tried to down grade �evolution,� a confirmed scientifically established fact, to be considered along with religious dogmas.

I do not think the physical laws of nature have changed in the last five thousand years. In other words, the same physical laws of nature that had confronted our ancestors are now confronting us in our own time. The difference is that most human beings now have a different understanding of such physical natural occurrences than individuals from a few thousand years ago. Such current drastically different views sharply contrast from those views held by people who lived a few thousand years ago. This difference seems to be due to the cumulative aspect of the availability of knowledge retained in our societal memory in books contrasted with the limited availability of such depository of knowledge in ancient societies.

We tend to attribute to ancient people some special relationship with God and/or nature. We differ to ancient people�s statements on morality, on social structure, on the relationships between individuals and society et cetera without taking into account the fact that they too were trying to survive in the same type of physical reality as we do. There is nothing special about such ancient people's relationship with the environment of their time that is not equally shared with the environment of our time by us. If there is anything that distinguishes us from them, it has to do with the amount and quality of knowledge available to us as opposed to the limited reserve of knowledge that was publicly available to such ancient human beings. What seems to be considered in our time as great teachings and wisdom coming down from our ancestors is nothing more than the practical solutions attempted by such ancient people to solve the existential problems of survival confronting those people and society. They have to solve such problems in order to continue living as individuals and as members of a community.

We all have seen monks belonging to this religion or that religion dressed in exotic gowns and flowing toga-like fabrics. The ancient people whom our contemporaries are imitating did not dress that way to distinguish themselves from their contemporaries. They dressed in the manner their contemporaries were dressing. I brought this mundane graphic example to show that our ideas on the nature of reality, creation, God or gods are equally anachronistic as our dresses are�imitations and lacking authenticity.

One ancient Roman practice that is still practiced in our time of turning mere mortals into gods and semi-gods can be observed, for example, in the practice of the Catholic Church of the consecration of saints. [I am not singling out the Catholic Church here for criticism, the fact is that it is the only Church in the World that tries to live up to foundational universal principles ever striving to improve itself from within while a number of Protestant Churches (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson et cetera) and other religions are sinking further into hateful demagoguery and warmongering.] The secular answer or counterpart to such process of beatification is the yearly awarding of the Nobel Prize to a handful of individuals. It is not that difficult to imagine that in time such famous individuals could be our gods and semi-gods. In other words our knowledge is affected to a great extent by our social interactions. There seems to be a great human need and hunger for human beings to create sacred places and sacred people (gods). Maybe such effort is to aggrandize our humble beginnings from the very bowel of a tiny speck of dust called Earth and elevate ourselves among the stars. I see in such desire a possible conflict between the pursuit of knowledge and the desire to limit knowledge by methods that are wholly outside of rational discourse.

It seems to me that there is a great necessity to recast our understanding of ancient people and their ideas that are still binding us in some form of cultural straightjacket, in view of our reality. Our religion, our social mores, and our relationships, whether in a traditional family setting or new format, must be re-evaluated for its authenticity and reality. Here is where our new approach would give us the tools that will enable us draw the new ethical limits to our ever expanding knowledge. The only way we can be able to construct such ethical limits to some of the destructive knowledge that we are currently capable of pursuing, such as genetic engineering, production of body parts, cloning et cetera is by considering human life with different perspective away from the dictates and logic of traditional religions and cultural values.

Of course, I am not undermining the great contributions of our ancestors to human civilization and social structure. We will not be here if those brave ancestors of ours did not take the first bold step that led to our incredibly diverse civilizations and cultural structures and value systems ending up with �us� the world over. Whether out of respect or for some esoteric reasons, if we stop in our struggle to fulfill our ever evolving capacity, then we are not honoring the great achievements of our ancestors. If we fail now in this human adventure because of our fear of new ways of thinking, or because of reluctance to try new methods of doing things, or because of our skepticism to adopt new relationships with each other et cetera, then we would have truly failed our great ancestors of ancient people.

How could there be a conclusion when I just wrote about "the principle of plenitude" and about "the principle of continuity." Both principles individually and in tandem leave us with open ended gaping hole that I entrust to you all to fill up in time to come. May I dare say years? I realize that my presentation is quite short, taking into account the monumental task of suggesting that ultimately knowledge should not be subjected to ethical limitations based on standards derived from inauthentic social relationships. I truly believe that our ancient ancestors have been given far too much power in shaping our daily lives in our own time. We ought to place them in their "right" place where their ideas and deeds must be judged by our own needs, values, and knowledge. Putting them beyond our critical judgments will not do.

Mankind seems to have made a turn for the better even though the record of the Twentieth Century is the worst ever in human history with no less than two hundred million people dead as a consequence of two world wars and endless series of conflicts, including the unjustified dropping of two nuclear bombs on defenseless civilian population where over half a million people died and suffered permanent serious disabilities. What I see most encouraging despite Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia et cetera, is the undeniable fact of genuine development of ethical principles and sensitivity to the needs of the poor, the oppressed and the disfranchised. Despite the inhumanity of war and destruction in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Far East, I see hopeful signs that we are, after all, breaking new grounds on fellowship, knowledge, and universalization of ethical principles.

Tecola W. Hagos

Montgomery College, Rockville

October 26, 2006